St Paul Cleaners Laundry & Tailoring

I love the service but will now switch to another dry cleaner because they stopped accepting American Express after at least a decade of coming here. I do all my accounting on one card and it is less inconvenient to just go elsewhere.

–10! They ruined the dress my mother was to be buried in. I dropped off the dress at La Cumbre Plaza but had to deal with a person at the Bath St. location. I explained the intent of the dress. He was terse, rude and said he required the sales receipt as long as it was less than a year old. Mom had bought this special dress for my daughter’s wedding last July (2013). We did not keep the receipt. I printed off similar dresses by the same «designer» from Macy’s. He would not accept it and told me he could only give me $ 40.00.
My mother is in Hospice, nearing the end. Now the dress that she picked, full of happy memories, will not the one she will be dressed.
Do not take anything precious or fragile to this cleaners. They’ll ruin it.

We went there to get my friend’s pants done and received the finished product back full of bleach stains.
Upon questioning the woman and haggling for a discount, we received a VERY minor discount and zero courtesy in return. The woman blamed the bleach stains on our misuse of the pants, when in reality it’s clear that it was her misuse of bleach. Never coming back here again.

I have used St Paul’s Cleaners for the last 2 years to the tune of probably over $ 200 total, for dress shirt laundering and dry cleaning. I now know that if you have a problem with their service they will blame you and will not make it right!
I had never previously had any issues, but after last visit I was surprised to find tears on 4 of my shirts at the same spot on each shirt’s sleeve ! I brought back 4 shirts to see if there was anything they could do to make it right. Here’s what happened.
* The woman at the counter checked in their computer and confirmed that these shirts matched the description of the last batch I had brought in.
* She got the owner, named Justin.
* He said it was not possible that this happened there. They have processed thousands of shirts and nothing like this has ever happened.
* I told him that 3 of 4 are custom shirts I had made overseas in 2007. I’ve been very careful with them. They fit perfectly and are not replaceable.
* He told me that the tear marks are from my elbow.
* I told him that I’ve had these shirts for six years, and a bunch of other shirts made at the same time, and I’ve never had a tear. Is it really possible that my elbow tore four shirts at the same time?
* He told me that it was time for me to buy new shirts. Shirts are not expected to last six years.
* I tell him I’ll post something on the internet.
* He uses his cellphone to photograph some wear on one of the shirts’ sleeves so that he can prove that these six year old shirts are ready to be thrown away.
I’m pretty shocked that the company I was trusting to take care of my valued shirts and keep them nice for as long as possible would damage them and then tell me that shirts aren’t worth keeping that long! Unbelievable. This is the opposite of customer service.

Love this cleaners. I was in a hurry and went to 1hr and for 2 pieces they quoted me $ 40. so i asked … «what if i wait a couple days?» same $ 40. So i drove the, what, ¼ mile from 1hr upper state to St pauls upper state. ½ the price. the clothes came back NIIIIIICE and no pain to the pocket book. The guy and his wife are really professional. You cant ask for more.

FAIR WARNING: I do not pretend to any objectivity whatever in this review (something on which I do pride myself in generally, along with consummate taste, haha) as this cleaners was the BANE of my existence for years. Thus, this falls more into the category of a retrospective rant about the most incompetent, irritating fluff and fold service in a TOWN full of fluff and fold that sucks. I have nothing good to say about ZipKleen, with whose owner (ten years ago, Glen) I had a real falling out on the phone.
For various reasons, my depression prohibited my doing my own laundry. Now, it’s not as if I have a long history with laundry and I fully acknowledge (and revel in) the JAP-​y (or is it Jappy) side of myself. As I often write, I’m only logistically Jappy. Psychologically, my family system prevented anything like true Jap-​dom because my father was the center of the universe (or the universe itself), which in and of itself prevents a full-​on JAP situation.
But my parents had full-​time help/​nanny situation and I never did my own laundry till college at which point the basement in Bingham was so hot and stuffy and irritating, I promptly found a fluff and fold (Yale’s service was overpriced and not good at the time) in New Haven. My father, 88, has never done a load of laundry in his life. First it was his mother, then the military, then his mother, then his wife, then his mother/​aunt, then housekeepers.
That said, I do know how to do laundry and my first year in Santa Barbara (or maybe 2) I did it in my apartment complex. That became impossible as I hated the neighborhood and going out of the apartment and roaming around the complex depressed me, on top of which there was a Section 8 guy whose elevator didn’t quite reach the top floor and who never changed his yellow polo shirt and Bermuda shorts and reeked of smoke. He depressed me as well so I didn’t do laundry. He didn’t work and roamed around the complex and really did freak me out (plus sometimes he detailed tenant vehicles in the carports so he was ubiquitous).
So in 2003, my dad, seeing the distress my laundry situation was creating in my life agreed to be my general on the laundry front. (I used to have a maid in twice a month and she did it but then I passed my PhD Orals and didn’t have to leave the house so I didn’t until it was time to swim and Silvia’s Cleaning Service, a big outfit in town whose employees drive red compact cars with tons of advertising in white letters, didn’t do night appointments.)
What to say? First of all, they were not reliable with pickup and delivery. Dad orchestrated the whole thing and it was supposed to be a Tuesday/​Friday schedule (I used a ton of towels as Death Gardens, my old apartment, was very hot with afternoon sun beating down on the walls of glass, including a sliding door in the living room, and the noise stressed me out on this official truck route so taking long baths and showers was a source of comfort and serenity for me).
Next problem? BOUNCE. I hate Bounce. I mean I hate it to the point that my skin would crawl and I’d start to cry from the fabric softener which they used like it was going out of style. And they wouldn’t roll back the detergent to a tolerable level. At the time I didn’t know about all the Planet and green products or Tide Free so I couldn’t even buy some and have them pick it up and use it
The final problem? INCINERATOR clothes. They insisted upon putting my clothes in this awful cellophane which made it seem like the clothes had been washed in an incinerator.
Don’t get me started on the price of the dry cleaning which like the rest of overpriced SB is outrageous. Now I go to Ecocleaners which I adore, half the price of St. Paul’s, Ablitt’s (snooty, pretentious, celebrity dry cleaners but without the panache of Brown’s in Santa Monica, on Montana Avenue, crazy expensive but if you have a problem on a designer or couture dress, this is the place to go).
Even still, on the Upper East Side, I save money on cleaning even as compared to Ecocleaners.
Slow, rude, stupid, incompetent.
HOW this cleaners manages to stay in business, much less win AWARDS in the «Best of SB» which the Independent (our Village Voice or LA Weekly) publishes every year is beyond me.
GRRRR