Robins Dry Cleaners

I rarely give one star reviews but Robin’s Dry Cleaners deserves it wholeheartedly. This review isn’t about the quality of their dry cleaning… because I couldn’t even get that far with them.
SO. I got married over a month ago and I’ve got a photoshoot somewhere secret (I would tell you but then it wouldn’t be a surprise for our guests when the thank you cards go out if they happened to see this first…) on Tuesday. I looked up dry cleaners in Crayford because that’s where I live and I’m all about shopping local and Robins came up. I called, asked if they could dry clean a wedding dress, satin cape and a three-​piece suit and they said sure, but I’d have to bring it in so they could look. All fine so far.
My husband and I walk it to them and immediately they say they can do the wedding dress but they aren’t sure about the cape and need to wait until the guy who does it comes in on Wednesday to get a quote for it. They make it sound like we have to wait until Wednesday to get a quote for the cape. Like she doesn’t know what to charge for it so she needs the guy’s specialist eye to tell us but the wedding dress will cost £100. She also makes it sound like the guy works there and just isn’t in until Wednesday. No time frame is mentioned.
My wedding dress has a few alterations to it too. Namely, one black velvet belt. As I need it for Tuesday for a photoshoot, I want it to look like my wedding dress and that means belt included. I tell them that. But the woman behind the counter said they’d have to take it off completely or the colour would bleed. That’s fine, but then they wouldn’t attach it back on. I’d have to do that myself. I paid £30 for that to be attached and it’s part of my dress. I expect my garment to come back looking the same as when I dropped it off. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.
I explained this to the woman, saying that because I was wearing it again on Tuesday the 26^th, I needed the belt on it. It’s what makes my wedding dress my dress. It’s how I looked on my wedding day and that’s the point of this photoshoot. But she just shrugged. Fine. We left the dress and the suit (after saying we’d wait until Wednesday and wanted them both done at the same time) there and went away.
Fast forward to today, Wednesday the 20^th, six days before my photoshoot and I get a call from them telling me it’ll be £150 to dry clean my dress and cape, they want an £80 deposit and it’ll be ready for pick-​up next Wednesday… the 27^th. I say ‘No, that won’t work because I need it for Tuesday’ and the woman is like ‘Well you can’t have said that to the lady when you dropped it in because she’ll have told you it takes a week and a guy comes and takes the dress away so it can’t be quicker.’ WHY WOULD I LEAVE MY DRESS WITH YOU FOR FOUR DAYS IF YOU’D TOLD ME THERE WAS NO WAY IT’D BE DONE BY THE 26TH WHICH IS WHAT I’M DRY CLEANING IT FOR?
Deep breath. Now, I KNOW I told her about the photoshoot and the Tuesday 26^th deadline at least twice. Because we had a whole conversation about the belt having to come off and me saying it can’t and has to be reattached because of the shoot. I point this out on the phone but the woman just talks over me and dismisses me. She’s not listening to my reasoning or the fact her employee is wrong and didn’t give us any information so we could make an informed decision.
I call around other dry cleaners and I only find one that says it’s possible to do it in six days but that’s conditional on seeing the dress. I take it to them and they take one look at it, and explain that because the label says No Dry Cleaning, it has to be sent to a specialist and he only comes once a week to pick up orders and drop off the week before’s. He comes on a Monday at that particular cleaners. I’ve missed the deadline by two days to get my dress cleaned on time and no one else can do it either, because it was sitting at Robins.
If they’d explained what the second dry cleaner had explained in two minutes, namely that it was SENT AWAY on Wednesday and would be gone until the following Wednesday, I would NEVER have left my dress there. Why would I leave my dress there and be without it for the photoshoot I’ve spent four months organising? The second dry cleaner also has a guy who comes and picks up dresses but his guy picks up on a Monday. If Robins had told me everything, I would have called around, taken it there and have it back in time.
I am BEYOND angry. I now have to do it in a muddy wedding dress because of their incompetence and it’s ruined what was a really exciting day for me. To top it all off, despite asking them to wait to dry clean the suit until we were sure we were using them for the wedding dress, they’ve ignored us and dry cleaned it anyway. Now I have to pay them for that and I am LOATHE to give them any money considering the situation they’ve left us in.
Do NOT use them. Poor customer service, inability to listen and no information given. The trifecta of TERRIBLE.