Cambridge Cleaners at Harvard Square

Door was locked when I showed up to drop off my clothes, despite a sign saying they were open. Huge inconvenience.

For Alterations.
This small place is located really near to Harvard Sq. I needed my dress shirt and jeans tailored in 4 days. The lady agreed with no additional rush charge for total of $ 45 (25 shirt, 20 jeans tampering). Additionally, I received an extra 20% off for being a new customer via Unilocal’s check in. Overall, the tailoring was done nicely and I could not have asked for more. My only critique about this place is they only have a really small room where you can change to allow the tailoring to occur. Other than that im very happy. Cheers!

I don’t know why people have rated this place so lowly. It’s a great dry cleaning place, not the cheapest, but priced moderately compared to other dry cleaners.
I was particularly really happy that they took my Unilocal deal so got a great discount. They won’t take those anymore, so don’t buy the deal on Unilocal even if it says it’s being offered!
Dresses, slacks, and shirts well cleaned. Took one of my friend’s coats in for dry cleaning because it was white and absolutely an eye sore to look at from previous stains. It came back almost to it’s original white. They did an amazing job.
Also, this place is so close to Harvard’s residential houses. It’s easy to pick up and convenient. They’re hours are not so great so make sure to head in during the day for pickup and dropoff. Turnaround time is 2 — 3 days.

Stay clear of Cambridge Cleaners! I really wanted to like this place since it is in close proximity to where I live. The staff is very polite but their inability to wash clothes is laughable. I need to get my white shirts laundered quite frequently and while it usually is not a problem, they really do not know how to deal with stains. They never label the stain and just say they will take care of it. Some of my white shirts have also returned with a yellowish hue. Normally, I just ignored it because of the convenience factor.
The last straw was this week where they did not remove ANY sweat stains along the cuffs of a white shirt. I asked them to wash it again and they claim that they tried removing the stains and recommended I send it back in for dry cleaning. They refused to provide a refund or rewash the item in question. Alas, I will not be returning.
On a side note, they advertise that their shirts are washed on-​site. While I am not certain, I believe this is a false claim because they have «deliveries» of cleaned clothes.

Been using this service since coming on campus. John is extremely friendly and helpful (especially during recruiting week). They even stayed in late one day to make sure I had my suit for the interview the next day.

I would honestly give this place zero stars if I could. I regret not having listened to some of the previous reviews that warned me away from getting anything tailored here because, well, they’re just awful. I brought in two full suits to get the jackets taken in and the pants hemmed slightly. Their turnaround time was pretty quick; about one week. However, when I went back and tried the suits on, the pants were tailored much too short (read: shorter than highwaters) and the jacket did not sit flat against my back (read: bulging and uneven tailoring). To be fair, the main woman who works there refit me and said they’d fix it, free of charge. I left the suits there and came back two weeks later to pick them up. Trying them on again, the pants were almost normal (they had taken off too much fabric to begin with) and the jackets were no better. I insisted that I speak to the seamstress. When I did, she mentioned that the errors in the tailoring were due to her not fitting me. She offered to fix the pieces again, free of charge. When I went back to check on the suits, the jackets were still not right and then they wanted to charge me for any additional work. She said it had been about 1.5 months and then implied that I had taken the suits out of the shop and ruined them elsewhere before she started trying to fix them (completely absurd). When I insisted that she do the job right for no additional money, she said that she couldn’t do any better and that the work was fine. She then said that my suits were not made properly and that’s why she couldn’t get them to sit correctly (my suits were about $ 400/​each; I guarantee that they were made properly). To make matters worse, the pants had been pressed since the last time they were tailored, as was the jacket, but in the last round of alterations, they didn’t press the jacket again and then demanded that I pay to have it pressed again… even though they never got the job right in the first place. Needless to say, my two suits are essentially mutilated and I will have to replace them both very soon. Take it from me: Do NOT go here for any reason.

I am normally pretty lenient for commodity services like dry cleaning and laundromats. I am reviewing the tailoring here, however.
I brought in a brand new jacket to be tailored. They had to take in the waist of a jacket about 6″. When I got it home and unbagged it, I noticed several brand new stains on my jacket. I immediately returned it to Cambridge Cleaners, and asked how they got stains on my jacket when they only needed to tailor it.
They insisted that I must have stained it in the quarter mile between their store and my apartment. It had been only 20 minutes since I had left. The stains were completely dry and set in. It was clear that there was no way I could have got anything on them, and have it dry and set in that time.
They still tried to charge me $ 13 additional for cleaning of the stains they put on the jacket. I asked for my jacket back, saying I did not trust them with it. They again insisted that I put the stains on there in the walk to and from my apartment.
The tailoring also was only alright. I would suggest avoiding this place if you can help it.

The people here know who you are, especially if you go to school nearby. They knew me by name after the first few visits, and knew what I was coming in to pick up, even before I handed them the slip of paper. I would walk in and they would say, «Oh, your yellow shirt is here.» They would also comment that a lot of my «brothers and sisters» (House-​mates,) also went to them. The personal touch is fantastic.
They also pay close attention to tiny details. I had a RL shirt that had a make-​up stain on it that was about 1 cm in length and 3 mm in width. The first time, this stain wasn’t removed so they sent it back. I’m waiting to see whether it has been removed now but they are extremely conscious of quality.
They also use organic dry cleaning. This is better for the environment and for you. You don’t want to put that many harsh chemicals in close contact with your skin. A soy-​based cleaner is a good alternative and I do not believe the price is higher due to usage of organic dry cleaning processes. The turnaround time is standard.

Poor dry cleaning service and poor customer service. Unfortunately, not too many options nearby for Harvard students, but I’d advise the extra walk down Mass Ave for other spots. They struggle to get stains out of clothes that other places easily removed, lost a dress of mine, twice did not have things ready at promised date/​time, and proceeded to charge full price for said poor effort. Never went back after the owner was rude. I don’t like to waste my time with places like these.

This is a great place for dependable dry cleaning. I’ve been going here for four years and they have always had very quick turn around with very friendly service. The owner James is a great person and has always been going the extra mile. I’m not sure why some people have had bad reviews. It could be that they have had tough stains or repairs and expect to turn a permanently stained dress to be like new. My roommates and I have been regulars at this place for all our business and formal wear and have always had great results! Go Cambridge Cleaners!

This is a very convenient location with a very mediocre service. It’s not uncommon that you walk in and have to wait 10 minutes for someone to emerge from the back office. While I have actually not had any real issues with the basic dry cleaning service, the first and only time a brought an item to be altered, they actually forgot to do the alteration, which left me in a jam. The people are nice, but I would rather them be mean as cat turd if it meant the reliability factor would increase.

First of all, let me say that the people who run this place are really nice, and give great customer service…
There’s just one small problem: their dry cleaning service just isn’t that good. I took in a cream silk dress with a red wine stain on it one time and they warned me in advance that they might not be able to get it out — and they didn’t. But why then charge me full price? I incidentally then took the dress to another dry cleaners who did in fact get the stain out and charged me less money.
I totally understand that red wine is a tough stain to remove but I’ve also taken in articles of clothing that have been returned to me dirtier than when I took them in.
2 stars because the people are so nice, unfortunately the actual service they perform is so poor that it’s hard to give more.

Let me start by saying I’ve never had alterations done here, just dry cleaning, so can’t comment on the alternation issues that some people have mentioned.
What I can tell you is that I’ve been bringing my clothes here for almost 2 years, and have never had a problem with damage, lost items, anything like that. The staff is always helpful and courteous, and the turnaround time is pretty standard for the industry. Prices are reasonable, haven’t found anywhere that can match the quality at that price.
So yeah, I love having a dry cleaner that I never have to worry about — one less stressful thing in my life!

Before I ever realized that Cambridge Cleaners did the on-​site pick-​up/​drop-​off of cleaning at the Harvard Business School, I went to them to get two pairs of new (expensive) jeans altered. Both pairs needed to be hemmed, one needed to be altered at the waist. One pair was to be worn with heals, the other pair with flats. They hemmed both pairs too short. Thus, the pair to be warn with heals (Rock & Republics) was salvageable. Unfortunately, the other pair (Sevens) was not… I even took them to my parent’s dry cleaner in Naperville, IL and while they tried, it was just not enough. Now, I’d probably be more upset if I had paid full price for the jeans, but if I remember correctly they were on-​sale and I had rewards from my old Corporate AMEX. So, in the end I got one good pair of jeans for full price…
Since then, I have been *forced* into dry cleaning with Cambridge Cleaners as it is the only reasonably convenient option for an HBS student. They have always done a fine job with dry cleaning, even on delicate pieces such as party dresses and thin, sparkly cardigans. The owner has made me sign away their liability for such items a few times. After my initial experience I was only willing to do this out of desperation, but thus far I haven’t had a problem.
Therefore, I would say DO NOT get anything altered here… However, in a pinch the dry cleaning services do suffice.

I’m not sure why Cambridge Cleaners has gotten such horrible reviews — they do the on-​campus cleaning at Harvard Business School (they come a few times a week to do drop offs and pick ups) and I always found them reliable and fairly priced. They usually seem to be able to get out most of the stains I tell them about and charge the going rate. Plus it saves me having to lug my dry cleaning across the river — priceless.

Awful. I took my tux shirt to get washed/​pressed and pointed it out it had a few stains. The woman (wife) told me that she could get them out. I pick up the shirt, inspect it and see the stains are still there, though lighter. I start inspecting the shirt and the man (husband) starts getting super defensive telling me it’s my fault there are stains and they can’t make me a new shirt. I point out I was not blaming him and merely evaluating whether I needed to go buy a new shirt and he continued to attack me and told me to pay and leave. I told him his customer service was terrible (I had seen someone with a similar problem when in the store a month earlier) and he told me he didn’t need me as a customer. Sounds good to me. D*ck.
Looking at my shirt more closely now I see that they actually made it dirtier on the sleeves that when I had taken it in. Great.

I gave these guys a try after moving to the area, and had multiple poor experiences. They were closed at random times, ignored me while they chatted on the phone, and took 2 weeks to tell me they couldn’t sew a pocket!
1^st visit: Tried to to drop off clothes, but they were closed at 3pm in the middle of their business hours. Just a «we’ll be back» sign. A little frustrating while I waited 45minutes for them to return.
2^nd visit: Came to pick up my clothes, and was ignored for 10 minutes while the employee had an entertaining conversation on the phone. I tried to wave him up to the front of the store twice, but he just waved back.
3^rd visit: An alteration was supposed to be ready on Friday, then Monday, then Wednesday. Finally they admitted they hadn’t even started on the job yet, and asked if they could use a different color fabric. Apparently they don’t carry «white». Wow. I just asked them to return my clothes and haven’t looked back since.

I have never used this company for dry cleaning but I have used them to hem a pair of trousers for my favorite suit — it was awful! You could see every stitch.
On the plus side, they refunded my order with only about 5 or 10 minutes of debate.
The location is convenient but the prices are not the best in Boston and I did not have a good experience with my hem job…

Though this place doesn’t do anything extraordinary, this is certainly a good, reliable place. They are always efficient and I have never had a problem with getting my things back on time. Especially given that they have a captive audience of Harvard students, they keep their standards pretty high and do a good job with what they are given. Admittedly, I think they could try a bit harder to get stains out but as long as your clothing isn’t covered in them, you should be pleased with the results.
I have also gotten clothing tailored here and have been very happy with the results.

They’re fine. Never leave your shirts with your collar stays in because they will definitely lose them. Sometimes my clothes aren’t done exactly on time, but at least they’ve never been lost. They do a horrible job at removing stains. The pressing job is OK, but not best in class.
I don’t know — they’re alright, but I’m not impressed. They’re also not open on Sundays, which can be a bummer for me.