I utilized one of Net Laverie's facilities near the Place Gambetta on a Sunday afternoon...which…read morebecame a Sunday evening, as explained below. They had five washers - one of which was for larger loads (18kg) - and three dryers. One of the dryers was non-functional, and a second (which looked like it was well beyond its service life) appeared to have most of the instructions removed from the front.
After selecting one of the four standard washing machine for my clothes, I went to a nearby café to wait for the 55-minute cycle to end. When I returned, I was glad to see that I had only 1 minute remaining in the cycle. But the 1 minute remaining seemed to last far more than 1 minute. After 20 minutes of the machine saying it had one minute left, after I attempted to turn off the machine, and after it had become crystal clear that the machine was not going to stop on its own, I called the phone number featured on a poster in the Laundromat to ask for assistance.
I was told that somebody would be coming soon. One hour later, that person arrived - all the while, my laundry was still churning away, with '1 minute' remaining on the display. Of course there was no apology for my wasted time - just a Gaullic shrug and the explanation that "C'est dimanche." The person - wasn't clear to me whether he was an owner, a manager, or just a service technician - took a front panel off the machine and managed to reset it. Of course the load of laundry hadn't been completely washed, so I had another 40 minutes of waiting. In total, I spent the better part of 4 hours washing and then drying a single load of laundry.
To summarize, I'd avoid Net Laverie if at all possible - their machines impressed me as unreliable, if they're in working order at all; their personnel are less than customer-friendly; and there are much better ways to spend four hours on a Sunday afternoon in Bordeaux.
Oh, by the way, although they advertise 'free Wifi,' it's a lie. Actually, it's a Catch-22. In order to get the free Wifi service, you have to establish a login ID and password once you connect with their wireless network. Then, you have to validate the account you just created by way of a special code they send to your email account. Of course, you can't GET to your email account without internet access, which you don't yet have because you haven't validated your account. Sounds like a fairly effective means of avoiding bandwidth problems, oui?
