There are various versions being advertised on late night TV and on You Tube of products/car polishes which claim to remove scratches swirls and skuffs from your car paint finish…BEWARE…I invested in the product and it wasn’t cheap…tried it out on a supermarket trolley scratch on my car…it wasn’t a big scratch nor a deep one…AND…Nothing …didn’t remover it nor even improve it one iota …so for all the advertising videos [ must be faked ]…they simply DON"T Work…Just another American SCAM product ! ! !
3 Likes
I have seen them being advertised and thought they were snake oil. Thanks for confirming.
A scratch can only disappear if it is filled with a compound of same colour and finish as the surrounding paint. A mark, such as tar or where the thing which contacts the paint, leaves part of it (a residue) behind. Standard car polishes easily remove marks.
If you bought it from an Australian based seller/retailer, contact them and ask for a refund…which you have the right to do under the Australian Consumer Law.
If you bought it from overseas, you can see if you can reverse the payment method. This may not be successful but may be worth trying. If it can’t be reversed, it might go down as a expensive lesson.
Also, please name and shame the product so it will come up in Internet searches, hopefully preventing others making the mistake of buying a dud/scam product.
2 Likes
These products generally are clear or tinted liquids that diffuse light so as to hide a scratch. The same principle applies to windscreen repair kits where injecting a resin in the crack makes it near invisible.
I have a cracked clear glaze in an expensive (kitchen) ceramic tile comprising the splash back. Once a month I smear a bit of canola oil on it, wipe it, and it becomes invisible to the eye. Nobody has found the crack excepting by running a fingernail over the tiles.
Oils and resins can work on a car to reduce but not eliminate visible scratches. For a car if one has modest expectation one might be satisfied. If one believes the hype probably not.
5 Likes
With modern cars they generally have 2 or more coats of clear coat over the original colour . Rule of thumb . If scratch is white and chalk like you have only damaged the top coat . What I use is Silvo silver polish . It has a mild cutting action and blends the top coat back in beautifully . Make sure you get all the Silvo off with a good detailing cloth .
If the scratch is deep run a tooth pick over it . If the tooth pick catches in the scratch shop around for a panel beater /spray painter . Once the bottom coats are damaged it’s time for a professional .
6 Likes
I have had success with McLeans toothpaste to blend in the scratch… Interestingly Colgate failed to work on the same scratch.
3 Likes
Rule 1 above in bold.
There are numerous scratch and swirl removers out there that do their job quite well (Meguiars ScratchX for example) but as stated previously there’s no such thing as a panel shop in a bottle. Were the claims about the product’s capabilities consistent with the use you had in mind for it?
How do you know it was an American scam? Were the people in it speaking ‘American’? Are you sure it wasn’t Canadian? Did you see it on an Australian TV channel? That’d make it an Australian-American scam or a Canadian-American scam (assuming of course you didn’t try to use it for other than its intended purpose in which case it’s not a scam and see Rule 1).
Beware of anything being advertised on late night TV, so called “infomercials”, U Tube, Pinterest, etc.
Usually the deals urge you to “ring now” and we’ll give you all sorts of free extras at no extra cost.
Just pay the extra postage!
The fact they are trying so desperately to convince you to buy their junk should sound alarm bells - hey this product is crap - that’s why they’re so desperate for you to “ring now” and “don’t you miss out” and to part with your cash before you have time to think.
You can learn to quickly recognize the same processed, manipulative voices behind the infomercials and safely ignore them, secure in the knowledge they are flogging snake oil.
1 Like
