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dry cleaner ruined Polo coat

stubloom

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Based on your 2 brief descriptions of the situation (and without speaking directly to the dry cleaner involved), I'd guess that the dry cleaner did the following: He probably cleans in perc, a rather aggressive dye-pulling solvent used by approx. 90% of all dry cleaners. As the garment is a light color, he probably added that garment to a "light" load without testing the dark colored leather/suede trim for the possibility that it could bleed in the cleaning. That garment should not have been cleaned in perc (perc "sucks" the oils and fats out of leather/suede and causes leather/suede to stiffen). If the only solvent the cleaner had at his disposal was perc, then that garment should have been cleaned by itself (it's his own fault that the garment bled onto other customer garments in the same "light" load). My conclusion? Your dry cleaner has no clue what he's doing. It's the equivalent of a witchdoctor performing open heart surgery with a chain saw. Sorry, but I have zero sympathy for the dry cleaner in this case. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of the 26,000 dry cleaners in the USA think that garment care involves nothing more than loading a machine and pressing the magic button (that's the button that reads START) before machine pressing those garments to a quick death. Unless they are held accountable for their incompetence, they have no incentive to improve the quality of their work. As a consumer of dry cleaning services, you have rights. Know your rights BEFORE you choose your dry cleaner. For more information on the subject...... Blog post: Your dry cleaning bill of rights http://ravefabricare.com/true-qualit...of-rights.aspx Blog post: Understanding the nuts and bolts of dry cleaning machine operations http://ravefabricare.com/true-qualit...perations.aspx
 

BerryWall

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My late brother, an attorney, took his cleaners to court after they ruined a number of his dress shirts. He won. My brother was slow to anger and did not waste his time on frivolous matters, but the owner's attitude and total unwillingness to do the right thing led my brother to take him to court, more to teach him a lesson than to recover his loss. I only wish I had been there to see it. My brother was brilliant, charismatic and had a great sense of humor. He could be quite formidable when he chose to be.
 

TimelesStyle

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How much do you spend there? If they want to keep your business and don't want you telling every Tom, Dick and Harry not to go in there on a bet, they'll replace the coat.
 

viator

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Ask for their insurance claim form. A friend of mine had her skirt ripped and the cleaners ended up making a claim for the replacement cost of the skirt and giving her the money. The form was specifically made for dry cleaner screwups.
 

epa

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Originally Posted by viator
Ask for their insurance claim form. A friend of mine had her skirt ripped and the cleaners ended up making a claim for the replacement cost of the skirt and giving her the money. The form was specifically made for dry cleaner screwups.

A dry cleaner ruined one of my sport coats. It was a linen coat and linen sometimes have some "imperfections" in the colour, which is part of its charm. Apparently, my drycleaner tried to get one of these imperfections out using some kind of agressive liquid the took all the colour out of the cloth in the affected area.

I noticed the defect when collecting the coat, and protested, and the old woman argued that the coat had been like that when I handed it it. I protested. I then dealt with her son, who admitted that it was probably his mother who had made some mistake (apparently, it was not the first time), as the woman was getting old. He said that he would fix it. This went on for a couple of months, and in the end he admitted that there was no way to fix it. He then said that he would claim the insurance and that I would get 50% of the retail price of the garment. I gave him the receipt from my purchase. That was about April 2010.

Now and then I drop by and ask how things are going with the insurance, and he keeps telling me that he is working on it. The last thing I heard was that his contact person at the insurance company had retired and that a new person would now look into the case.

In any case, the good thing about it is that this was my cheapest sport coat and, actually, my second last RTW one, fairly badly fitted, so I was in any case thinking about having it replaced by something better.

On the other hand, since this happened, in the autumn of 2009 (it took a couple of months before I started to insist on the insurance thing), I have of course not entrusted this guy and his elderly mother with any more of my stuff. It all goes to the competitor next door, who so far has been careful and not ruined anything.
 

foodguy

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Originally Posted by stubloom
Based on your 2 brief descriptions of the situation (and without speaking directly to the dry cleaner involved), I'd guess that the dry cleaner did the following:
this was a great post. wonderful information. thank you!

Originally Posted by viator
Ask for their insurance claim form. A friend of mine had her skirt ripped and the cleaners ended up making a claim for the replacement cost of the skirt and giving her the money. The form was specifically made for dry cleaner screwups.
yeah, we spend a bit of money there, so i'll push for this. AND i'll never take them anything more than straight laundering and dry cleaning again.
 

jefferyd

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Originally Posted by stubloom
...If the only solvent the cleaner had at his disposal was perc, then that garment should have been cleaned by itself (it's his own fault that the garment bled onto other customer garments in the same "light" load).


Would it not still have bled onto his own garment?

I am not excusing the cleaner here, but nobody has considered the fault of the garment maker. There are steps in the design process that can, and should be followed to prevent this sort of thing happening. Had you bought it from a store, I would say take it back to the store and they should replace or refund it.
 

a tailor

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you should have called attention to the leather trim when you brought the coat in.
but then a competent cleaner should know about handling something like this.

question, is there a care label on the coat?
 

NoNothingGuy

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I used to live in Charleston, SC. This was about 10 years ago. I used a cleaner on the Isle of Palms named Pelican Cleaners. I remember picking up my shirts one day and realizing that my new Ben Silver shirt - a big deal for me, especially at the time - was missing. I had only worn it once.

I figured it was a simple mistake and called when I got into my house. They said that they had no record me me dropping it off. I could have sworn it was in the load as it was the last shirt I had added to the bag prior to dropping it off. They told me they would check again and get back to me. They called back and told me that I had never dropped it off. I saw red and drove back to the office to speak with the manager (owner), who was extremely nice. He offered to not only give me cash to purchase a new shirt, but also match the amount in free dry cleaning (~$225 or so). I was very thankful.

A few weeks later, I picked up my cleaning and there with my clean load was the Ben Silver shirt with a personalized note thanking me for my business, saying that the shirt had been misplaced and that they were sorry.

That is how a cleaner should handle something like this. I moved about a year later but made sure to tell them that I appreciated their service. I have yet to find a cleaner like that in my current location.
 

stubloom

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Response to jefferyd:

Ralph Lauren loves using suede or leather trim. For example: tan suede elbow patches on an off-white cotton shirt, dark brown leather patches on a tan cotton/spandex britches, brown leather collar on a white cotton ladies blazer, etc.

As the dry cleaner for Ralph Lauren in Phoenix, we're often called in by Ralph Lauren to "fix" a problem with a garment with suede and leather trim: some have been messed up by other cleaners (our job is to restore the garment to original condition); some have been brought back to the store by clients who were told by their cleaners that the garment was "not dry cleanable" (our job is to prove that the garment is perfectly cleanable if you know how).

Based on my experience with Ralph Lauren, their quality control department does a pretty good job ensuring that their garments are serviceable according to the care label. Nonetheless, we always test EVERY garment with suede and leather trim that comes into our plant for cleaning -- irrespective of brand.

Why? Because we have to be 100% certain how we're going to clean a garment with suede or leather trim BEFORE we go ahead.

Unlike the cleaner involved with this garment (whom I suspect cleans in perc), we clean in siloxane. You'd think that we wouldn't have to worry about the bleeding of suede and leather trim because siloxane is a dry cleaning fluid that is known for it's NON DYE BLEEDING PROPERTIES.

Yet, we worry. So we test every garment with suede and leather trim.

Even though we clean in siloxane, we still sometimes find that we have to remove and replace the suede or leather trim to ensure proper cleaning of the garment.

An example would be a "dry clean only" white ladies cotton blazer with a brown leather collar. Let's say that the blazer was relatively dirty/grubby and required special water-based treatments to remove all the stains and dirt. We'd remove the collar, restore the garment to it's original white color, hang dry the blazer, dry clean the blazer without the collar, clean the leather collar independently, sew the whole thing back together again, and then hand press.

I think that it's a cop out on the part of any dry cleaner to rely SOLEY on a care label: "Sorry we screwed up your garment but we did exactly what the label said and look what happened...it's the manufacture's fault...so take it back to the store". If your experience/knowledge/skill tells you otherwise then you have an obligation to your client to contact the manufacturer BEFORE "experimenting" on their garment. I know that this is a contrarian view that's not shared by the "dry cleaning industry", but that's my opinion (for what it's worth).
 

CYstyle

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Originally Posted by stubloom
I think that it's a cop out on the part of any dry cleaner to rely SOLEY on a care label: "Sorry we screwed up your garment but we did exactly what the label said and look what happened...it's the manufacture's fault...so take it back to the store". If your experience/knowledge/skill tells you otherwise then you have an obligation to your client to contact the manufacturer BEFORE "experimenting" on their garment. I know that this is a contrarian view that's not shared by the "dry cleaning industry", but that's my opinion (for what it's worth).

+1

Having been working on the store side of things, I hated when people brought in their clothes destroyed by a crappy dry cleaner and expect us to replace it. It was sold in brand new condition to the customer, any point after the point of sale the liability should reside with the customer, and if the dry cleaner destroyed the garment the customer and dry cleaner should work it out amongst themselves.

Threads like these highlight the importance of a good dry cleaner. Think about it, you read up and have all this knowledge of things like canvassing, learned about fit, differences between fabrics, spent hours doing so. Then spent a ton of money on your clothing, finding a great tailor, having a tailor make you bespoke clothing, or spent money on alterations from a great tailor. After all this then dumping it on a cheap crappy cleaner to ruin it all.

A good cleaner may be more expensive, but it's worth it to avoid all the headaches dealing with a bad dry cleaners.
 

Douglas

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Honestly, it sucks these guys screwed up, but people are pretty f*cking hard on dry cleaners around here. Sure, they don't know a lot about cleaning clothes, and it is kind of frustrating, but they make their money about $2 at a time and the first thing anyone wants is a replacement of their $200 shirt or $1000 suit and gets all indignant about it.
 

Rambo

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Try and get replacement value in person. If that doesn't work, file complaints with the Better Business Bureau and the state attorney's office. Both should have online complaint forms.

I had two separate dry cleaners **** up two different shirts - both completely random stains, both completely ruined when said stain removal turned into a bleaching competition. The complaints didn't do a damn thing but I used them to leverage a settlement out of both of the cleaners.

Document every conversation detail - names, dates, locations, etc.. Get pictures of the garment and try and get some pics of it new (the ones from the B&S thread should suffice). Be as thorough and detailed as possible.
 

singlechange

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Perhaps next time you may want to look into using RAVE Fabricare in Scotsdale, Arizona. They take shipping orders now. After a local cleaner ruined my wool/cotton Brioni suit, I have been using RAVE, which is also recommended by the gentleman who runs the blog asuitablewardrobe. I've already have used them on my bespoke suits. They also do reweaving. In anycase RAVE offers some very informative information on dry cleaning process too on their website, which you might also look at.
 

stubloom

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Response to Douglas: You make a great point which gets at the heart of an issue that galls me on a DAILY basis: From the consumer's point of view.... Why would you take a $200 shirt for laundry or a $1000 suit for dry cleaning to an ordinary cleaner (such as a discount or middle of the road cleaner) when you know, in advance, that in all probability they don't have the skills nor the time to "do the job right"? And why would you then complain when the cleaner screws up? From the dry cleaner's point of view... Why would you accept a $200+ shirt for laundry or a $1000+ suit for dry cleaning when you know, in advance, that you don't have the skills nor the time to "do the job right"? And why would you then dodge compensating the client when you screw up? Garment care is a two way street: it involves the correct selection of a dry cleaner by the client based on the type and value of the garment being cared for, and it involves honesty on the part of the dry cleaner as to what he can and can't do based on the type and value of the garment entrusted to him by the client. I'll be honest and blunt: I don't have much sympathy for the client that entrusts a valuable garment to a discount or middle of the road cleaner and then complains when the cleaner screws up. And I don't have much sympathy for the cleaner who doesn't understand the quality or value of the garment he is holding in his hands and is oblivious to the fact that he doesn't possess the requisite skills to care for that garment. Yes, I know that I am biased. And, yes, I had fun penning this comment.
 

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