Arrow Dry Cleaners & Tailoring

This place is terrible. DO NOT bring your clothes here.
I was in Cambridge for a couple of days in July for a conference. I had some blouses I needed dry-​cleaned so I dropped them off at Arrow dry-​cleaning on a Wednesday. I asked them when I could pick up my clothes before handing them over, since I needed them back before I flew out to another conference on Saturday.
The worker (or possibly the owner) told me I could pick up my blouses on Friday before the shop closed. I told him I couldn’t make it then, so he told me to come in on Saturday from 10 am to 2 pm. I said OK and handed over my blouses.
On Saturday I went to Arrow at 11 am on my way to the airport to pick up my blouses. THE STORE WAS CLOSED. And they were apparently closed the entire day. The guy had specifically told me to come back on Saturday anytime between 10 am until 2 pm. I suspect he lied to me in order to get my business. I had to catch my flight, so in the end I had to have my friend pick up my blouses the following week and mail them to me (well, to my home in New York even though I was flying overseas during that period).
Moreover, I called them to complain, and to tell them my friend would pick up my stuff. I gave them her name multiple times, but it seems that they didn’t write it down. Finally when she picked it up they gave her a really hard time and almost wouldn’t give her the clothes, despite the fact that I had given her the ticket number and given them her name and phone number.

Terrible service!!! I came here 3 times, all of them just bad experiences. Twice they left spots on shirts that weren’t there when we let them to dry clean. So we had to wait a few more days to clean it again. The other time, I left a Chef’s jacket to be ironed and starched and the result was really poor. Besides delaying to return my coat, when I asked the owner about the wrinkles, he says «it’s perfect» in a very rude manner. US$ 4,50 to iron a coat and get it worse than I can do by myself in 10 minutes, is really not perfect to me. Never going back to this place.

Terrible and irresponsible people. They lost *** LOST *** the pants to my suit. I had interviews at MIT that week and had to go in jeans!

An (initially stain-​less) white shirt came back with a thin (very visible!) black line all around the collar, and a some kind of red stain around the top of the collar. Also, they messed up ironing the cuff so there’s a huge crease across it. They offered to re-​do it, which isn’t helpful because I’m traveling. Moral of the story: leave time for at least two tries at this place. Which is to say, go somewhere else.

Arrow is overpriced, does a terrible job and has poor customer service. The stuff I brought in came back smelling like a locker room, they charged about 25% more than I’d expected for my wife’s dresses (short little cocktail dresses — nothing fancy) and the guy didn’t even want to talk to me about any if it. That’s the last time I go there — wish I came to Unilocal first!

2^nd time here– Told them to hem $ 200 jeans to 30 inseem… he wrote 30 on the receipt. I get them try them on– they are too short– i measured them, low and behold they are 29! Fail– never coming back to this place again

No, I’m not on Unilocal to complain about this and that, but if it needs to be said, it needs to be said.
Brought in a silk Cache dress (read: $ 300+) to be dry cleaned, and got it back with strange little holes and quarter sized bleach marks on the sash.
Showed it to the guy working there, and he starts yelling at me «That’s not us! What did you do to the dress? You must have gotten it dirty beyond repair!» After I calmly tell him «No. I’m PRETTY sure I didn’t have a bleached sash when I brought this in» he accuses me of not caring about the dress enough to have noticed it.
I asked to speak to the manager about getting some kind of refund, and after a long glaring look he jots down a number and says, «Fine, call him, but he’s very busy.» Big surprise: the «manager» brushed me off quickly too.
The only mistake I made was going to a dry cleaner before reading the reviews on Unilocal

I had a really bad experience here, but thankfully there wasn’t much lasting harm. I work nearby, so I thought it would be convenient to get a pair of jeans hemmed. It wasn’t too expensive, but cash only, which is always an annoyance…
Anyway, I brought in my jeans and the woman didn’t even ask me how much I wanted hemmed, just grabbed them and stuck a pin in. I came back a week later, and they still weren’t done — they said they needed another day. So I came back again, and it took at least 20 minutes for them to find my jeans. This should NOT be so hard. When I finally got them back, they had hemmed the jeans I wanted to keep at heel-​length to flat length… disaster. Thankfully they did a cheap job hemming, all they did was turn up the inside and sew, no cutting involved… normally that would be awful, but in this case it saved my jeans. I was able to take my pants down to Jordan the Tailor on Newbury and he undid the hem and fixed it.
All in all, this was a disaster and I’m never going back, I don’t care how convenient it is.

Bad People.
These guys ruined a dress (big chemical burn splotch), and when I complained, they said sure, no problem, they can help me, I just have to talk to «Mike». And funny, Mike is always available on the phone and says «no problem, just come on in and we’ll take care of it», but when you get there, «Oh, Mike just left.» They had me running back and forth between their two branches trying to find this mysterious creature.
Funny this even happened when I called from right outside of the store, talked to «Mike», then walked in the door, and the man there says Mike’s not there. When I finally confronted him and said that’s funny, I just talked to him 30 seconds ago, they gave me the compensation that the receipt claimed I was entitled to (10 times the cost of the cleaning, in this case $ 80).

BOO!!! HISS!!!
Oh, how I wish I had looked this place up on Unilocal before I dropped off precious pieces of my wardrobe here.
I moved to the Boston area during the last week of December 2008, and being that this dry cleaners is the closest in proximity to my building, I decided it would become «my» cleaners. To quote Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman … «Big mistake. Huge.»
In early January, I took in seven garments to be cleaned, five to be tailored and cleaned, and a pair of heels that needed freshening up. I was told everything would be ready one week later.
I went in a week later with my receipt and the girl took, oh, about 25 minutes trying to locate my things. I was fairly patient for the first ten minutes, but when she became noticeably frantic and then ASKED ME (!!!) to come back behind the counter and help her look for my things, I started making a scene. I couldn’t believe it. I was completely dumbfounded. As I walked up and down the aisles of random people’s clothes covered in plastic, I began calculating the cost of the clothes that I would probably never see again and figured I was about to be out $ 1500. I can’t lie — my eyes started welling up with tears. I couldn’t find my clothes and I demanded that the girl call the owner, who was the one I had dropped off my things with. She said he was upstairs and ran to get him. He came down and found my things in five minutes (apparently they had gone out to his other location and come back that morning and was still in the «to be sorted» pile. Ummm. It was 2 in the afternoon. Maybe that should get done earlier in the day???) — except I was told one of the pairs of jeans I needed tailored were not ready. After I told him that this was my first time using his establishment, he said he «didn’t want to lose me as a customer» and that he would have the tailor finish the jeans in one hour and there would be no charge.
When I came back an hour later, the jeans were ready and admittedly, were well tailored. But, I was also presented with MORE clothes that they had found of mine after I had left the first time. When I went to pay is when I found out it was CASH ONLY, which always makes me über suspicious of businesses. I mean, geez louise, its 2009… pay the merchant fees and get over it. I ran to the B of A next door to get cash, paid 80 freaking dollars, and left. When I got home, I discovered two of my sweaters still had the holes in them that I had taken them in for to get repaired and a skirt still had a tear in it. At that point, though, I didn’t want to ever leave anything I owned there again… so, alas, the holes/​tear are still there, three months later. PS The shoes looked just ok…
When I started using Unilocal for everything Boston shortly thereafter, I looked up Arrow Dry Cleaners and found that I only had myself to blame for not checking earlier and that you all had told me so. Live and learn, I guess.

Ouch guys. I’m not here to complain like an over-​annoyed botch because quite frankly, I thought my pants were hemmed just fine. And it cost me $ 12 a pair. Sure, they weren’t done when they said they’d be done and they only take cash/​check (however, they did take my debit card), but it’s in a convenient spot if you’re working in the neighborhood and definitely appear to be busy all the time.
Anyway, a little bit of helpful info for you concerned citizens. Arrows offers three services: tailoring, shoe repair, and dry cleaning. There is a different person responsible for each service except the tailor isn’t usually there and tailoring requests go through the dry cleaner lady. The shoe repair man seemed nice enough. Service with a smile.

I typically grade inflate so this rating of 1 is infinitely more than this awful establishment deserves!
~~!!~~ AVOID THIS PLACE LIKE YOU WOULD THE BUBONIC PLAGUE! ~~!!~~
BARF! SPIT!!! EWWWW!!!
TRUST Unilocal REVIEWERS!
This place is utterly reprehensible for the following reasons:
1) CAN’T BE ON TIME IF THEIR MOTHER’S LIFE WERE AT STAKE — I gave the cleaners 1 week, called in advanced to check if my clothes were ready, and they still didn’t deliver on time! In fact, they asked for 3 more days! I needed a suit for a very important event 2 days later and had to buy a new suit as a result!
2) RUDE AND DISRESPECTFUL — When I ever visit this place, the woman behind the counter, Elaine, acts like she wants to spit in my face. She’s short, short-​tempered, and kind of obnoxious.
3) THEY LIE — I called 3 hours to check on my suit. They said it was ready. I arrived 5 hours later, but it was not ready. When I asked why the woman, Elaine (the only person that works there), told me it would be ready, she said that she did not say that. Hellooooo! She’s the only woman that works there. I am not an idiot!
4) THEY UNDERESTIMATE YOUR INTELLIGENCE — See #3 above. They blatantly lie hoping you are too stupid to match their voices.
5) THEY POTENTIALLY CHEAT THE GOVERNMENT — They ONLY take cash or checks and you know what that means! So for every dollar you are giving them, you are cheating the government and hard working (honest and nice) Americans 33 cents! Your honestly earned dollars are subsidizing their existence i.e. the roads they drive, the bridges they use, the public parks they visit… They enjoy these public goods for 33% less than it costs you to enjoy them!!! HAH!
6) THEIR DRY CLEANING (for lack of a better word) SUCKS! I saw some imperfections in the dry cleaning like small residual spots and ironed on wrinkles… How can they SUCK so bad.
7) THERE ARE CHEAPER, MORE CONVENIENT CLEANERS — Harvard Highland Laundromat or HSA Cleaners. Flint Cleaners is good too, but in Allston.
8) HORRENDOUS CUSTOMER SERVICE — When I asked for a discount for the spots and delayed service, they said «no» and that was it. When I asked for a receipt, they scribbled on a piece of paper — I was afraid for my life that my suit that they delayed was at risk!
************ DON’T EVER VISIT THIS PLACE — YOU WILL BE SORRY! ************

Needed to get the heels of my shoes fixed and they promised to get it done before i was off for a business trip — This is what happened:
They promised to call as soon as the shoes were fixed, but they did not. So i called them almost everyday to check on the status — sometimes the man on the other line wouldnt even find the ticket number and couldnt give me a status, then he would promise to call back the next day before noon, but of course he never did. We played this game for 4 days until i was off for my trip — of course without my shoes. In the end it took them twice as long as promised to get my shoes fixed.
Dont go there if you need things to be done in time, you cant rely on their time estimates and you wont even get an apology.

They didn’t f-​up my shirts too bad, but that’s all i can say. Shirts came back smelling a bit funny, the hours are not great and the guy only takes cash which required me to go to the $ 3 fee ATM next door. Not coming back.