Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Reason Number 657 Why I Love Saks

As I mentioned yesterday, Saks is my happy place. This afternoon that fact was proven correct once again.

Last week I dropped off a sweater and a scarf at the dry cleaners. Not just any scarf, a Missoni scarf that the Dad treated me to back in February. Since February I've worn it quite a bit, it's black, green and white and all was going well until my last day of work when I managed to spill Ben & Jerry's Cookies and Cream ice cream on it. I managed to dab off all of the ice cream, but I'm a bit of a moth-control freak, so I was concerned that I should probably have the scarf dry cleaned.

That was my first mistake. Since coming to Princeton we've been using Craft Cleaners. They're a pretty big operation but they have a bit of a lackadaisical attitude. Typically its things like they'll lose your clothes for a day or so, not have things ready when they've said they'd be ready, or they fail to crease your pants despite having the "all pants creased" directive, etc.

This time I go in to drop off and pick up clothes. The woman says to me: "I'm having a hard time finding where your order for pick up is" and I'm thinking, "Oh, great, they've lost my stuff again." Nope. Instead she comes out from the back with my Missoni scarf which now has a GIANT HOLE IN IT. It's Wednesday. The scarf was supposed to be ready for pick up last Friday.... the woman says: "The seamstress was supposed to have fixed this already." Fixed already? Were you not going to tell me you put a hole in my scarf??? I ask, "Why didn't anyone call me???" "How is she going to fix it? What kind of yarn will she use?" "She'll try and get something as close as possible." AS CLOSE AS POSSIBLE? It's from Italy. Most importantly it was made by people in Italy, it wasn't made by your seamstress! I wouldn't mind if I had brought it in with a hole and was asking for it to be repaired, but why is it okay for the dry cleaner to put an 8 inch hole in my scarf and I'm supposed to be fine with just having it "repaired"??

So, I say to the woman-- what if I'm not happy with the repair job? "Then we'll give you a claim form." Great, get that claim form ready.

Now I'm thinking, what the heck do I do? I don't have my receipt for the scarf, I could look up my credit card record but it's not going to indicate what was purchased, and not to mention, I'm going to have a repaired scarf.

So, I do the next thing that comes to mind-- call Saks. I get put through to Tina in the scarf department. I describe my scarf and she says to me: "I know the one you mean, I have one left." Better yet, Saks is currently in pre-sale mode and the scarf will be 30% off next week. I give Tina my Saks card and she's shipping me the scarf! God knows what kind of fight I'm going to have with the dry cleaner people but at least this way I'll have an undamaged scarf and evidence of how much the scarf cost, and they'll get the benefit of mark-down depreciation.

From now on I'm just going to buy stock in Woolite and take my chances washing by hand.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry hear about your scarf; I hate dealing with dry cleaners. That said, I recommend using a specialized lingere wash on your scarf instead of Woolite. Woolite has elasticizers and other chemicals in it that coat the fabric fibers in an attempt to help them keep their shape, but end up weakening them over time. I use a wash called Forever New that I've been very happy with, and I've read good things about the Laundress product line. Good luck!