Spencers Dry Cleaners

I took a silk dress to be dry cleaned at Spencers, Three Bridges, Crawley, in June 07 - The dress was brand new, 100 per cent silk, expensive, and worn only once. When I got it home after collecting from Spencers Dry Cleaners, it had a huge stain on the front of it - and the bottom of the dress was all dirty - it looked like dirt and dust on the bottom of it. I took it back to Spencers immediately. While I was waiting to speak to someone, the man in front of me discovered they had lost his suit trousers and could only find the jacket. They told him to come back next week and never even offered an appology - things were not looking good for me! I eventually spoke to one of the staff They were so incredibly rude to me and told me the stain on the dress is 'what happens sometimes when you wash silk' and it wasn't their fault, despite the fact I pointed out they should have been dry cleaning it not washing it. They would not accept any responsibility and did not even offer an appology even when I pointed out they must have known the mark was on the dress when they gave it back to me and they said nothing. They would not let me speak to the manager, claiming there 'wasn't one'. Eventually they gave me the name of the owner, insisting I leave the dress with them to show the owner. I left the dress still in the plastic cover with them. I wrote a letter of complaint registered mail. I heard nothing so I rang every day leaving my phone number, and still no reponse from the owner. After a week of this, I went to the shop and demanded they contact the owner there and then. I was rudely told to come back in 2 hours although its a good 8 miles drive from my house! On returning to the shop I finally met the owner, a Mr Tuppen and he handed me a letter that he had clearly written in the two hours he had before I had said I was returning to the shop. The letter was rude, badly written and a completely untrue. He was so incredibly rude and nasty I could barely believe my ears. He completely blamed me for the stain on the dress and told me that dry cleaning brings out stains that you can't normally see (seems little point in using dry cleaners then!) He denied his staff treated me rudely although he was not even there to witness it. He then proceded to try and claim that the dress was damaged when they recieved it, which it clearly was not, despite the fact one of their staff checked the dress over for marks and stains before accepting it! He told me that I had damaged the dress myself before I had taken it to them, and they were in no way reponsible and that they had tried to clean a damaged dress! When he handed the dress back to me, it was clear he had tried to get the stain out again possibly by rubbing the material making the stained area much larger than it was. He then handed the dress back to me, it was not in plastic and it was not even on a hanger, but had been left screwed up at the back of the shop somewhere (which may explain why it was so dirty on the hem!) The owner, Mr Tuppen then told me to take him to court if I wanted to and consistantly raised his voice, trying to intimidate me, telling me it was my fault the dress was damaged, and tehy had cleaned an already damaged dress. It was clear to me that they had damaged the dress but thought they could get away with not saying anything about it. I am out of pocket to the cost of the dress and the cost of the dry cleaning now. I was disgusted and appalled not only at what they have done to my dress, but at thie lack of responsibility, and that they have behaved so rudely. They obviously have no idea how to treat their customers, as well as the garments they dry clean and they obviously do not value customer service. I would never ever recommend them to anyone and would go out of my way to warn people against using them! If I could give a '0' instead of 1 star, my rating would be '0' on every aspect of their service!!!

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Cathy D.