I will start by saying that I really did not want to write this review - I was hoping that my situation could be resolved in person with this dry cleaner. I love Sausalito and hate the idea of writing anything bad about its small business owners. But I wish I had read this review before I tried this dry cleaner. So, I decided I should write it so that you would not have the same experience that I did.
First, this dry cleaner is ALWAYS late. She would literally tell me that my clothes would be ready on a certain day, and then I would make the trip over and it was not ready. This happened to me a few times, but I decided to forgive it (in retrospect, I am not sure why I did).
But what made me decide to stop going and write this review is my most recent experience - about 3 weeks ago, I dropped off a lot of dry cleaning, maybe a third of my work wardrobe. I picked it up a week later on a Friday without much thought. Then, Monday morning, I put on one of my dresses from the order. Suddenly, I noticed this disgusting stink, like a really, really dirty man's B.O. Realizing it was the dress, I immediately took it off and went and smelled the rest of my clothes. It all smelled like that.
I returned my clothes to the dry cleaner and she apologized, saying that the place where she sends it to be done must have placed it in the machine (or however they do the cleaning) with something that smelled like that and it must have rubbed off. I have never heard of something like this happening, and she said she had not either. I totally get mistakes happen and she said she would take care of it for free and that I could pick it up several days later.
When I showed up when it was supposed to be ready, again, it was not. She told me to return the following Monday evening. You can imagine how much that added to my frustration, but I decided there was no benefit in fighting with her about it. Assuming that she would have taken care of the issue, my husband picked up the dry cleaning when it was finally ready. When I smelled it at home, I realized that the smell was a little better, but still there.
I figured she couldn't seem to get it right, so I called and nicely said that I would like to try to take my clothes somewhere else to see if it could be fixed, and if she could please refund me given the trouble. It was a little difficult to communicate with her because her English isn't great, so it is possible I misunderstood some of this. But, from what I did understand, she said absolutely not and told me she has a sign up that says that she is not responsible for anything that happens to your clothes when it is with her. I totally get wanting to limit your liability, but if you make my clothes worse than it started, maybe you should take some responsibility. I wasn't asking her to buy me new clothes, just refund me for the poor work she did. She then tried to blame me, saying maybe the smell was my husband's. As far as I know, my husband has never smelled like that a day in his life and does not wear my clothes, let alone all of them at once. The real cherry on top was that she threatened that I should speak with her lawyer, which I thought was hilarious since I am a lawyer. Also, who threatens that you should speak with a lawyer over a $150 dry clean order? Wouldn't it cost her more to pay the lawyer to fight me than to just refund me?
Anyway, I am fighting the charge with my credit card company and hoping another cleaner will be able to fix my clothes. Like I said, I won't be back, and I hope you never have this experience now that you know it can happen. read more