It was Saturday evening, all stores were closed except for Walmart and I wanted to clean my car on Sunday and so I bought some Armor All Protectant. Wlmart has a very poor selection of auto cleaning supplies in Canada. I thought I'd try it out on my Acura Legend and after a few days here is what happened to my dash:



I contacted the parent company and they had me take real photos of the damage, send them the empty bottle, get 2 estimates on the repair and send teh original copies, send the original purchase receipt etc... and then I waited and no one called ever me. So I called and kept getting a machine and fianally someone answered and gave me the number of the person I should speak with. TO make a long story short, I spoke with him and he said that it's "impossible" for their product to damage a dashboard. He claims that BMW and Mercedes gives them dasboards to test their products on from the Alabama plant for Mercedes and the South Carolina plant for BMW.

What do you guys think?

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1989 300CE Astralsilber/Schwarz
1992 300CE Schwarz/Schwarz

I hope you did not send them the entire contents of the product that you believe caused your problem. If you did I think it will be difficult if not impossible to establish that the product caused the problem with the dash.

You are going to have to establish, i.e., prove your case. To do this I would start by having the product chemically analyzed and try and find out if there was some chemical in there that would damage your dash.

I think it will be quite expensive to establish the connection between the product and the damage to the dash without the use of experts to establish the connection. This is not something a lay person a prove on their own.

I kept the product and sent only the empty bottle. One of the customer service representatives asked me send it full, but when I received the "claim package" it stated to send the empty bottle only.

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1989 300CE Astralsilber/Schwarz
1992 300CE Schwarz/Schwarz

I have another idea. Since you have a bunch of the product why not go to junkyard and get a piece of a dash similiar to yours and do your own test and see if it causes the same thing that happened to your dash. That might be helpful.

Wow I knew Armor All was junk but I didn't think it was that bad!

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1999 SL500
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

I'm not a fan of Armor All by any means and would not use it but I find it hard to believe that it caused the damage you have shown. Imagine all the lawsuits if it did. Was the bottle sealed when you opened it? Also do a test on a clunker as suggested , you mite have gotten a bottle that was tampered with in which case they are still not liable. Please Post the results of the test so we may see.
Hard case to prove Good luck.

The bottle was sealed and was the largest size they make. Walmart no longer carries it, because when customers bought it, it took them a long time to use all the product and would not visit the store as often. That's what I was told. The reason why I found this out, is because I never saw any more of the Armor All bottles in the store that were the same size after I purchased mine. They said they stopped carrying it in that size. The UPC code on the bottle wasn't even recognized in their system when I took the bottle back after 4 or 5 weeks of having purchased it.

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1989 300CE Astralsilber/Schwarz
1992 300CE Schwarz/Schwarz

Next time use 303 aerospace protectant.
it is probably the best for dash and rubber materials exposed to sunlight.
You can buy it at the boat place for about $12/16 oz bottle.

The safest thing to do is not use such products -clean it with water. The rumor that Armorall causes such damage has been going around for a long time. I think if you can replicate it under controlled conditions monitored by an independent party you'd really have something. Of what they're afraid of is not you but the possibility of a class action and/or bad publicity.

The problem with cleaning your dash with just water is it offers no protection from the sun.

303 is the only stuff that should be used, Armor All usually does more harm then good.

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1999 SL500
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

I just received a letter in the mail today from them. Here is what they had to say:

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1989 300CE Astralsilber/Schwarz
1992 300CE Schwarz/Schwarz

my experience with armor all differs. i have a 66 mustang conv that I have owned for 12 years. The interior is all vinyl including the seats. I have always used armor all, all these years, and have had no problems.

2 other cars that we own 93 legend ( my daugther's ) and 91 560SEL which I drive, I use leatherique for the leather seats and armor all for the vinyl dash and door panels. No problems whatsoever. We have owned the legend since new, and the 560 for last 5 years...

there could be a batch or datecode that is bad, and that is scary....

The other thing is I found that my windows kept getting real fogged up when I used it too.

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1989 300CE Astralsilber/Schwarz
1992 300CE Schwarz/Schwarz

here's a detailers secret....use the highest SPF sunscreen you can find for babys. it moisturizes the dash, and obviously protects from the sun. this also works great on spa covers. for your leather seats, don't bother buying the expensive leather treatments, use HAND LOTION! Hand lotion is designed to moisturize and protect your skin, leather is animal skin. While not rocket science, very few people think of this.

The use of a high SPF sunscreen product on the dash sounds like a really fine idea. Hand lotion however, might not. I did a survey of hand lotions some years ago trying to find one that prevented the hands from shedding particles (for use in a semiconductor cleanroom). Most hand lotions actually attacked the skin, causing them to shed a lot of the epidermis (dead top layer). By shedding, you got rid of the dry scratchy skin leaving you with the soft new skin that was underneath (dermis). There were, of course, also moisturizers in the lotion that wetted down what was left of the old epidermis and made the hands feel good. Perhaps this wouldn't be applicable to a leather seat that has been tanned and dyed, but at least you know now how hand lotions work.

For what it's worth, I've never had a problem with Armor All and I have used it on all of my various cars.

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'76 240D-Sold
'78 240D-Sold
'85 300 SD, 165K-Sold
'88 300 TE, 165K-Sold
'64 Porsche 356C Cabriolet- under restoration
'86 560SL 124K Miles-Sold
'94 320E Wagon, 74K Miles-128K Miles JUNKED
'06 E350 Wagon, 84K Miles
07 SL550, 14K Miles