A few days ago one of my dogs peed on my comforter. It’s king sized and far too large to fit in my washer so I brought it to a dry cleaner to have them do it. Whether they washed it or dry cleaned it, I have no idea.
Actually, looking at I see a tag on the hanger that says they recommend ‘wet cleaning’ so I assume they just washed it in a normal washing machine.
Also, I should probably mention that I did specifically tell them that there was dog urine on it and she was very aware of it (“Dog urine? Here, you put in bag”).
Anyways, I picked up today, tossed it on my bed and as soon as it came out of the bag I could smell the dog pee on it, looking at it I could see two big yellow spots. One from where the dog peed, one from the way it was folded up in the bag that they had me shove it in.
My plan is to take it back to them in the morning and see what they’ll do about it. I’m hoping to just get my money back (unless they want to take another crack at washing it and removing a now set in stain). It was only $20 to get it washed. I think it’s fair since they didn’t get it clean. I’m going to have to replace it now (mainly because of the smell), so if they weren’t going to be able to get it clean, it would have been nice to know that beforehand so I could have just thrown it away without spending an extra $20 on the project or called another place to see if somewhere else would felt they’d have better luck with it.
So, is getting my $20 back reasonable or am I going to get laughed out of the shop? I really don’t know, I’ve never used a dry cleaner before.
Also, if it makes a difference, when I brought it to them, it was very, um, fresh. The dog has peed on it less then 2 hours earlier. It was still wet, I had not attempted to clean it or remove the stain on my own. I just tossed it in my trunk and dropped it off as soon as I could. Oh Tide got it out of the sheet and my Spot Bot and some Febreze got it and the smell out of my mattress.
ETA: Not that I’m thinking this is the case but I want to toss it out there for discussion…should they be replacing it because they ruined it by setting in a stain that they either should have pretreated but didn’t or should have warned me they didn’t have the ability to remove?
Taking it to a laundromat and using a front loader would have been my first choice. Dry cleaners don’t have “regular” washing machines, though if they had been really thinking, taking it down the street to a laundromat would have been a great idea. Shove it into a front loader washer and dryer for a few bucks and profit.
Can you clarify that part about recommending wet cleaning? That sounds like they put a “sorry we couldn’t get your stain out” tag, and are telling you to take it to a cleaner that has “wet cleaning” as a service, usually a secondary and off-premises special service that not all dry cleaners can do. Dry cleaning uses solvents, and doesn’t get out water-based stains from my understanding. It would never have occurred to me to take a urine-soaked comforter to a dry cleaner. I wonder if she realized it was really still soaking wet rather than a smelly dry stain, or figured they’d give it a shot anyway. Honestly she probably thought it was weird enough you were taking it to her in the first place, why not try, put the “sorry couldn’t get the stain out” tag on it, and take your money anyway. I suppose it’s a conversation worth having if you decide to take it back - but don’t plan on any refunds or replacements without making a really big stink.
If they did put a note on your item that said they couldn’t get the stain out, and you paid and took it home, or didn’t ask for some sort of compensation if you had pre-paid, you might be out of luck. But I’m basing that on being unclear about the tag on the hanger.
If you haven’t tried to get the stain out in the same manner you got the rest out of your other bedding, you have no idea whether it’s really set-in at this point. I would use an enzymatic cleaner as a pre-treatment, see if I can start getting the stain out in the sink, and then use a laundromat front loader to clean the whole thing properly. Probably cost you less than $10 total.
I had a rabbit who became incontinent due to age. I found vinegar was mostly the most successful pee stain and smell remover. Anything it couldn’t handle fell before something called hutch cleaner which is one of those enzymatic thingamabobs.
The dry cleaner I go to has a big sign on the wall that says “Comforters $39” I’m pretty sure people take their comforters to the cleaners all the time. Heck, my last comforter specifically said “Dry clean only”
I vote for take it back. If it’s a Mom & Pop shop, make sure you speak to the owner. If you try to take it to one of the underlings, they might try to shoo you out of the shop so they don’t get in trouble with the boss for not cleaning it right in the first place.
My current employment is next to a dry cleaner, which is owned by the same person who owns the shoe repair.
According to him and a couple of the employees I’ve spoken to, dry cleaning does not remove urine. Not dog, not cat, not human (apparently far more men dribble than I ever imagined). That outfit will tell people “we can not remove urine odor” but not everyone is so scrupulous.
As a matter of fact this operation DOES have a regular washer and dryer, but not every such shop does.
I would suggest going to a larger pet store and inquiring about pet urine removers which are designed specifically to remove pet pee from objects. Even that is not 100% guaranteed (and generally work better if you use them before you attempt a wash) but the results are much better than anything else.
I wasn’t saying it was weird to take a comforter to be dry cleaned, just a little weird to take a comforter freshly soaking wet with pee to a dry cleaner. ::shrug:: Maybe that’s just me. Rinse it out, spray it down with enzymatic cleaner, and then see if it still needs professional cleaning. Even if it does, from what I understand about dry cleaning is that it does not work on water based stains, so the disservice I see here is the “try it anyway” attitude from the attendant, she should have directed the OP to a cleaner capable of wet washing or suggested a laundromat.
I’ll be interested to hear what they have to say for themselves if the OP goes back. I’ve found the dry cleaners I’ve dealt with to be not all that helpful, just take the stuff and if they can get it clean, great, and if not, oh well we tried, here’s a tag that says it’s there for good.
But I wasn’t sure how to get this stain out. Besides, the comforter is big and unwieldly and spending the day going back and forth to a laundromat isn’t what I wanted to do. Giving someone else $20 to deal with it was something that I was more then happy to do. Besides, from what I understand, they’re customers at my store so I was more then happy to take it there.
Really, I’d always heard that they do, or could at least send it out. Either way, this is a mom and pop one with, I think, 3 locations, surely one of them must have one.
This tag was on when I got it back. FTR, when I brought it in and told them that it had dog urine on it (and it does have “dog urine” written on the receipt) I did tell them it was okay to dry clean it or wash it or do whatever they wanted to do to get it clean, I really didn’t care, I just wanted it cleaned. So they probably just put that tag on it so it would get ‘wet cleaned’.
No, she knew it was wet, she made me put it in a bag. I thought I was doing the right thing by bringing it in ASAP.
There was no “We couldn’t get the stain out” tag on it. Hell, they didn’t even get the smell out. It’s like they just folded it up, handed it back to me and took my money.
I’ve used Nature’s Miracle on carpets, but this was soaked all the way through the bedding. But even if I put that on the comforter, then what, take it to the laundromat and hope for the best. My thinking was that the dry cleaners would have known to do exactly that. I can be the only person that ever had a dog pee on their bed. If they can’t get it out it’s really not a big deal, they just need to tell me instead of taking my money.
Agreed. That tag is weird, it has a box for client approval, which indicates to me she should have explained it to you at drop-off, gotten your OK, and then sent it to wet cleaning. Instead the tag is there after the fact. Definitely take it back, it sounds like a place that should have been able to handle your request the first time.
In my experience normal dry cleaning really doesn’t get rid of pet urine odors or spotting, especially on something like a comforter where the pee soaks into a whole matrix of thick fabric batting. Your only potential save would have been to rush it to a laundromat or throw it in the bathtub ASAP and try to flush as much of the pee out as possible. By the time you got it to the cleaners it’s likely the stain was already “set”.
The issue here isn’t that they did a bad job, but that they agreed to take it in the first place. You can argue that they should not have attempted to clean it in the first place, but that’s a different argument than them doing a bad job.
I blogged for a cleaner for a bit and saw their operations. They definitely should have the technology to get the stain and smell out. Go back, show them what’s wrong, and they ought to gladly redo it for you. If they are shitty about it (or, in this case, pissy), then you should get a new cleaner that stands by their work.
I took it back and to make a long story short she said that she would put it back through again for no charge but she couldn’t guarantee that she could get the stain/smell out because they never guarantee that. I told her that I wish she had said that the first time because if she had I wouldn’t have even bothered with it. She said that they never guarantee that pet urine will come out (in a duh tone of voice) and I just kept trying to explain to her that “I’m sure that’s the case but you didn’t tell me that so I had no way of knowing and I know you didn’t tell me that because if you had I would have just tossed the comforter. I wasn’t going to spend $20 (with my 30% coupon) hoping you could maybe clean my $70 comforter” She said “We’ll wash it again but no guarantees bye bye”
So, I left. In my mind if it doesn’t come clean and I don’t get my money back they’ve lost all my business going forward. I mean, it’s no big loss since this is the first time I’ve ever set foot in a dry cleaners in my life, but I can’t believe she was arguing with me over this. I think what I should have said is “It’s not clean, you didn’t tell me you couldn’t get it clean, I’d like my money back”.
She did mention something about letting the owner know, so maybe something will come of it. Anyways, it was mentioned up thread that like it’s a well known fact that they can’t get pet urine out, but how should I know that. I dropped it off assuming I would get it back smelling and looking nice and clean. It didn’t even cross my mind that it might not come out. If I thought that might have been a problem I would have asked.
For future reference, two things to keep in mind when patronizing a dry cleaner:
Be honest about what a stain is. Yes, I know the OP was, but apparently an amazing number of people won’t admit that, say, there is blood or urine or feces or whatever. Folks, they really have seen it all before. Knowing what, exactly, the stain is has a major impact on whether it is possible to clean it at all.
Ask them “do you think you can get this stain out?” This gives them an opening to either say “perhaps, but not guaranteed” or “definitely”, and if the latter, they are probably not being honest. As the lady said, they can’t ever gaurantee they can get a stain out. Nonetheless, they do expect to be paid for the attempt, hence the reluctance to refund your money. They don’t want to work for free any more than you do.
I’m sorry there was a misunderstanding. Too often such businesses are unaware that some people have never used their services before.
That’s the thing, I was totally unaware that I was the moron for assuming the it would come out. Honestly, the only reason I took it to them was because it wasn’t going to fit in my machine and I really didn’t feel like trying to deal with washing it at the laundromat. Running back and forth from work, trying to dry it without all the batting ending up lumpy or in one corner. And, like I said, it came right out of the sheet and the mattress so I really didn’t think of it as a stain.
And if they I known there was any chance that they couldn’t get it out I would have tossed it back in my trunk it put it in the dumpster at work. I wasn’t interested in spending $20 attempting to clean a $70 comforter.
