Getting Started & Support Questions
Please review and be aware of the limits on liability in our general terms and conditions (a.k.a. terms of service), which can be viewed at the link on the bottom of our website. Generally speaking, we have always operated as a business that attempts to make things right when our team makes mistakes. We have developed extensive and redundant layers of processes and we are a professional laundry service with very high expectations and standards for our team members. Yet, we are also a team of human beings, and human beings are not perfect. We are all “only human,†as the expression goes. So, we have often owned up to and exceeded the limits of liability in our terms of service when someone on our team makes a mistake we cannot solve.
Effective July 28, 2022, there will be a new and absolute exception to this. We are explaining here what that is and why. The following does not apply to hotels and business customers sending in all linens, where weights and volumes can clearly confirm that we are returning what we received.
For residential customers, we will no longer pay to replace missing sheets, linens, and bedding items. These, when measured by weight, provide a gross revenue to us of potentially only $2.50 or maybe $5 before our sizable operating costs. Yet, among many affluent Bay Area customers, often turn out to be ultra expensive items with asserted replacement values in the multiple hundred of dollars. The replacement cost, however, is not the reason for this new policy.
Rather, we have over several years had some unfortunate and costly experiences when people have asserted that we lost expensive sheets, contrary to all our documentation to the contrary (and in a few cases these customers later realized they had not even sent us the sheets). It is hard to disprove a negative, as the expression goes, especially in the case of reports of missing linens.
In addition to our other processes for keeping items separate, we weigh both before and after, which helps us double check that everything received is being returned (I.E. nominal variance in before and after weights, explainable based on dirty or wet items in the before weight). [By the way, our invoicing is done based on the after, clean weight, if you are wondering.]. Notably, because most all bedding items weight less than a pound, it is hard when someone says they sent us something they may never have sent us for as to definitively confirm there was no discrepancy or error on our end.
Expanding on this, people often have numerous sheet sets that look alike (unlike clothing they recognize), and can’t be certain how many they sent us.
We have experienced situations where people’s’ housekeepers changed their bedding and sent in the laundry so the customer assumed we never returned the sheets, when the cause turned out to be an issue with the housekeeper not changing all the beds and not sending us as many sheets as the customer believed the housekeeper had sent in. These situations then placed us in the middle of uncertainty between the customer and their housekeeper. Most recently, we had a customer send in sheets from a neighbor and friend mixed in with their own laundry as a favor to the third party. And, they then assumed we had sent back another customer’s sheets, only to eventually connect the dots and realize we had returned what they had sent … but it just didn’t look familiar to them.
We have unfortunately also dealt with a customer who admitted she was having memory problems and wasn’t positive whether she had sent in a set of sheets, dropped it off at a drop off laundry service she had previously used before switching to us and the convenience of pickup and delivery, or not charged her sheets that week. Yet, we found ourselves still paying her because of what we just mentioned about the nominal weight of a set of sheets preventing us from definitively and empirically offsetting her own uncertainty.
In short, there is too much room for uncertainty on the part of members of a customer’s households on items that are not as obviously personal and recognizable as someone’s individualized clothing.
Also, one of the biggest values of our service is in the time saving value of sorting and folding, with items being returned generally organized and ready to put in drawers. For customers with home washers, a load of sheets or a single, light weight blanket that fits in a home washer is fairly easy to wash and fold.
We made this change after a great deal of reflection, but we hope the explanation and examples above help it make sense. To fulfill on the mission statement on the bottom of the home page of our website for the largest possible number of families and business owners in our community, we have determined we need to reduce this potential source of confusion and stress in the relationship between us and our customers with an absolute policy in this one regard. As noted in our terms of service, this and all the content of the FAQ section of our website is incorporated by reference into our terms and conditions (a.k.a. terms of service).
Yes. If a weekly customer refers a new customer who signs up for weekly service, we apply a $15 credit to the next invoice of the referring customer. We do ask new customers to tell us how they heard about us.
As often as you like. Some of our customers tweak their profile prior to every pickup because they have special instructions for us. Other customers set up their preferences when creating their account and then rarely change them.
You should receive a call within one business day from one of our Customer Satisfaction Team Members. They will answer any questions and help make sure that our team members (including our drivers) have all the details they need to be of service and meet your specific needs. If you don’t hear from someone on our team within that time, please use the contact us form on our website to let our business owners know.
On your first pick-up day, please remember to leave your laundry accessible for our drivers and separate into a separate bag any delicate items or items requiring special attention. Our drivers will leave a welcome card when they pick-up your laundry. When your laundry is returned, we will return it in one of our blue Marin Wash and Fold laundry bags, and include for future use a white mesh bag for delicate items. Every time your laundry is returned, you should also receive one of our thank you cards, which will remind you to feel free to let us know how we did.
Many of our business customers provide us with keys or gate codes to accommodate flexible pickup and delivery times.
For residential customers, we will not be able to provide service to customers who need to meet us to specifically handoff the pickup or delivery. Part of how we offer free pick-up and delivery is by being able to have flexibility in our pick-up and delivery time (instead of scheduling a precise time to meet someone). In limited circumstances for a recurring residential customer, we may make special arrangements. However, the cost for this will be $50 for the combined pickup and delivery. And, we will still need you to be available within the approximate time window. Also, if a customer in this situation asks us to meet them personally and someone else at their place of work takes receipt of the delivery, this is the equivalent of constructive receipt and will be considered the same as meeting you personally.
Please log in and let us know you will be away by 7:00 a.m. on your pick-up day. We understand that many people in our area do travel periodically during the course of each year. You will still be considered a weekly customer and receive the price for weekly customers when you return.
The Welcome Kit consists of one blue laundry bag, one green dry cleaning bag (if applicable) and one white mesh “special attention” bag and a welcome card.
Sometimes the answer to a question or a resolution of an unanswered question may involve getting an answer from someone who works on a different shift (such as an evening or overnight shift) or has a day off and is not available. In this type of case, it may take time to get a question answered and respond to you. Our software tracks all open questions in detail so multiple people can track what was requested, what has occurred, or what needs to be resolved to leave the customer feeling satisfied. The minute a member of our customer satisfaction team speaks with you, receives your voicemail, or receives your email, the information is categorized, and available for the appropriate people to review on the next time they come in to work. Our customer satisfaction team members review updates to the internal messages each business day (and for several hours each weekend day too) so they can respond to a customer by phone.