Recently, my wife and I had noticed the sign advertising "Comforters cleaned for $12", which is a fairly reasonable price to clean a comforter. We new at some point we were going to take advantage of the offer. Well, the day finally came. Our dog woke up sick the other day and unfortunately threw up on the comforter. After cleaning up about 90% of the mess, my wife threw the comforter in the bag and brought it in for cleaning. The owner accepted the $12 in advance for the cleaning and my wife continued on her way to the office. The owner never once inspected the comforter, he just gladly accepted the money. About 15 minutes later, my wife received a call from the owner who was screaming, yelling and cursing at her. "How can you bring this in with "shit" all over it? One of my customers almost threw up!" My wife was totally stunned and in disbelief of the voice at the other end. "What are you talking about, the dog didn't go to the bathroom on the comforter, she threw up on it!" At that point we found out the real reason he was calling. In order to complete the cleaning process of such a soiled comforter, he would need to charge an additional $13!!. AHHH, so the picture becomes clearer. My wife was so distraught that she unfortunately agreed to the additional charge.
Since she did not want to deal with that "nasty foul-mouthed man", I went over to pick up the comforter when it was ready. The daughter of the "nasty foul-mouthed man" was there. I politely and calmly asked for our comforter. She explained that she had it ready and that I owed an additional $13. I agreed that my wife accepted the fact that she would have to pay the additional charge. I also tried to explain that the whole situation was handled poorly. As a customer, particularly a first-time customer, the owner should have done several things differently:
1. He should have inspected the comforter when it came in instead of just focusing on getting his money.
2. Let the customer know that the $12 offer is not necessarily the full cost of cleaning. Apparently there are different levels of dirty!
3. Politely call the customer up and explain that the job was more difficult (again, different levels of dirty) and there is an additional charge. What madman calls a customer screaming and yelling?? (Apparently a man that doesn't know how to gain a new customer and hold on to a new customer).
Oh, and the daughter could have cared less. "My father was very upset". Well, we wouldn't want to get your father upset now, would we? I explained that I also run a business in the area and that I would NEVER treat a customer like that. I can't say that I was surprised at her response... "I guess we just have different ways of running our businesses!"
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