http://autos.yahoo.com/articles/auto...parking-valet/

Nothing new here. A friend was a valet while in college in Baltimore at the Hilton back in the 80's and his stories convinced me to never have any valet park my car.

 

odeboy is gonna be mad

 

I never let anyone else drive my car.

 

 

when i valeted nothing like this ever happened, maybe because i have a respect for other peoples vehicles... it all comes down to who has the job. some people are just more prone to this type of behavior than others.

 

I valeted in college and drove everything from minivans to Phantoms, and treated them all with respect...even when I got stiffed.

 

I always made sure I pre-tipped (when I had newer cars) so I didn't have to wait so long. I still pre-tip even now with my crap car, but I could care less what they do to it...

 

As we can see from the posts already, there are good valets and bad ones.

To minimize damage risk to your car, pre-tipping, as Jim mentioned, is a good idea.

 

These topics come up every so often:

https://acurazine.com/forums/car-talk-5/valet-park-think-again-710629/
https://acurazine.com/forums/car-talk-5/what-could-happen-your-car-when-you-use-valet-parking-756372/
https://acurazine.com/forums/showthread.php?t=710629


But yeah... generally I do not valet.

There are a few places around town where I do b/c the lot is very close to the drop-off point and the places are so crowded that looking for a spot myself may take a while. They are also typically higher end places, so they tend to hire higher end help who have respect for other people's property. I also tip on drop-off and pick up to ensure they take it easy. So far, no problems...

 

Drift: "After our parking garage is cleaned, we have to re-park all of the cars back in the structure. Of course, having an empty, wet structure. Of course, having an empty, wet parking structure just begs for a little hoonage. I take every rear-wheel-drive rental car and find out how well they drift going up the structure. Surprisingly, the Chrysler Crossfire does a great job."

 

I was always a fair tipper with valets.

When I went to school in Manhattan I would valet all the time. Didn't have a choice. I had a normal guy that would park it for me everyday and I would tip him when I left the car. 9 out of 10 times the car was waiting for me when I got there. He even skipped people to get my car.

 

There was recently video footage of valets at some hotel here (downtown) tearin up cars. I think they put it online themselves, then all the local news picked it up and it was big news for a couple days. They were ROUGH on those cars.....and it was an odd mix of cars, too - a Grand Marquis, a Magnum, some exotics and even an 04-06 TL they were eBrake slidin....

 

I baby the hell out of my car so no matter what pulls in my valet lane, I treat it with respect. One because I'm not an asshole, two because I wouldn't want someone to do that to my TL, and three because if I fuck it up, I have to pay for it, and I'll most likely lose my job.

Btw check the "Interesting Cars at Work" thread for pictures of some cars I've parked

 

I made a few bucks as a young-un doing valet for my boss's dinner/wine parties. All private stuff. I remember one guy in a cowboy hat kept asking for his keys every 30-45 minutes. He'd go to his car, hang out for 5 minutes, then go back into the house. For some reason, he would always have more energy after his car visits. Hmmm........

Oh yes, and I NEVER EVER valet unless it is absolutely unavoidable.

 

Park yourself if you can. Problem solved.

 

I did it once for some extra cash and the company I worked for made sure nothing ever happened. It's always stories like this that gives valet parking a bad name. I didn't even bother reading. I mean...I've also worked in the food business and what I've seen was a lot worst. A LOT worst. So all you guys that worry about your precious car, I don't care if it's worth $15k or $150k, your health is priceless and just think about the shit they do to your food.

 

Meh just like everything else. Same shit with kitchen confidential or horror stories from mechanics. If you take a blanket approach to everything you are an idiot.