We understand that it’s not “normal” or “average” for a person to take all of their items to a dry cleaner. Some people may try to spend as little as possible on dry cleaning their clothing or try to wash everything themselves at home.
But, when you do choose to take your items to a dry cleaner, it’s extremely important that you know what you are paying for and how one dry cleaner who cleans your garments for $1.99 could differ from the dry cleaner who will charge you more.
If a dry cleaner is able to clean your items so inexpensively, they could be cutting corners to keep their cost down. Here’s how a dry cleaner could keep their cost down internally and pass the “savings” on to you:
Reusing their dry cleaning solvent over and over. It costs to money purify dry cleaning solvent before and after each dry cleaning load. It also costs to filter the solvent during each load. A way to cut back end costs is to filter either with little purification, inadequate purification, irregular purification or all of the above; or worse, no purification. The result to you is grey & dingy whites; dull & faded colors; and a solvent smell.
Using cheap dry cleaning solvent detergents or none at all. Just as you add a detergent to your home wash, a dry cleaner must add a dry cleaning detergent. To keep costs down, they may be using detergents that are cheap and ineffective or even worse, they may not be using any detergent at all.
Not inspecting your garments. It takes time and trained personnel hours to inspect garments for missing buttons, loose threads, stains as well as pills on sweaters and items in the pockets. It takes time to read a customer’s special request on a particular item than carry out the request. An operation focused on getting items in and out in as little time as possible isn’t going to stop and pay attention to the little things.
Not stain removing and/or spot treating your garments. Dry cleaning is not spot cleaning. Spot cleaning is more labor intensive with hand finishing therefore you will pay more for the man hours spent. Instead of throwing your item into the load with all the other clothes that come into the plant, items that need to be spot cleaned are individually treated, cleaned and hand pressed. Someone charging $1.99 is most likely not spot cleaning your items. They simply throw it all in the machine and wash them all the same.
Take risks with your clothing. To cut costs and speed up turn times they may be mixing garments of different colors; mixing regular and fragile garments; overloading their machines; reducing their “wash” cycle times; and increasing their “dry” cycle temperatures. It’s fast and it’s cheap and it’s the worst way to dry “clean” your clothing.
Yes, you can get your items cleaned cheaply and risk the life of your garments but what will it cost you in the long run? Not only could it cost you a new wardrobe eventually – and you might be okay with that – but it could cost you a ruined favorite item that can no longer be purchased/replaced or a ruined one of a kind item that holds a special memory. There’s a reason “You get what you pay for” and “If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is” are popular, well known and true statements.
For details on how we clean your garments, check out our informational pages. If you ever have questions regarding our services, we welcome the opportunity to speak to you. We care about the details and we employ top notch, trained professionals to handle your garments with care. They will notice the little things and carry out your specific requests.
– S.O.
