Damaged Goods

[tgifbos]

I Have been opened for about 4 months now, and on each dryer (and washing machine) I have a sign that says:
"Make sure that the dryer is free of any foreign objects before you put your clothes in. This laundromat is not responsible for damaged clothing."
Now, today an old customer put her clothes in a dryer that had either red ink, dye or crayon stuck to it. And when she took it out, about 15 articles of clothing had red spots on it. My attendant (I am fully attended) re-washed the clothes 3 times to get out the spots.. but was unable to. I have yet to see the clothing (I went away today for two days).

How should I handle this? I try to be as customer friendly as possible.. And I want to project that image.. I also do not want to spend a lot of money either :)


thanks for the help!

[buddy]

My guess is that crayon was in one of the pockets in the customers clothing itself or they were already stained when brought the clothes in. I had similar incidents just few weeks ago.
Some lady dropped off her kids clothes for Wash & Fold with stains on them. When she came back to pickup she acted shocked
and blamed it on my equipments. I knew it was not from my equipments because no one else's clothes had stains. My attendant swore that the stains were there.

Anyway, to keep her happy I paid her 50% of the value of her clothes and instructed my attendants that if they see any large stains on the clothes when customers drop off, mark it on the receipt and have them sign it.

Few weeks later the same lady dropped off her kid's clothes with similar stains again. I called the lady and told her to come back and look at the stains and sign the receipt. Her reply was "Oh I know they are stained my daughter had crayons in her pocket that melted and I tried washing the clothes at home and rest of her clothes got stained as well"

In other word last time she had played the same trick and got money out of me.

[Rondo]

When this type of thing happens I also offer about 50% of the value of the clothing, then I offer 100% of the value in drop off service value, Most take the drop off service and you will only be out the utilities cost and NO CASH. The utilities will only be a fraction of the cash.

I've got all kinds of stories about this type of problems over the years. Most of the time it was the customers fault because of articles in thier clothing. We don't check pockets because of a fear of sharp objects ( needles etc.)

[Fred50]

Rondo,

You don't do that for self-service customers, do you?

I have only been at it for a few months, but I've had a bunch of customer issues.

Yesterday, a self-service customer said that there was a marker in the dryer and it got ink all over her white clothing. We politely explained that we were not responsible, but we offered to try to get it out for no charge. We made some progress.

When we asked to see the marker, she said she threw it out. In addition, there were no other stains in the dryer.

What would you customer service experts do?

[Kitty]

You try to clean the clothes. Crayon is a bitch, however some crayon can be removed by Mostenbach cleaners as well as greased lightening. It all depends on the fabric and the effort the attendant puts into seeing the stain removal process is accelerated before any drying (most problems occur in self service customer clothing).

Ink, crayon and lipstick problems happens in the dryers, 99% of the time the heat melts these products and causes a mess. It is always in the current customers clothing that caused this problem, no matter how much they claim no liabilty. It annoys me so much that no one usually takes responsibility. It is always our fault.

We never admit fault. We try to remove the stains, we never make any promises of removal but state we do everything possible to do so. We discuss the fact that we have signs and try to make it plain the type of stain is caused by a certain product and it was likely in their clothing when being washed. We deal with each customer in how they behave and deal with the situation accordingly.

Many times the dollar amount of the articles is minimal and it is more beneficial to pay a dollar amount to the customer. Many times trying to take the stains out, makes the customer happy enough as they realize they were to blame. Usually there is a happy compromise, great customer service skills are usually needed to diffuse and accomodate an angry customer but it certainly can be done.

You and your attendant should have a policy in place when stains and tears in clothing are apparent (notification of both parties,you and the customer) should be made known prior to laundering/ re-laundering.

Of course you learn all of this after you have had a wdf problem...

[rildin]

I'm still so new in this biz (3 weeks since I got the mat) that I'm still working on procedures for this kind of thing.

A few days ago, a woman brought in 55 pounds of wdf (they're moving). She mentioned that she had included a white dress. Sure enough, I found the white dress as I did the wdf piles. It had several spaghetti sauce (looked like) stains on the front, and a black stain (no idea what, but didn't seem like tar, more like black paint) on the hem. The dress reminds me of the one that Marilyn Monroe did the vent scene in. I have a digital camera in the mat, and took pictures of the stains with the dress on the table, among the other clothes. I don't know if it would help to do that, because the woman came back with more drop-off, and I showed her the stain. She hadn't known it was there, but since I hadn't started her wash, it was obvious that it was already stained. All the stains came out except the black paint, but the lady was very satisfied.

I haven't had any mishaps yet with things left in pockets, although the mat has disclaimers. How do you get the crayon, etc out of the dryers?

Thanks,
frank.

[Kitty]

Crayon will melt almost completly away if it makes its way into the dryer. You usually find the paper of the crayon, in the bottom of the dryers, sometimes throughout the clothes as well.

We have a policy that states, customers must have had the pockets emptied prior to drop off. But, we all know that not every one does this. We try to catch those that forget, but when you are doing 1Klbs or more a week, it is difficult to check every pocket. Thus, the responsibility is left on the customer, but then they always love to turn that responsibility back to us.

We get phone numbers for every customer, and we do try to inspect the items before laundering. If need be we call the WDF customer prior to laundering to make them aware of their problem within their clothing.

Many times people will bring in clothes or comforters unsure of the laundering procedures and ask us our "professional" opinion. As we give them an idea of what we can do, and estimate how the clothes will actually launder we make sure the customer is told that they are to make the ultimate call and that we are not responsibile on any effects laundering may cause. We do accept responsibility for any mistakes the attendant may make, as well as mechanical problems.

The digital idea is a good one.

[Rondo]

Mark , we try to help our self service customers if :

1. They are good customers
2. They talk to us with respect (You can read people that are about to get disrepectful)
3. They acknowledge that it's not our fault because of the signage saying that they should check the washers and dryers before using them.
4. They agree to take free washing and drying for the value of the clothing.

Now saying this, it rarely happens so it's a small amount of free service and it will not be repeated for the same customer. They should no better the next time.