Yikes! OP here! It the Moen Align faucet in Brushed gold. Not sure it makes a difference but I wanted to correct my post.

Brushed gold is a living finish?

We have a Moen brushed gold faucet in the bathroom and I’ve just been cleaning it as usual - a mild all purpose cleaner, soft brush, rinse off and wipe with microfiber cloth. All the smudges come off.

Thank you, @recordaras! We've not moved in yet so I'll clean once we move in.

I want to say that the instructions said something about periodically rubbing in a polish of some sort... I’m sure google has the answer. By the way I have a mix of Kohler/Delta/Moen and have been very happy with Moen! Delta has given me nothing but trouble, considering swapping them out for more Moen.

I have 3 Moen brush gold faucts (2 in kitchen and one in pantry) and 4 Delta in the bathrooms. In our other house we installed almost all Delta and a few Grohe. Grohe gave me the most trouble of all! I'm glad to hear that for you Moen has been trouble free. I'm looking forward to trouble free!

I always heard such great things about Delta so was concerned about Moen, but really loved their gold finish. I got a fairly expensive kitchen faucet (Pivotal) and in 6 months the webbing covering the hose completely rubbed through. Fortunately they are replacing parts, but they insisted on sending me a new hose and seeing if that one will fray too before replacing the top part assembly. Surprise surprise new hose is already fraying, and it has been one week. Then I got a Zura bathroom faucet for the guest bath and the lever that closes/opens the drain snapped off, sigh.

Whoa! Good luck with the new faucet. I don’t remember my Mom ever having to replace a faucet. They just don’t make em like the used too.

I always had cheap builder grade faucets in rentals and our previous condo and NEVER had issues with them! You just never know.

I have this same problem. Ugh!