Two $500 Burberry button-up shirts were damaged at Occidental Cleaners.
I hope those that read this review don't simply dismiss it thinking it's just another Karen who had a rare but unfortunate experience at Occidental Cleaners. I did not want to write this review, and I hesitated for a few days, but the purpose of Yelp is to be as honest as possible and to help other Yelpers have an appropriate assessment of businesses. Of the 120+ Yelp reviews I've written, only five are one-star.
I've been coming to Occidental Cleaners for over three years. Even though I don't live in this area, I still drive out of my way to go here because I treasure the thought of supporting local, family-owned businesses and, of course, because I've gotten to know some of these family members over the years.
However, I recently bought two $500 Burberry button-up shirts for a dry-cleaning service. I've had these dry-cleaned before in New York City, New Haven, and South Korea and never had a damage problem. However, when I brought them here, and upon checking post-cleaning, I noticed 19 out of the 22 buttons (11 buttons on each shirt) were damaged. Some were severely chipped (half of it fell off), and some were just mildly chipped. I later found out it was because they did not put tinfoil on the buttons to prevent them from being damaged in the machine with the chemical solvent. It's unfortunate because these are expensive dress shirts, but I'm not going to complain and cause a scene demanding a replacement. After all, that would cost them $1000. I told them since the white shirt (I only have the blue shirt pictured since the white shirt is currently at a professional designer repair shop) is white, and you can't tell the buttons are chipped from far, I'll forget this ever happened and move on, but if you can, please fix the blue shirt. Well, they tried. They replaced four of the eight broken buttons on the blue shirt (they claimed they didn't have more buttons), but again, I didn't budge to ask for more since I thought these were good people and it was an honest mistake. A few weeks later, those buttons started to become very loose and come off. I went back for another dry clean, and this time, they wanted to charge me twice the price for the dry clean and had the audacity to ask for more money if I wanted the buttons replaced. I got, understandably, upset, and the younger lady there started to accuse me of damaging these myself (why would I do that to $500 dress shirts?) and that they couldn't help me.
The photo attached is how I received it at the dry cleaners last week. Four buttons were missing, and if I wanted them replaced, I had to pay "more money" and wait "up to weeks" for them to find the buttons in Downtown LA. If you look at the top two buttons in the picture, the one on the bottom is black and just a generic button without any engraving, unlike the one on top (the original). Without even asking, they've removed the blue buttons and put on black, constantly telling me that it looks good this way (imagine walking into a restaurant and half of your buttons are black with no engraving, and the other half are blue, half-chipped, and says "Burberry" on it).
I will leave an updated review if anything changes. As of now, I took home the white shirt and kindly asked them to "find" the replacement buttons if they could. They kept telling me it would be "nearly impossible," but who knows.
Another note: Many others have had similar experiences with damages. I don't want to accuse this business of ill-intent, but I did hear that they remove some of their negative reviews. Yikes. read more