lost a wash n fold item

[DanD]

We are new in the business and a customer has claimed that we have lost a shirt that she brought in.I told her to double check her car and her home and she still insist that we have lost it.Maybe we did-don't know for sure.Anyway,what is this normal way of resolving this situation?How much do I offer?

[Howard]

There is no one size fits all answer to this question. Do you think she will be a good customer, or is she a one shot wonder - it might play into what you do. I would ask her what she thought would be fair compensation. If it seems fair to you offer that to her in the form of a credit on future WDF. If that does not work and she gets nasty about it you can either insist it was not there and stand firm if you think you are correct or most commercial three part forms state on the back that your liability is limited to no more than 10 times what you charged to launder the item. Since the shirt probably weighs less than a pound, if you charge 85 cents a pound your total liability would be limited to $8.50. You need to decide what stand you want to take.

[Kari]

This has happened to us a few times. I asked them to go purchase an equivalant item. (from the customers we have I knew it was not going to be expensive). I asked them to bring in their reciept and we would reimburse them. Since we have the reciept we can now write it off. One person stated his jeans that were lost were over 85 dollars but he said that he would feel bad making us pay for that amount so he bought some 25 dollars jeans from Wal-Mart. Another customer replaced his clothes from the good will store.

But there was one time that we got a phone call from a real witchy person saying that we had lost a comfronter and a pair of heavy weight work pants that were dropped off about three weeks prior. Oh, and by the way they had to mention that the pants were about 100 dollars. The person who called said that they were calling for someone else. I knew that they were full of crap. It is a little hard to just lose a comfronter and the pants that they discribed none of the emplyees or myself remember them. We just told them that we were pretty certain that we did not lose the comfronter or pants but we would talk to the employees to see if they remembered anything. That was a month ago and we have not heard anything back. Probably someone looking for drug money.

Don't worry, this happens to everyone in the WDF biz. Good Luck.

[Howard]

Most times when my regular customers claim that we lost something they end up coming back about three weeks later saying that they found the item in their closet.

[millenniumplus]

Howard summed it up quite well. In addition to that - we check our computer records to see what
other customer clothes were done around the same period of time. If the clothes are still onsite we
rebag and look through those clothes. If the clothes are gone we call the customer(s) up whose
clothes were done around the time the missing clothes were done. We have had luck doing both
of these things. And yes, we ask the customer carefully look though their the clothes we wdf.
We have found that people find the clothes after rechecking. When all else fails we ask the
customer how much the clothes were worth. Recently a loyal elderely customer claimed
we lost 2 pair of underwear and a tee shirt. He went to Walmart and we paid him the full
cost. He has been with us for about three years and comes failthfully every Friday afternoon
at a cost of about $12.00 (w/tax) a week. Whether he was being honest or not the $4.00
we put out was worth paying out. We WDF over a thousand pounds of clothes a week and
things get lost (we pay out about two items a month). We listen carefully to the customers
story and do our inhouse investigation and decide to pay or not from there. One lady claimed
a complete set of bed sheets were missing (including pillow cases!!!). She was overly irate
and said the sheet set cost $200bucks. We reviewed our security tapes hoping to find a
"walk by" customer (or employee) stealling a set of sheets but nothing. Unfortunately
for this customer they claimed missing items on a day my wife and I were onsite all day
working & training new people. We remembered this particular wdf because the sheets
were extra stinky. We refused to re-imburse her and she threatened to call the BBB. In
closing any payouts of this nature goes towards tax write-offs. On average one can
offer 50% or less re-imbursement for missing items (or prorate) unless the customer
can absolutely prove the missing item was new. Whatever we decide to do after all the
invesitagting we make sure we are comfortable with our decision and then we move on.

[actionmedia]

One unsatified customer mean loosing 10 others customers that is one unwritten law of marketing. So it is your interest to satisfy your client needs
On the other hand you have to look out for scums.
I would say first step is to prevent that kind of thing never to happen. You need a good system. Minlennium gived a good example of a system.
I would go with some registration before wash. Like a client file. It would take a cuple of additional minutes but will save you from trouble.
I would write there:
- registration number for the bag, for easy identification
- the number of items in bag, for quick check
- a table with name or type of the item, color, size, brand, for detalied check
When the client come to pick up their stuff, ask them to take a moment to check the items in the bag.
To show your clinets that you care you can even ad a small fee on the receipe (like 5 or 10 cents per bag) for this kind of "care" service. If they ask way you charge that you explain to them and offer them the posibility to fill that sheet themselves to save that money and you only do the check when receive the stuff.
That is only a draft of a plan and can be improoved. I don't know if it will work but I will try it.

[millenniumplus]

Mr ActionMedia is correct a good WDF tracking system is key. Our automated system is very good.
An invoice with a wide list of info is created and printed with a computer for each customer from color of
basket left with us to hanging bras to dry VS using a dryer to dry them. Each washer and dryer is tagged
with the invoice assoicated with that customer. We do one WDF at a time and usually someone is with
that WDF at all times. With everything we have in place it's difficult to completely eliminate human error
when you move the amount of volume we do on a daily basis. Our history shows us we lose a piece of
clothes here and there when there are 3+ people working at one time and our WDF is peaked out. My
wife and I come in when it's busy work with the team in hopes to reduce losing WDF. We have 5 cameras
in our WDF area to ensure no one walks off with customer items. We had a child take some kids spiderman
underwear one time. When the items turned up missing, reviewed the tapes and contacted the childs Mom
(we know most of our customers personally). She came in with duplicate underwear. Her kid had the
spiderman underwear and thought they were his. An honest mistake but another example of not being
able to eliminate all problems (the attendant stepped away from the WDF to use teh bathroom). If you
offer WDF expect minor problems like this. Do what you can to learn from your mistakes but expect to
lose things. Didn't say it in my last post but many items that are reported missing, rarely do our customers
expect anything in return other than to report to us to be more careful next time. Most of our WDF clients
are like family coming to us for years. We've discovered $150 & $180 dollars in cleints clothes and contacted
them and turned the money in. We've found wedding rings, lottery tickets, wallets (you name it) and we
return things. Our clients are often amazed as we get so much down. They come in and see clothes
everywhere and often wonder why more stuff isn't missing. With the little problems it will always be worth
having WDF VS not at all.

[Howard]

Don't think the old marketing adage of 1 upset customer telling 10 applies to WDF as I really don't think any of my WDF customers know any of the other WDF customer. This does apply to my self service customers.

As far as asking customers if they got someone elses laundry be careful. I have a very good customer named Susan that said we lost 5 pair of Hanes underware. She was not very upset, but asked if I could try to track it down. The only other laundry that was done at the same time as hers belonged to another customer named, you guessed it, Susan. So I thought maybe the attendant accidently mixed it up. I talked to Susan #2 about it and she got very upset thinking that either we washed her clothing with someone elses or mixed someones underwear in with hers. Turns out she did not have it, but it raised some concern in her head. Two weeks later Susan #1 tells me that she never put the underwear in the laundry, that is why she did not get it back and thought it was missing.

[millenniumplus]

Point taken Howard. It's really a tough call, yes. An elderly gent who was in the Navy years ago on
the USS Bushnell claimed we lost his tee-shirt last week. The tee shirt had all of his crew members
signatures on it. The garment was "Pricesless" in this regard. We called several customers around
the time of his wdf and located the tee-shirt. He came in personally to hug (cry) and thank me for
calling around. Your right, half the complants turn out the customer may have their garments. Over
the past 3 years we've tried just about every angle when clothes are claimed missing. We've settled
in on this problem resolution and it's worked for us. Again, this approach not for everyone. I trust both
Susan's are still getting their WDF done with you. Whether customers love us or hate us they do
try other laundry services. When the service can't be beat, most times they come back.