Interior Only or Super Interior: which one you need

Two interior packages exist because two genuinely different problems exist. Booking the wrong one either wastes your money or leaves you disappointed, so here is how to tell them apart before you pick up the phone.

Interior Only, and what it covers

This is the standard deep clean and it suits most cars most of the time. The whole interior and the trunk are vacuumed, hard surfaces are deep cleaned and wiped down, and a UV protector goes on so the dash stops taking the full force of the sun.

Then the carpets, the trunk and the floor mats are shampooed, and the leather is deep cleaned and conditioned, or the cloth seats are shampooed. The headliner is spot cleaned, and the vents, door jambs, interior compartments and interior glass are all done. It runs to around two man hours.

If your car is simply overdue rather than in trouble, this is the one.

Super Interior, and who it is for

The Super Interior is built for what the trade calls a hot mess, and there is no polite way to describe the cars it is for. Stains that have set. Pet hair worked so far into the carpet that a vacuum just skates over it. A smell that has been there long enough that the owner cannot detect it any more.

It includes everything above, but the carpets, trunk and mats are shampooed twice and the leather is deep cleaned and conditioned twice. Stain removal, pet hair removal and foul odour removal are part of the job rather than a hopeful extra. It runs to around four man hours, which is genuinely how long that work takes.

Four questions that decide it

• Is there a stain you have already tried and failed to remove yourself?
• Does a dog travel in the car regularly?
• Is there a smell you notice when you get in after the car has been shut for a day?
• Has anything been spilled that soaked in rather than sat on the surface?

One yes and the Super Interior is probably the right call. Two or more and it certainly is. All four no and the standard Interior Only will do the job and save you money.

Why the cheaper one is sometimes the wrong answer

A single shampoo pass lifts what is near the surface of the carpet fibre. What has soaked toward the backing needs a second pass to draw it back up, and without that second pass it wicks upward again as the carpet dries. You get a car that looks great on collection and looks disappointing three days later.

That is not a fault in the work, it is the wrong package for the problem. It is also why you will sometimes be told over the phone that the cheaper option will not fix what you are describing.

The stain nobody else could shift

One customer came to Mr. Sparkling after another company had already tried and given up on very stubborn seat stains, and she was outside the normal service zip codes on top of that. The stains came out. It is worth asking before you write a car off as beyond help.