This place is horrific. I'm disgusted by the experience I had there today - a first and last.
I called this morning to ask if they had washers and dryers large enough for a king-sized duvet. The woman who answered said yes. I asked the price, and she told me it would be $6.50. Then I asked if I needed to stay there and her non-response was, "Bring in what you have and I'll help you." I thought she seemed friendly and was happy to give a small local company my business.
I took it in and she told me it would be $6.50 to wash it, then got her calculator out and said, "It will be $4/hour to dry it and it will take 3 to 3.5 hours to dry, so you owe me $18 or 18.50...but just give me $19 to make it even." I questioned her about it taking that long, and she said it would since it was so large. This seemed odd to me given the size of the dryers; my dryer at home would have taken 3 hours, but it's nowhere near as large. However, I trusted she knew what she was talking about since she apparently runs the place, so I gave her $19, she didn't bother giving me a receipt or even asking my name, then she told me she would put the cover in the dryer for me after it was washed and I could pick it up later.
I called 2 hours later to see if it was done and she said it was. "So you'll give me a refund for the extra money I paid you?", I asked. "No refund," was her response, "I did you a favor." I asked her what that meant and she said most places don't let you drop off and leave; you have to stay. I said, "I asked you if I needed to stay and you told me to go and that you would take care of it." She definitely didn't tell me she was going to essentially charge me for that "favor" (this place is advertised as a drop-off laundromat, by the way, which I didn't know until arriving there, so she wasn't doing me a favor at all; she was simply doing her job). When I said, "You never told me you wouldn't refund the extra money or that you were essentially charging me for leaving," she said, "Oh. I'll tell you next time." Because I hadn't picked up my duvet yet, and recalling that there was a basket of towels sitting out on the curb in the pouring rain when I arrived, I didn't want to get into it with her, so I ended the conversation by thanking her, and hung up.
My husband picked up the cover a short while later, and asked her why she had overcharged us. She said "I did your wife a favor. She didn't want to stay here." That wasn't at all true - we never even discussed that. I was prepared to stay, but wasn't sure if it was required, which is why I asked when I called this morning. I brought my own detergent and fabric softener and would have come back to switch the duvet from a washer to a dryer had she told me I needed to do that. In other words, there was no reason for her to charge any more than the machines required, and if the policy is to charge someone for leaving their items there (again, I don't think it is, since it's advertised as a drop-off laundromat), that should be made clear. There were a couple of washers and dryers going when I got there, and no one else was in the place. I guess she does a lot of "favors" for a lot of people.
I called her after my husband left and told her I would never return there, as she stole our money and lied to me. Her response? "That's fine." I told her of course it was fine because she had already taken money that wasn't hers, knowingly having me give her more than would be needed. Her defense was that she deserved the money because most places don't allow people to leave and if I didn't want her to do it, I should have stayed. Absolutely atrocious behavior.
There is nothing worse than dishonest business people, and it's too bad that $9 in her pocket was worth more to her than a satisfied customer. If all you're looking for is a place to wash and dry your clothes, hassle-free, look elsewhere. People like her give small businesses, actually - all businesses, a bad name, and now that basket of towels getting drenched in the rain makes a lot of sense; I wish I'd taken it as the sign it was to leave before I stepped foot inside. read more