I brought a cashmere sweater to a local dry cleaner to get cleaned. Honestly, I don't use the dry cleaners very often. When I pick it up it was folded over, hanging on a hanger which I did think was wierd. When I returned home there were three little holes in the sweater. Honestly what makes me so mad is that they tried to hide it. What would you do in this type of situation? I am not a confrontational person but this was kind of a sentimental sweater. Thanks for your help.
Often sweaters are folded when they are returned on a hanger so they don't stretch the shoulders as they are often plastic or wire hangers that can cause more holes. I used to get all may cashmere sweaters cleaned and I would be angry if they stretched the shoulders using hangers. I don't think they were hiding the holes to be honest. It's standard and normal for sweaters to be returned how you received it and I've had hundred of sweaters cleaned. I'm not sure what they can do about the holes as sometimes it can happen, you can take it back and ask them, but sometimes there are moths and you have to live with the holes when you have delicate sweaters. I only wear cashmere so I keep all mine in separate zip lock bags all the time.
I feel for you here. That has happened to me before but not with cashmere. I had taken mine home and when I pulled it out of the sleeve I saw the damage. I took it back and they said there was nothing they could do. It could have happened at home. So I never went back to that dry cleaner again. What I do now is exam my clothes before I leave the cleaners. I know what my clothes look like before dropping them off. That works for me now.
Save for going over and trying to get explanations which may end up being more annoying than the holes in your sweater, as Mrs Jones says, since you didn't examine the clothes when you picked them up, the cleaners could say the sweater was OK when you picked it up. So, you better just let it go. Hard, yeah it is but it will save you some stress, anger, etc.
It is indeed a learning experience. When I take anything to the cleaners I ask the clerk to look things over for "areas of trouble." If nothing is found then I expect there to be no problems when I pick up the garment. Like an earlier poster said, inspection at the time of pick-up is also a must do. Also, very often businesses belong to the BBB or other business organizations. A report to their organization normally helps recoup the expense of the object of question.
I would simply go over to the dry cleaners and ask them in a non-confrontational way what happened to the sweater. You might want to explain in a calm and neutral tone that there weren't any holes in the sweater before you took it to them, and that you are not happy with what you discovered when they returned the sweater to you. In my experience, most people will apologize and try to find some way to compensate or reimburse you. If they don't, then just try and let it go. The damage has been done, and you will never be going back there again. Finished.
You definitely need to confront them. Hiding and avoiding confrontation isn't going to solve anything. You have to stand up for yourself. Don't be rude about it. But definitely explain the situation. To be honest, you probably should have done it as soon as you noticed the holes. You should definitely get your money back and be reimbursed for the sweater by the business. It's only right. You shouldn't be taken advantage of like this. If the business were ran by professionals they would have pointed out what happened and given your money back up front, without you having to go through all this. May be time to find a new cleaner.
I think that it really is just part of normal wear and tear. Unless the holes are bigger than about 0.5 cm each. I think this would be a difficult issue to prove. It's not like the dry cleaner did anything wrong that could have caused the holes, it was just unfortuante that it happened then.
