Free Drycleaning Arbitration Service
Are you in a dispute with your dry cleaner? If so, I’d like to help!
Over the past 21 years, I have had the privilege of experiencing the drycleaning industry from a very unique vantage point. In a way, you could say that I am a “super customer” for the drycleaning industry. I have worked with hundreds of cleaners and spoken on behalf of thousands of drycleaning customers. My role is very similar to a union representative; a union of drycleaning customers. I work with cleaners to resolve problems with customers and to improve their quality & service.
The best part is that my service is FREE!
So, tell me what happened…
Tags: arbitration, claim, dispute, Dry Cleaning, drycleaning
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May 9, 2010 at 11:06 AM
This is a great service!! Excellent information for the dry cleaning consumer. For more information and insight into the daily operations of a drycleaners, visit my blog: http://www.thedrycleanersblog.com.
May 11, 2010 at 8:54 AM
Thanks! You’ve got a great blog, too. I’ve added yours to my blog roll.
May 11, 2010 at 9:14 AM
Thank you!!
June 8, 2011 at 6:09 PM
so how does one use your free service and what are the strings attached?
June 9, 2011 at 7:20 AM
No strings! It works like a traditional arbitration. If you and the cleaner both agree to honor my decision, I will listen to both sides, consider the evidence and make my determination.
June 10, 2011 at 2:54 PM
I recently took 3 sofa slip cover bottom cushions (previously cleaned by this dry cleaner beautifully) When I returned to pick them up I was told their equipment broke and they were not ready. They stated they had to send them out due to the break. I pick them up several days later to see them totally grayish not even close to the off white they were before. I took in a pillow that had never been cleaned and one top cushion that had been previously cleaned and there was a slight difference in the the uncleaned and previous cleaned, most would not notice and the cushions just cleaned covers were dramatically different. I told them that they were not acceptable and they said they would send them to a special cleaners. After several weeks they came back again looking only slightly improved and this time the fabric felt chalky and pilled. I asked for them to pay to replace them @the cost of $208.00 a price from Kittle’s Furniture where I purchased them They owner says he did not do anything wrong. Can you help me? I have been a loyal customer and thought I had a good relationship with this owner.
June 15, 2011 at 12:55 PM
We can send one of your covers to the lab for analysis. The lab will send us a report of their findings that you can present to the cleaner.
October 15, 2011 at 2:47 PM
I hope that you can help me on that one because it is very puzzling. I took 3 pairs of pants to the dry cleaner. One was my best pair. They came back longer( about 2 inches) and one longer by as many as 6 inches. It looks like the texture an the fit of the pants is even different. However, I doubled checked and it is indeed my pair of pants not someone else’s ! I don’t know how to approach this . Do you know of anything that they could have done wrong to cause such thing?
Thank you very much for your help.
Aurora
October 15, 2011 at 4:13 PM
This stretching most likely occured during pressing. There is a good chance the cleaner will be able to return your pants to their original length. If not, they should be willing to hem them for you, free of charge.
October 27, 2011 at 3:56 PM
I had a light green silk shirt cleaned at my local cleaners. The shirt was biege when I picked it up. The shirt cost me $80 I know that I cant get anywhere near that amount. The cleaner offered me $30 which was fair but they wanted to keep the shirt. I didnt think that was legal. What do you think.
October 27, 2011 at 4:02 PM
It’s legal, but unnecessary in my opinion. I think they should let you keep it. However, this damage may be a manufacturing defect. I recommend taking it back to the store where you bought it.
February 14, 2012 at 11:25 AM
Hello Mr. New,
I recently took a suit to the drycleaners and when I picked it up, it was ruined. The suit is black with white ruffles on both the upper right and left sides of the jacket and has a brooche-like closure. Upon looking at the suit, I noticed that black die had bled onto the white ruffles on the right side of the suit, but not on the ruffles on the left side and that the brooche-like closure on the suit was broken into pieces. Like others, I contacted the owner of the cleaners and he told me that it was not the cleaners fault, it was the manufacturer’s fault and for me to take the suit back to the store and ask them to replace it. This suit had been cleaned 2 times at a different cleaners prior to me taking it to this new one, without any damage to the suit. What do you suggest I do to get my issue resolved? Could this be a technique problem (how they cleaned the suit) as opposed to a manufature’s problem? How is it that one side is ruined and the other side isn’t affected? Should I send it out to be analyzed?
Thank you for your help.
February 16, 2012 at 10:52 AM
Hi Sharon,
Since your suit had been cleaned safely twice before at a different cleaner, it is unlikely that your suit has a manufacturing defect. This cleaner most likely did use a different cleaning method than the previous cleaner used. Does your suit still have its care label attached? If so, what type of cleaning method does it recommend? We can send your suit to the lab for analysis, if you like. They very well may be able to determine what caused the damage and who is responsible.
February 17, 2012 at 1:42 PM
Thank you for your help Mr. New. I have taken my suit to the Ranchero address you told the other person to send their garment to. I look forward to seeing the results of the analysis.
February 20, 2012 at 2:03 PM
I have been using the same cleaners for about a year, and always get the same treatment on dress shirts: all are finished with “light starch.” When taking a shirt out from a batch that had just been picked up, my boyfriend pointed out how very stiff it, and all the others from that batch were, and indeed, they all felt like they could stand up on their own! Since we always have the same results, I assumed they had treated them as medium, or even heavy starch, instead of the light starch. When I showed them to the cleaners, they were very insistent that they had done nothing different, but that this was due to the starch “building up” on the shirts , and that I should request no starch for a period of time to give the shirts a rest. I can understand if this is something that had slowly been building up, however, as it was only from one batch, and the results were so dramatically different, I don’t see how this is possible. If they made a mistake and simply over starched the shirts, I understand, but they are insisting that I should have been requesting no starch from time to time to so as to avoid the build up. So my question is: is this possible, that literally from one cleaning to the next the “light starch” builds up that quickly so that the shirt now is incredibly stiff, or is this simply a matter of over starching the shirts on this one particular occasion? Thank you for any consideration of this matter.
February 24, 2012 at 10:15 AM
Hello Samantha,
This is a GREAT question!
Starch does build up slowly in shirts over time with repeated applications. However, you are correct that you shouldn’t see a dramatic jump from light starch to heavy starch in just one cleaning cycle.
The cleaner’s advice to occasionally send in your shirts for “no starch” is a clue as to what may have happened. If you take his advice without telling him what you are doing, he will end up mixing your heavy starch shirts into his no starch loads. If the cleaner is washing shirts that have heavy starch build up on them with the light starch or no starch shirts, he is creating the problem. The shirts with too much starch in them will act as “starch pills” in the load. The starch will transfer from the heavy starched shirts into the water and then transfer from the water onto all the other shirts in the load. Therefore, shirts that have heavy starch build up should always be cleaned by themselves, so they will not contaminate other shirts in the load.
My advice to customers who want to reduce starch build up is to wash their shirts at home two or three times.
February 24, 2012 at 3:38 PM
Dear Mr. New,
Thank you so much for the speedy reply. The way you explained the process makes a lot of sense.
When I picked up the shirts in question after being redone ( they did offer to remove the starch “build up” at no cost ) ,a different counter person handled the transaction. She happened to remark to me that it took three washes to remove the starch buildup, and proceeded to explain that using heavy starch on the shirts causes the fabric to break down much quicker. As she was telling me this, I was remembering reading something very similar on your site, so I trusted her knowledge. Apparently, she wasn’t aware of what the previous tech told me, as she assumed I always had the shirts finished with heavy starch. She did apologize profusely after hearing the excuse I had been told, and now all is well in my world of dry cleaning!
Again, thank you so much for your reply and explanation. This is a great service you are providing, and I will be sure to recommend you to anyone who needs timely and honest answers to their drama filled dry cleaning dilemmas!
Sincerely,
Samantha