You want a windscreen coating. You do your research and settle on Soft99 Glaco DX. You apply, it’s successful (not a given) and you experience the joy of water rushing off with your wipers, which now seem to be surplus to requirements. The adulation is........ short lived.
As time passes, the speed of water evacuation slows and the vehicle’s velocity required to achieve this increases. Next comes what looks like a spiderweb effect. This is presumably where the coating is breaking down.
Then the blotchy effect (on areas of the screen) where the water can’t stream off. It begins to cement your opinion that the coating is dying. And all this after only 6-7 weeks, not the claimed 4 months.
I’ve begun calling it dead after 3 months, because the annoyances outweigh the benefits. So not the 4 months they state. And I’ve used it 4 times now.
I’m sure Soft99 would say I didn’t use their compound or their glass cleaner, but I’ve gone through the required steps that many would. I also clean the windscreen most days before I even set off, and I clean the wipers regularly.
Now for my massive issue with this product, and I learnt this the hard way. After 3 months, now into December, I did a full prep and applied another coating. All went well, but this time, the coating failed instantly. Almost like it never bonded and cured. At first I blamed myself and wanted to know what I had done wrong so I could rectify my error. I fully read everything on different Soft99 websites. A subsection ‘precautions’ on the Soft99.jp website states ‘under 10c, avoid use.’ This isn’t even on the UK website so when UK retailers download the blurb for their listings, they have no idea this even exists. I initially read everything on the Soft99 UK website. I read posts on forums, watched a variety of videos and read countless comments. No mention of this anywhere. It’s an absolute deal breaker if you live somewhere that, I don’t know, occasionally gets cold for prolonged periods.
I’m ranting here, but I’m so angry I have to go hunting for this sort of information. A conspiracy theorist would think Soft99 were deliberately hiding crucial information from a specific market.
I want this product for September to March when rain can seemingly persist unabated for days and weeks at a time.
I apply in September then go to reapply in December or January and I can’t. If we get a mild UK winter, I may be able to reapply. But if we don’t, then I have a useless product sat on a shelf taunting me.
I try to do sufficient research before any of my purchases so I don’t end up with products I don’t want. But sometimes I’m made to look stupid, and this is one of those times.
And all this to look forward to IF you’re one of the lucky ones for whom a windscreen coating works, because that certainly isn’t even a guarantee. Just read any thread on here for evidence of widely differing experiences.
Conclusion
Would I buy it again?
Absolutely not. I would never have bought it in the first place if I’d known about the 10c issue.
I can maybe live with the degrading effects (might be me). I can live with the shortened life expectancy (might be me). But I absolutely cannot live with having a product I can’t apply which is designed for specific conditions but can’t be applied when you need it.
I will however try Glaco Ultra. It says ‘up to 12 months.’ I’d be happy to get 7-8 good months and then just strip it off in April and leave the windscreen coating free until September.
People, you have been warned!
