National Clothesline

Once again, drycleaners felt like the target of the media’s crosshairs when SmartMoney columnist Daisy Chan penned an unflattering article about the industry entitled “Ten Things Your Dry Cleaner Won’t Tell You.”

The article, published in the magazine’s March 2003 edition, begins: “Winter is nearly over, and you’re itching to swap your wool for shorts and T-shirts. But before you send those sweaters to your drycleaner, realize this: You many never see them again. Drycleaners have a knack for losing your stuff.”

Chan, who writes a “Ten Things” consumer action column every month, listed ten complaints against drycleaners, punctuating the piece with headings such as: “We’re masters of the bait-and-switch routine,” “We ignore what the courts tell us to do” and “We clean your clothes with killer chemicals.”

The article suggests that cleaners, in general, are apathetic to environmental problems, deliberately charge women unfair prices and try to avoid responsibility on garment damage claims, among other things.

One quoted source — attorney Ralph Warner — questioned the validity of the results found in IFI’s garment analysis lab, suggesting they are tainted to favor cleaners over consumers in garment damage disputes. “It’s a trade association,” Warner said. “They want to sell it as an expert opinion, but it’s not unbiased opinion.”

The International Fabricare Institute objected strongly to that remark. IFI CEO Bill Fisher called it “a direct attack on the International Textile Analysis Laboratory’s credibility.”

“Our track record speaks for itself,” Fisher said. “The veracity of ITAL analysis reports have been good enough for the Federal Trade Commission, and consumer agencies such as the Better Business Bureaus and consumer protection agencies routinely use ITAL services.

“Over the past 10 years the FTC has repeatedly fined clothing manufacturers based on identification of the problem from IFI’s lab. Last year, for example, the FTC fined clothing manufacturer Jones Apparel Group $300,000. If ITAL’s analysts didn’t call it like they see it, working relationships like the one forged with the FTC wouldn’t be possible.”

In another section, labeled “Our customer service stinks,” Chan used statistics from the Better Business Bureau to make her point, noting that drycleaners were the 21st worst offender on the BBB’s complaint list for 2001 with 4,451 complaints.

“When it comes to resolving a complaint in good faith or to the customer’s satisfaction, drycleaners have an unusually low settlement rate — 34.6 compared with 66 percent for all other businesses,” Chan wrote.

While not quarreling with the BBB statistics, Fisher said they need to be viewed in context. “The complaints lodged against drycleaners with the Better Business Bureau are minuscule when you consider that approximately 2 billion items are processed by the drycleaning industry each year.”

Fisher said the BBB statistics mean that for every 449,000 items processed, one formal complaint was lodged against drycleaners with the BBB in 2001.

“That is a complaint ratio of less than 1/100,000th of a percent,” Fisher said.

“Furthermore, an average household may have 100 items or more that they have professionally cleaned, and unlike automobile mechanics — typically one of the highest complaint areas — our industry’s customers see their drycleaner 40-50 times a year, not once or twice,” he added.

Calling on SmartMoney to publish a retraction of the article, Fisher said, “This muckraking series masquerading as ‘journalism’ serves no purpose other than to denigrate an entire industry unnecessarily. Our members are understandably apoplectic over the hatchet job SmartMoney magazine did on the drycleaning industry.”

Cleaners have denounced the article, too, believing it depicts the industry in an unjust light. One such person is John Watkins of Watkins Cleaners in Birmingham, AL, who was used as an example in the story.

Under a heading of “We take new brides to the cleaners,” Chan gave an example of Meredith Jowers Lees who sent a $2,800 white silk satin Amsale wedding gown to Watkins Cleaners hoping to have a large stain removed. Lees told Chan that when she went to pick it up, it was still stained and had become yellowed and torn.

Watkins, was quoted in the article as saying: “We told her at the beginning it was a risk. The dress was very much damaged when it came in.” Still, he wasn’t happy with the overall tone of the article. He believes Chan did not want to tell the full story.

“She definitely did not put in a lot of things I said. She didn’t want to hear the truth. It’d ruin the article,” he said. Watkins noted that his company has over 45 years of wedding gown experience and they weren’t given a chance to finish working on the garment.

“The dress was really in bad shape,” he recalled. “It had red wine all over it. I stand by the way I handled it. It was one of those situations where you’re either the hero or the goat. We’ve been a hero a lot more times.”

Regardless of the bad publicity that the article might bring to the industry, Watkins isn’t concerned about losing any business.

“The customers who know us in the area will probably take it for what it’s worth,” he explained. “I’m disappointed, but we just have to concentrate on taking care of our customers who believe in us.”

Many cleaners have expressed their dissatisfaction for the article’s content on the Fabricare Forum by posting letters they had written to Chan and SmartMoney magazine.

Ed Roth of U.N. Cleaners in New York stressed that most drycleaners work hard to help consumers: “The reason people bring their clothes to me is because I'm honest, sincere, hard working, patient, environmentally aware, and am willing to literally do anything for my customers within reason to help them get through the day with clean, beautiful clothes.”

He added, “If I didn't do such a tremendous job at being an honest and respectful business person, my customers could go down the street to one of the other seven cleaners that would also treat them with sincerity and good service.”

Terry Fitzsimmons of Majestic Cleaners expressed his frustration by telling Chan: “What you've done here is irresponsible and reckless. You do this all without conscience. Then you go about your life leaving all of this damage in your wake. I think you and others like you should be held responsible for this kind of slander.”

Drycleaner Sharon Chandler also chimed in. “It hardly bears repeating, but drycleaners are as different as the members of any other service industry,” she wrote. “Painting an entire group with the same brush is remarkably easy for someone with no understanding of the business world.”