Washington Ave. Self Serve Car Wash

I should have read an earlier review about the credit card machine not working. I had the same experience of soaping up my car only to have to drive off without rinsing it because the credit card swiper couldn’t read it after the initial swipe.
In general I saw quite a few nice cars with people washing them that looked like they cared about their cars so I don’t think that my experience was normal. I just wouldn’t advise going without coins.

Ok, and turns out that as well as not working, the funky shaped credit card reader ruined my credit card, it is now bent to hell and won’t swipe. Do not use.

The guys here did a good job on my car, & they were super nice. Price was really good also :-) & I got to stay in my car the whole time, loved that part :-) only thing I didn’t like is that the place looks a lil ghetto :-/​… So if it wasn’t for that, the place would get 5 stars, especially bcuz the guys did such a good job :-)

It is easy to miss when your driving by, it sets back. It is a decent self service car wash, the area is so/​so.

Normally I like to take my vehicles to Auto Pride Car Wash in San Carlos. I live on the peninsula so it’s relatively close and for pretty cheap I get a swarm of people (who probably don’t have work visas) to go to town getting things all sparkly. However, I have one car that is my POS commuter vehicle and it spends most of its time strategically parked under the tree in front of my house or the tree that offers shade at my workplace. Needless to say given the parking locale and the fact that it has about 130K miles and counting it is hopelessly neglected. I feel embarrassed taking it to Auto Pride and the peninsula doesn’t have any old school coin car washes (at least as far as I am aware of). So when it comes time to knock all the bird shit off I take it over to the Washington Ave Self Car Wash in San Leandro.
I have to give these guys credit for not skimping on the coin wash business. For $ 2.25 you get a reasonable time on the spray gun and if you get the foam brush out it’s like taking a bubble bath. You get enough soap that it gets hard to see all the crusty bird feces to be removed. Although the machines take credit cards I wouldn’t feel comfortable putting my plastic into some sketchy coin wash. To their credit, they have a working change machine and you can also feed bills into the machines. In addition, they have vending machines offering Turtle wax, a variety of air fresheners and, of course, Mountain Dew (Sadly no crab juice or khlav kalash).
Another plus for this car wash is that you get to observe all of the finest Oakland public in their natural habitat. I would call the car wash reasonably safe and certainly not flak jacket worthy but do realize this is not an oasis in the East Bay. As expected you will see a bunch of ~$ 400 Buicks with rims worth 10X the body and woofers pumping out the 150 dB inner city tunes. It’s all good though ’cause as I said I’m also washing my POS vehicle…
Bottom line… It’s nice to see a coin op car wash today and it’s great if you need something fast and cheap but you’d probably be better off taking your Mercedes somewhere else.

I had some time to kill before an appointment, so I decided I should wash my van since I had not done so in almost a year. I guess it’s been a while since I had been to a self service car wash… but it’s kind of fun using the high pressure washer and bubble brush…
I wouldn’t usually leave a review about a car wash, but apparently, the guy who owned it was there at the time, removing money from the machines, servicing equipment etc… He was such a nice guy, he added extra money to lengthen my wash, for free!
Thanks dude!