Valvoline Oil Change has been recommended as a Covid-safe and Covid-cautious provider of oil changes throughout the United States. It may take a little research on your part to determine whether a given location will fully accommodate you, but many, if not most, will if you explain your situation (trying to avoid Covid) and ask nicely.

What you need to know: all Valvoline locations not only have the ability for you to stay in your car during the oil change, they actually require it. This is because their crew works in a pit, below your car and over which you drive and park.

The person who recommended Valvoline went to one in Colorado, explaining that their mobile mechanic, who is very Covid-cautious themselves, suggested that for an oil change they go to Valvoline, as you already have to stay in your car, and they will accommodate not having to put the window down, and instead calling with your credit card.

(You can read about their Covid-safe Colorado mechanic here: Fantastic Covid-Safe Mobile Mechanic in Westminster, Colorado: Repair on Wheels Mobile Mechanic. And you can read their experience with a Covid-safe Valvoline in Colorado here: Covid-Safe Oil Change in Longmont, Colorado: Valvoline Instant Oil Change.)

As the person who submitted Valvoline explains, “I called the first local Valvoline shop and asked them if they could accommodate me by keeping the windows up and letting me call them from the car with whatever details they need, and the guy set “no, we can’t do that.” That seemed odd to me, but rather than arguing with him, and because my mechanic had said that they would (so I was guessing that he knew of a situation where they had), I figured maybe different locations had different levels of what they are willing to do. So I called another nearby location, in Longmont.”

According to the person who recommended Valvoline, they had much better luck at the second one.

“At that second location the manager, who was a very nice fellow, answered the phone and I explained to him that I was at high risk for Covid, and could I pretty please keep my window up and call him from inside my car with my credit card number?

He said that he understood, and that yes, of course I could do that! But then he said “So the only thing we’ll need to do is open the door to scan your VIN and get the mileage,” to which I replied “Could I maybe, pretty please, give you my VIN number and mileage over the phone too?”

And he agreed!

I think that sometimes in these situations people want to help you, they just don’t really know how to, and if they are on auto-pilot it keeps them from thinking even a little bit outside the box. So my recommendation is call a couple of Valvoline locations near you; they ALL already require you to stay in your car, so you just need to explain nicely, ask nicely, and if one says “we can’t do that” don’t give up, call another (they are all over the place).”

Valvoline’s motto, at the top of their website, is “No appointment needed. Stay-in-your-car oil change in about 15 minutes.” You can do a location search right from their home page.

Valvoline Instant Oil Change
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