How Dripbase works

You book a package, not a person

Booking asks for a vehicle (which sets the size bucket and any surcharge), an address, a package, and a start time. Your card is authorized for the full quoted total at this point — nothing is captured yet. You are not choosing which detailer does the work; that comes next. Step-by-step instructions for booking are in How to book a detail.

Your job goes out in waves

Once booked, Dripbase offers the job to eligible detailers in your market — people who are active, currently vetted, working that day, and available for the time you picked. Offers go out in small rounds rather than to everyone at once: currently, a round is three detailers, each with a 20-minute window to accept before the next round goes out to three more. Dripbase currently runs up to four rounds on a job before giving up.

That's a deliberate choice on the supply side, not a delay for its own sake — blasting a job to every available detailer turns it into a race that most of them lose, which is how a detailer learns to ignore notifications. These numbers are platform settings, not fixed guarantees, so treat "small rounds, a short window each, a handful of rounds" as the shape of the process rather than a number to promise a customer.

A detailer accepts — and the deal is locked

The first detailer to accept an offer gets the job; nobody else can take it after that. At that moment, the price and the package's contents are copied onto the job as it existed when you booked. If Dripbase changes what's included in a package, or its price, after your job is already accepted, your job is unaffected — you get exactly what you were quoted.

Arrival, work, and photos

Once assigned, the detailer marks themselves en route, then starts the job when they arrive. Before-and-after photos, from matching angles, are part of the job — they're the record of what the vehicle looked like going in and coming out. Your card is charged only after the work is marked done and the required photos are in. Nothing is captured on a job that hasn't been documented.

The outcome nobody wants to write down: nobody takes it

Sometimes nobody accepts. If every round of offers runs out, or there's no longer enough time before your appointment for a detailer to reasonably get there, the job is cancelled automatically. The authorization on your card is released and you are not charged anything. You'll see this reflected as an expired job rather than a completed one — it's a real outcome, not a bug, and it happens more often in markets with fewer active detailers or for times that are hard to staff.