We just moved to a new neighborhood and I dropped off 4 of my scarves at the dry cleaner across the street without thinking twice.

Today when I picked them up, I saw that they pinned (with safety pin) their item tags directly through the scarves! When I removed the pins, there are definitely holes, and I don't think they will go away.

Lesson for thinking the surburbs are as sophiscated as the city!

Now I don't know what I should do. The people who own the cleaner are nice asian people who probably don't know the value of these scarves and 2 of the scarves are older (+5 years) and I don't even know what they are worth. Plus, probably the most they can do is refund the money I paid for cleaning them anyhow.

Advice please? What would you do?

well, i appreciate this post because its a good warning to others- if you hand over something precious/expensive to get worked on you need to be specific about handling care. you can't assume people will be nice to your stuff even if its just common sense to not poke a hole in a silk scarf! i'd definetely tell them how upset you are and the value of these scarves and see how they will want to proceed.

Tods123: Have you tried to gently push the fibers back together with a safety pin? When you do this, you have to be careful not to snag the silk. If you have a loupe or a magnifying glass, use it to look at holes in the scarves. Are the fibers broken, or are they just pushed apart. If they're just pushed apart, you can get them to come back together, although you may have to handwash and iron them.

If the fibers are broken, you'll be able to tell because there will be splits with little tufts that you can see under magnification.

I paid $35 apiece to clean some scarves at the best cleaners in the state. I gave explicit instructions for hand cleaning and pressing. They STILL flattened my hems, ripped off my tags, and left safety pin holes. I was able to coax the separated fibers back together, finally.

I'm so, so sorry this happened to your beautiful scarves.

Originally Posted by gga

Tods123: Have you tried to gently push the fibers back together with a safety pin? When you do this, you have to be careful not to snag the silk. If you have a loupe or a magnifying glass, use it to look at holes in the scarves. Are the fibers broken, or are they just pushed apart. If they're just pushed apart, you can get them to come back together, although you may have to handwash and iron them. If the fibers are broken, you'll be able to tell because there will be splits with little tufts that you can see under magnification. I paid $35 apiece to clean some scarves at the best cleaners in the state. I gave explicit instructions for hand cleaning and pressing. They STILL flattened my hems, ripped off my tags, and left safety pin holes. I was able to coax the separated fibers back together, finally. I'm so, so sorry this happened to your beautiful scarves.

i hope they refunded your money- that's horrible!! that is a job very poorly done. they have no business charging that much and having a reputation of being "the best" if they cant follow instructions and take real care of precious items.

Sorry about this! I am sure they had no idea. I agree with Croissant. Let us know what they say.

I have had several LV scarves dry cleaned lately and they were folded and pressed the way I wanted and in between tissue paper when I picked them up.

And you dont want to TELL them how valuable and expensive they are because they might "disappear"...I had a very expensive Chloe dress disappear last year. (I got reimbursed after a looong fight)

Originally Posted by Oh Donna!

I have had several LV scarves dry cleaned lately and they were folded and pressed the way I wanted and in between tissue paper when I picked them up. And you dont want to TELL them how valuable and expensive they are because they might "disappear"...I had a very expensive Chloe dress disappear last year. (I got reimbursed after a looong fight)

the way your scarves were presented to you after drycleaning is what everyone ought to expect. now THAT'S good service.

how the hell could they not take responsiblity at first for a dress "disappearing" on their watch? what the is wrong with people? i'm glad it was resolved in your favour!

you ought to be able to tell your drycleaner, worry free, that this dress cost $3,000 and needs to be treated like a $3,000 dress. just like when you go to a mechanic there is no blushing or "aw shucks-ing" when you pull up in a Bentley (they are aware of your car's value) you should be confidant that you're working with professionals who ought to understand the value of what they're working on (whether the scarf is $800 or $20 but an extremely sentimental object to you) in order to best treat it. there's no pussyfooting with a mechanic, you cant pretend your Bentley is a Dodge, why not be fully honest about the other objects? kwim?
(then again, you'd go to a Bentley mechanic/dealership to get your car fixed and other mechanics do tend to eye your car and eye you funny if you come to them instead of the brands mechanic, so maybe nevermind my advice)

gga, thank you for your excellent advice. I am going to buy a magnifying glass right away and see what I can do to control the damage.

Now I think about it, I don't know what I was thinking. It's all too obvious that this could happen, but sadly the possibility of it never once crossed my mind. I've lived in the city for too long.

Croissant, I will follow gga's advice and see how much I can rescue before I go speak to them. Strangely I feel quite uncomfortable confronting them. I am sure they have no idea and they are a small business where every penny is very hardearned.

Oh Donna, thank you for the warning about not telling them the actual value, again, something I would not have thought of myself!

ugh -- been there. which is probably why now i only handwash.

here's something to try -- wash your hands very well, then dip them in lukewarm water and with your thumb on one side of the hole and a finger on the other squeeze the damaged area and with gentle bur firm pressure try to massage the separated fibers back together. it's not so much moving your fingers back and forth as moving the finger pads around without changing the areas in contact -- pushing the "meat" as it were. (sorry -- that's clear as mud, but the best i can do.) as gga said, it's possible the pin went through without breaking any of the threads -- and even if you do have broken threads this should help close up the holes for you and make them less noticeable.

i'm sure gga's way is better than mine, however i'm not comfortable taking a pin to the textile in fear of doing more damage. but unless i'm on horseback, i'm exceedingly uncoordinated, so you'll probably do just fine that way!

good luck!

I'm so sorry that happened. This is why I can't use drycleaners, plus don't even get me started on how bad the chemicals are that they use!!! I don't know how many people realize that the only reason they call it "dry cleaning" is because they don't use water, rather your precious material are submerged in chemicals! Since they aren't wet with water they call it drycleaning.....very sneaky if you ask me and the chemicals are VERY bad for you. Anyway, I've only had things ruined that were drycleaned in the past so I don't trust them and take cleaning my fine items into my own hands. Have YET to ruin anything.....

Good luck! So sorry this happened!!!

Ouch. I think I will try DQ's handwashing techniques.

Argh, I'm sorry about what happened >_> I've had that happen before to several silk skirts; they'd take wide pins an use two on either side to secure my very heavy, layered silk skirt to the hanger Luckily I'm not that anal about my clothing being pricked a bit, but if I had my scarves treated like that, I'd be upset. No doubt that they didn't mean to do it, but it still isn't fun to receive them back like that.

I can't think of a good way to avoid such item treatment then to give really, really explicit orders, but I don't even know if most dry cleaners would listen. I've had several shrug off my efforts to show them small stains that I'd like removed from my clothing, only to end up getting the item back with the same damn stain in place, and I end up having to remove it on my own. Bleh!


Edit: there is an article in an issue of Bazaar, I can't remember which one, that pertained to dry cleaning luxury goods...I'll try to find out which one when I get back from class!

Ugh! I'm so sorry, Tods. Maybe try wearing a dry glove first and finger the pin-holes to put the threads back in place. Worth a try, right?

Sorry this happened to you. I hope it all works out for you.

Wrt dry-cleaning, it's very misunderstood, ask your H store for a name. Not all dry cleaning is bad ... here is a free article from Consumer Reports and maybe you can check if there is a good one close by you. I prefer to dryclean as I think hand washing robs the colors off the silk, I can place a handwashed and my dry cleaned ones next to each other and there's a vast difference. As for color-catcher sheets et al ... all you have to do is drop one in with your whites and see how they turned gray. There is no easy solution. If I have good drycleaners, I'll always dry cleaned.

http://www.consumerreports.org:80/cr...dry%20cleaners