Gem Cleaners

Doesn't Recommend

ulysses777

Joined 5 years ago

Worse than your next door Cleaner. This cleaner was mentioned in Philadelphia magazine as "Best of Philly", and the guy who owns it talks a good game - about the quality of his cleaning and the care he takes when handling garments.

The work doesn't back it up. He's abrasive and difficult to deal with. The cleaner is only open Monday through Friday, and randomly closes early or in advance of holiday weekends, making it difficult to catch him unless you live right next door.

A few details:

His prices are about 50% to 100% higher than your average dry cleaner. This would be fine if the quality of his work matched his rhetoric.

He shrunk a pair of dress pants from a normal size to something approaching leggings, and denied responsibility for it. He told me flat out to my face that the pants had already been shrunk when I brought them to him, which is ridiculous - the pants are unwearable now. If they were unwearable before, then how did I get them dirty?

Also - mistakes happen. However, when they do happen, it's the cleaner's responsibility to stand behind their work and make restitution - especially if the cleaner thinks he's good at what he does.

This guy doesn't stand behind his work. He ruined a $250 pair of dress pants, and the most he was willing to do was deduct the $13 charge for dry cleaning the pants from my bill. Oh, thanks.

I dropped off one large order of clothing with him about two months ago. He couldn't give me a date by which he would have the clothing cleaned (he just told me to call him in a couple of weeks). When I called him about three weeks after dropping the clothing off, he couldn't give me a price on the cleaning - he was always "in the basement" or "outside". Then, when I came in, he still hadn't finished one of the pairs of pants I gave him, and he let me walk out of the door without a sweater I had given him, necessitating another trip out to Mt. Airy (a week later).