HOUSTON – Dry cleaned clothes give you a fresh, clean, crisp look; but the bill can leave you feeling broke. A week's worth of work clothes can set you back as little $12 or as much as $30.
Consumer expert Amy Davis wanted to know if paying more gets you better service.
She shopped for three gently worn white women's shirts and then marked them all with the same stains. She put lipstick on the collar, blue ink on the front of each shirt and a good bit of make-up on the shirt sleeves.
She chose three dry cleaners in southwest Houston at different price points.
The new Tide Dry Cleaners charged $3.09 to launder the shirt.
Bellfort Cleaners at 8761 West Bellfort charged $2.27, and the $1.49 Dry Cleaners at 7609 Hillcroft charged $1.61 after taxes.
Davis tried to find a dry cleaner for less, but even the $1 Dry Cleaners on Chimney Rock near South Braeswood is much more. When she took a shirt inside, an employee told her it would cost $4.06 to get it laundered!
"Oh wow. Is anything $1?" Davis asked the employee.
"No ma'am," the woman answered.
"But the name is $1 Dry Cleaners. Did they ever charge $1?" Davis asked.
"Yeah, when they first opened it years ago," the employee explained.
Every dry cleaner we used asked for two days to launder our shirts. When we picked them up, all of the stains were gone.
In our case, the higher price did not get us better service. The lowest priced cleaner did just as good a job cleaning the shirt as the higher priced one. There was a price difference of $1.48 between the Tide Dry Cleaners and the lowest price we paid. If we were taking five shirts from a work week, that's $7.40 difference.
