In late 2019, I noticed a serious and ever-increasing problem with one of my pairs of Wrangler…read moreRiggs ultra-heavy-duty work jeans. Specifically, the eyelet hole for the metal stud fastener in the front on the waistband -- a slot-type hole which is normally bordered on all sides by a heavily stitched seam -- had developed a major tear, and as a result, would no longer properly hold the metal stud in place, which meant that I could no longer wear that pair of jeans, because they were in danger of falling below my waist.
So, remembering that many years ago, when I had Iived in the NYC area, whenever a pair of my heavy duty work jeans had developed a similar problem with the eyelet hole for the stud, I would simply bring the jeans to any nearby cleaner shop that also offered clothing repairs and alterations, and ask them to do the repair. In all of those cases, the jeans were always returned to me within a few days with the eyelet hole restored to better-than-original condition, and with the "new" eyelet hole bordered by even heavier stitching on the border (that is, heavier thread and more stitches) than had been present on the original eyelet hole, and with the entire eyelet area reinfoced with a piece of thick heavy-duty jean fabric.
So, in this current instance, I looked online for a nearby (well, relatively nearby, since I live in a very rural mountainous area rather far from the city...) cleaner that offered clothing repairs and alterations. I dropped off the jeans with a clear request for the type of repair work that I expected to be done, and the staffer with whom I spoke indicated that they could easily do that job in a few days.
A week later, I picked up the jeans, and discovered to my dismay when I got back home that the fabric repair job was quite horrible; it had been performed quite incompetently. First, if any jean fabric had been added at all to the torn area around the eyelet, it was so thin as to be unnoticeable (given that the jeans themselves are made of very heavy and thick jean fabric), and the new eyelet hole was not only located almost an inch further out to the side from the site of the original hole, thus reducing the waist size of my pair of jeans from size 32W to size 31W, and thus rendering them totally unusable, but the new hole was so small that I could not fit the metal stud fastener into it without a massive amount of effort, and worst of all, the new small eyelet hole was bordered only with a very thin layer of stitching that had been done with a very thin thread, rather than a thick heavy-duty jeans thread. So, even had the eyelet hole been of a usable size and even if it had been positioned correctly, it would not have lasted for more than a week due to the weak and flimsy stitching/border.
So, the approximately $15 that I had paid for the repair had been totally wasted money, as the pair of jeans had now been rendered totally unwearable and unusable. As a result of this fiasco, I donated the now-useless pair of jeans to a nearby thrift/used clothing store, and made a mental note in my mind to never again send any work -- whether cleaning or clothing alterations -- of any kind to this shop (Rainbow Cleaners) ever again!