Family Cleaners

The dry cleaners at Wildwood is AWFUL with awful customer service to match!!! They ruined all of my husbands custom-​made dress shirts by turning the collars yellow. To make matters worse, they weren’t even apologetic once I confronted them.
They ship the clothes off to be cleaned & are merely a middleman and take no responsibility for what happens to your clothes in the dry cleaning factory. Although this is the most convenient dry cleaners for me, I will now take my dry cleaning elsewhere!

I had a truly terrible experience here. I would only recommend this place if you’re OK with a business that will wreck your clothes and then blame you/​your garment/​etc. The owner seems more interested in making a quick buck than in providing quality service. My experience was bad enough that I looked these guys up with the Better Business Bureau. It turns out (surprise, surprise) that they are not accredited.
I had dropped off four formal Indian-​style blouses to this cleaners. The blouses had elaborate beadwork and tassels, and I knew they would be difficult to dry clean. I asked the lady behind the counter if they could clean them, and she said that they could and had cleaned these types of garments many times before. She charged me a fairly high price (around $ 12 per garment). When I mentioned that the price was high, she said «Well these are fancy garments.» I was reassured that they knew what they were doing, and left the garments in their care.
I returned a few days later, and found that the beadwork had been totally destroyed. Despite the high price and their elaborate detailing, the blouses had basically been treated the same way that slacks/​shirts are: they’d been tossed into a big dry cleaning drum. The end result was that the beads, after repeatedly slapping against the sides of the drum, all fell out. In one case, there was even a visible tear left on the garment. Every single one of the blouses had suffered damage.
This is where the truly terrible part begins, however. Rather than taking responsibility for the error and admitting that they should have hand steamed the garments or treated them more carefully, the people behind the counter basically handed back my ruined garments, a bag of the beads that had fallen out in the drum, and told me that they were still going to charge me the full dry cleaning fee. The lady said, «we don’t guarantee against damage.» (They would NEVER have done this with equally beaded Western garments — they insinuated the damage was our fault because our garments were Indian)
I pointed out that A) the damages were extensive and EVERY garment was damaged B) their own agent had assured me that they could clean the garments and C) the damages were DIRECTLY attributable to the manner in which the blouses had been treated.
I also mentioned that my sister was going to be wearing one of these blouses at her upcoming wedding, and that it was basically unusable. The person behind the counter didn’t even blink. The counter lady told me that they could ask their hand alterations person to try to fix the garments (ie, to reaffix the beading) for an additional $ 18. When I remained visibly shocked that they would charge me for their error, she told me to return on Thursday to speak to the owner.
I naively believed the owner might have more self-​respect. Boy, was I wrong. This time, my sister came with me. The owner continued to tell us that she wasn’t going to refund us a cent, and that we would have to pay extra to have the garments fixed. She blamed the stitching of our garments, as well as their age (they were new clothes). When I mentioned that she should have asked me more questions before taking the blouses, she said it was her first time cleaning beaded garments. This all seemed incredibly fishy to me — she has 30 years of experience, but she has never cleaned these clothes? Her counter lady had been sloppy in taking the garments, they’d been sloppy in cleaning them, and instead of taking responsibility and trying to fix the error, she was still just trying to make money off of me.
My sister, meanwhile, kept saying that this was her wedding dress, and she started to cry. At this point it had probably been more than half an hour. I told the owner that I didn’t want to pay for her shoddy work, and her disrespect. Her assistant took the blouses into the back of the workroom, presumably because she didn’t want us to have them. This argument went back and forth for a while, with my sister in tears and the owner insisting that she didn’t guarantee against damages and it was our fault. (Although she admitted that from now on they would «put up a sign» about garments like this. To which my sister replied, «That’s good for you, but what about for me, whose wedding outfit is ruined?» To which the lady replied, «Normally we charge much more for a wedding dress.» ???)
I finally told the owner that I was going to file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, and write a poor Unilocal review. She offered me a 15% discount. I told her I’d pay her 50%, even though I firmly believe she should have offered us the garments for free and/​or included the alterations/​fixing in the original fee. (I mentioned both of these options to her)
Overall, it was a really negative experience. The owner clearly didn’t care about us, our experience, our clothes, or really anything other than her $$. My sister was devastated, as was I. This place is clearly not looking for repeat customers.

Only 1 star as it cost over $ 40 to wash-​not dry– clean my queen bedspread, AND it took A WEEK.

Not impressed. I’ve been here several times to have clothing tailored (jeans, etc.) and the quality of their work is not great for what they charge. There are some great tailors in the Bethesda area so I won’t be back here… just mediocre, in my opinion.