rev:text
| - I feel like I got robbed from Tide yesterday. My dear husband dropped off our bag with dry cleaning here because he decided to be obnoxiously loyal to this brand since we use their free laundry detergent (free as in free of dyes and perfumes, not cost-free). I objected because I know it is expensive, but nevertheless, he was nice enough to take the heavy bag to the dry cleaner when I was having back pain and planned to see a doctor on Wednesday.
For whatever reason, he was not given an itemized receipt of what was dropped off nor did he tell me how much to expect to owe. I went to pick it up yesterday in their drive through (my back hurt too much for me to want to take the clothes from the store to the car myself so this is a nice feature). The staff person was very nice, but when she gave me the total ($35ish) I asked if they included the groupon that my husband gave her (he paid $12 for $25 off of our next order). She said yes. I thought to myself, there is no way we had $60 worth of stuff, so I asked to see the itemized list of what we brought. We argued briefly over the number of pieces (she counted the suit as 2 though they charge it as 1 on their price list, and she counted the laundry bag itself) and she claimed we had 2 orders and perhaps dropped a second order off at a different time (we only dropped off 1). She told me that Tide generously offered 50% off on one of the orders (I finally figured out they split this one order into two but it was from the same bag).
So with 50% off some of the order AND $25 off, it was still $35?!?! Yes it was. I was not too happy but she put the items in my car and told me they would fix it if we found a mistake. I was miffed and went home. We calculated the original cost pre-discount and pre-groupon and it came to close to $80!?!?!? With NO coupon and NO discount at my regular place, Fifth Avenue, this would have cost $19.25!!! A 300% markup? Even for the nicer items (a suit for example), I would go Town & Country and it would not cost $13 for a suit!
When I started to take my items off of their hangers and put them back on mine to hang up, I noticed that instead of the old safety pin and tag that I usually dislike from Fifth Avenue, Tide puts stickers with bar codes behind the tags of each item. They are melted into the fabric so I with my super sharp nails had to get a corner loose and tear them off with my TEETH because they were melted. Now I guess I prefer those safety pins because at least they are easy to remove.
I do not think it makes sense to pay $12.50 to dry clean a dress when I could buy a dress for a few dry clean visits! Should I need to dry clean anything, I will definitely go back to my go-to places, Fifth Avenue for a decent job and a low price, and Town & Country for some of the nicer items (silk shirts, etc.) who still charge much less than Tide.
|