This place pissed me off so badly that I signed up for yelp just to write this review. I've gone to this place twice and have been really disappointed twice.
You know the saying- Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.
Shame on me.
I'm not often in the Walnut area but I was visiting family two months ago and had a suit I needed cleaned. I've always driven past this place when I was younger and decided to finally go in. The suit wasn't exactly dirty (suits don't really get dirty) but I had probably two 1 cm dots of sauce on the pant legs. When I got it back, the suit (which pretty much went in clean) was still clean. The dots on the pants were still probably 50% there though. While the man who works there (owns?) speaks English very well, the woman seems a little less able. She was the one at the register and instead of fussing about it, I just noted it and left. I was in a hurry and it might have just been a tough sauce blob.
2 months passes and I'm in Walnut again with a few dress shirts I needed cleaned. I was here visiting after business, and was continuing with business after, so I only had my nicer business shirts with me. Guys, you know what I mean when I say "nicer." You have your causal nice shirts and your $100+ nice shirts that you don't exactly wear to a picnic. Well, at least I don't. I hear reports about the wealth gap growing in the US and I wouldn't be surprised if people wore $100+ dollar dress shirts to picnics but let's just say I'm at the other end of the increasing wealth gap. Anyways, I digress. Lets just say that these were really nice shirts to ME.
3 white, 1 blue.
I wasn't sure if I should go back because of the suit pants from before but they were close and I was in a hurry. Told myself "you can't really mess up shirts." After all, it's just a wash and press. None of that fancy dry cleaning machinery involved. Again, shame on me. ...
I got the shirts back and they wrote my name and some random numbers on the inside of the shirt with some sort of permanent marker. I'm not sure if this is common practice for cleaners but from experience, places who do their wash in-house (like Walnut Cleaners claimed) DO NOT do this. Worse, they never told me they would do this when I dropped off the shirts.
I regularly go to 3 dry cleaners in the LA area. 2 of them simply just don't mark your clothes. 1 does but THEY TELL YOU BEFORE and if you ask that they don't, they just attach a tag in one of the button holes and charge you like an extra 50 cents. Walnut Cleaners just goes ahead and does it w/o telling you! Well, at least you now know because you're reading this. I gave a little fuss about this to the woman at the register but left.
As I'm walking out, I noticed that they hung my shirts directly on to the thin metal cleaner hangers without paper between the metal hanger and the clothes! Can you say shoulder nipples?? Again, I'm only familiar with about 3 other cleaners so I don't know what is common practice. However, other places I've gone to has a two or three sheet paper layer between the clothing and the hanger to avoid shoulder nipples. This place does not do that.
All of this is upsetting but not the end of the world right? The shoulder nipples go away after another wash and the writing was on the inside, no one ever sees it.
When I brought the shirts home and started to pack I noticed that 2 of the 3 white shirts still had dirty yellow collars. It looked like it had never even been washed, just steamed so no wrinkles appeared. I was kind of grossed out by this. Yes, I know the yellow was caused by me and my overly sweaty neck combined with the great so cal weather but still- gross. Putting on your own dirty underwear is kind of gross right? This is a bit less gross than that but still gross.
At this point, I'm kicking myself for going here. I further inspected a white shirt and noticed markings on my outside cuff! THEY WROTE SOME RANDOM NUMBERS ON MY CUFF where everyone CAN see. It's the little inch that shows past your suit!
I bought it to them and they said it wasn't them. I learned then that they actually don't do the wash in-house and that they send it off somewhere.
"We don't do the laundry here."
Your sign says you do.
"That was before."
Did you write my name on the clothes?
"Yes, that's how we know whose it is."
You should tell people that before. What if some people don't want that?
"It's just on the inside."
Can you wash this marking off on the cuff?
"Cuff? That wasn't us."
Was it your washers?
"No."
Well I didn't do it and it wasn't like that when I gave it to you.
"Maybe it was fabric marking and the manufacturer didn't cut the fabric well."
ahhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
At this point, I just gave up and left. Going to take the shirt to the usual cleaners when I get back home and see if it comes off.
So. upsetting. read more