Horrible laundry service!!

We live in a rather small apartment with a tiny balcony, so all the space is really taken up by the necessary furniture like sofa, tv, etc. The balcony, being as tiny as it is fits some brooms and mops plus our two a/c condensers and some space to walk. As such, we barely have space to fit a washing machine, much less have enough space to dry our clothes (seriously, it's like choose one or the other!)

We were advised to use one of the AMPLE laundry services that are available around the apartment block. A rough look at the prices and they seemed VERY VERY cheap. Only Rp7000 to wash and iron 1 kg of clothes. There was another laundry service advertising Rp5000 per kg even.

We closed our eyes and picked one of the laundry services from the MANY MANY brochures we had. Obviously from the title, you know we picked wrong!!

Oh, the initial round we called them, they were excellent. All my husbands working shirts came back ironed crisply and on hangers (of course right? otherwise it wouldn't make sense ironing it if you were going to fold it back). We, of course, being laundry service virgins assumed that our OWN clothes would be returned to us and therefore didn't take inventory of our clothes going out to the laundry service.

The second time we called them to come pick up our clothes, husband's working shirts came back folded! Hmm..maybe it was a one time mistake or maybe they didn't have enough hangers that day.

Third time we called them, husband's working shirts still folded plus we got a little bonus. We were handed back a t-shirt that wasn't ours. "Oh, poor sucker who owns this t-shirt. Probably wondering where his t-shirt went. Nevermind, we'll return it to them when they next come to collect our laundry" we thought.

Fourth time we called them, husband's working shirts still folded (notice a pattern here?). Now my husband is getting really ticked off and has already decided not to use their service anymore (guess it's not too much fun going into work with wrinkly shirts).

This morning, when my husband tried to put on his working pants, guess what happened? Well, you would have guessed it already. The pants weren't his!! Surprise, surprise.

So at 7:30 am, he's already ticked off (seriously, I didn't even get a kiss goodbye this morning). Calls the laundry service looking for his pants. They actually do pick up. So my husband goes "Semalam, hantar seluar salah. Bukan seluar saya". Then I hear him say repeatedly "seluar...bukan seluar...seluar.." (you get where I'm going). Then I remember, from my vast TV watching (don't say you don't learn anything from TV), that here they call it CELANA. Anyway, I shout from the bedroom "I think they call it celana here". At that point in time he had already been handed over to someone else, who I assume understood what seluar meant, and had said "ok, ok". Well, how they're going to manage to find the right pair of pants that belong to my husband is beyond me.


Then I get a "ding" moment (imagine light bulb going on above my head). Oh...that means we're missing a t-shirt as well since we got someone else's t-shirt. Now THAT is going to be a problem, because I have no recollection whatsoever, of the missing t-shirt.

If we were in KL, they would be getting an earful about how lousy and undependable they are. But here, people only probably understand 30% of what I'm trying to say. They usually just stare at me like I'm speaking some foreign language (which to them is probably true). So I'm thinking, save my breath and move on bravely to the next laundry service.

My theory is that they are secretly siphoning out our nicer clothes and replacing them with lousy ones so that they can sell it by the streets! If only I were in KL, I would probably be able to find them back by going to the Pasar Malam. Here, well, for safety reasons, we only hang out in shopping malls.

Well, I guess lesson learned. Cheap things aren't always good quality things. Now we have to make a choice, to buy a washing machine or to continue using the laundry service. Personally, I would vote for the washing machine and hang my clothes to dry in the house (yes, sad I know but that's our only choice). I believe that the only way you can get things done right is by doing it yourself (how optimistic of me ya?).

P/S: Some clothes even came back with mysterious red spots on them!!