AITA: road edition | refusing to pay extra to get my muddy car washed?

In this second part in our new series, Suzuki takes questions from readers and lets the audience decide - is this real-life person an, erm, donkey, or not, in a road-related conflict. And you get to share your thoughts!

Road trip season has come and gone and in Suzuki’s newest series, based on the reddit thread of the same name,  we take in anonymous reader’s questions on road rules and car etiquette. This is a place to vent and a place to judge! We want to hear all about your non-violent, legal, car or road - related conflict. Give us both sides of the story, and our audience will judge: were you right, or were you, well, the mampara? Read the real-life stories here and vote on our social media platforms. We’ll update this blog with the overwhelming consensus so you know for sure if you were in the right or the wrong.

My family and I recently went on a pretty rough weekend away in our robust little blue Jimny. We really took it through its paces and did some intense bundu-bashing through a mountain and over a (small) river.

Needless to say, the car was smothered in mud at the end of the trip. 

Back home, I went to my local car wash to get it cleaned up and when they saw the dried mud on the bumper and over the wheels (and OK, a bit up near the roof too!) they refused to clean it until I coughed up an extra R100. I thought this was ridiculous! You don’t pay extra because your car is dirtier than other cars? Surely a car wash is a car wash, and the standard fee applies no matter how dirty (or clean) the car is. That’s the deal - you get easy clean-ups and rough clean-ups and this one was just a bit rougher than normal. 

I refused to pay and left but want to know: AITA for refusing to pay extra to get my muddy car cleaned?

Vote on our social media platforms! Is this anonymous Suzuki driver wrong? If you have your own AITA question submit it   here.

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