Doing business with The Dry Cleaner by Val was one of the worst customer service experiences my wife and I have ever been through. We had a house fire and lost a great deal of our belongings. Two adjusters, the cleaning company, and The Dry Cleaner by Val were at our house the following day. I was unable to be present that morning, so my poor wife had to deal with it on her own. We never called The Dry Cleaner by Val, so we had no idea how they entered the scene. They bagged *everything* they could get their hands on: clothes, blankets, drapes, napkins, tablecloths, towels, and rugs, a lot of which had holes, rips, missing buttons, heavy stains, and/or damage from fire and soot. Most of these garments were beyond restorable, but they took them anyway. The only instruction they gave to my wife was to separate the items that we needed back right away (our priority items). My wife was dealing with too many things that morning, between the two adjusters and the two cleaning companies, so she couldn't monitor everything the dry cleaners were bagging. We wished they gave us sufficient time to go through all of our things before they came in and took everything in sight.
The representative at The Dry Cleaner by Val called us the following day to schedule the delivery of our priority items. In conversation with her, I asked who referred us to them. She got quiet for a moment and stuttered, "Well, uhhh, we really don't have that information. I asked, "OK, so someone called you to let you know that we had a house fire, gave you all of our personal information, including our names, address, insurance information, and both our cell phone numbers, and you have no record of who provided this to you?" They showed up at my doorstep around the same time as the adjusters and cleaning company, yet they're claiming they don't know who referred us to them? I don't believe that for a second. Why the secrecy? This was not even the half of it.
It turned out they "accidentally" charged for clothing that was marked as non-restorable. Our dry cleaning bill was over what we anticipated, by the thousands, actually. We would have rather brought our clothes elsewhere, or even called everything non-restorable and have spent that insurance money on new clothing. A lot of the clothing they "restored" came back to us still smelling like smoke, a lot of my wife's clothing had shrunk (especially her hand-wash only items), and our custom-made curtains came back to us a few inches shorter. They blamed it on the material, stating that custom-made curtains can shrink if never washed before, and said that since we signed the waiver form, they were not liable for it. Any company who throws the "too bad you signed our waiver form" phrase into the conversation, without even sympathizing or apologizing for the matter, isn't a company worth doing business with. In the end, they finally offered to stretch them out for us, which would take another few days, but we didn't want to deal with The Dry Cleaner by Val any longer than we already had to.
Do yourself a favor: If The Dry Cleaner by Val is *mysteriously* called in at the scene of your house, spare yourself the trouble and decline their service! There are so many behind-the-scene issues when dealing with them that you may not ever discover until digging deep like we did. I'm sure there are plenty more cases like ours, maybe even worse, so please take a few minutes to do your homework so you can do business with a better, more honest and caring company! read more