Kirkland Cleaners

So, an update from my last Unilocal review:
The laundromat is under new ownership, which should make me happier.
Pros — they did purchase all new washing machines, which means a majority of machines are now in working order.
Cons — a good number of dryers are broken. Also, the washing machines are $ 3.25 for a cold/​warm wash, and $ 3.50 for a hot wash. These are NOT large machines. The price has gone up to a point where I am enraged every time I go here. The only time I use this laundromat is if I’m pressed for time and have to stay close to home — I can do one quick load at Kirkland and be on my merry way. But when I have 2+ loads of laundry to do, I drive a mile down the road and use another laundromat in Arlington. (Which, by the way — has older washers but EVERY SINGLE WASHER AND DRYER WORKS and has never been out of order. And also, it’s just so much cheaper per load.)
I’m glad Kirkland got new washers, but jacking the prices up to $ 3.25 per load is aggravating. This isn’t a super wealthy community, and there are a lot of students in the Teele/​Medford area. It just feels like a rip-​off.

The worst experience with dry cleaning I’ve ever had. Needed a suit dry cleaned for a wedding. Put a rush on it (even though they had 2 days to do it). I call to make sure it’s there on the time we agreed and they tell me they don’t know where the suit is. I have to leave for the wedding without the suit. Fine. I ask them to ship it to me at the wedding location. They do but don’t pay the customs fee so I get a call from UPS saying I need to pay the fee for them to deliver my package. $ 60 out of my pocket. The suit jacket is damaged when I take it out of the box. I talk to the owner and she doesn’t reply to texts/​phone calls for several days. Says she talked to the shipping company and that I need to call customs to see if we can reverse the charge. That’s it. I paid $ 60 for the most stressful wedding I’ve ever had.
I should’ve known something was up when I went in to put the order in and their computer was so slow that they had to take my order by hand. This place is a joke and I would NOT trust them with your clothes.

this place has for the most part been serviceable — in large part because there are usually so few patrons. but today almost half the washing machines were out of order, and both coin machines were broken, so there was nothing you could do if you didn’t bring your own quarters. had to go somewhere else — awful experience.

I am so fed up with this business– absolutely the worst-​run laundromat I have ever used. The machines are constantly out of service, and often break in the middle of a load, necessitating extra time to switch machines and re-​wash or re-​dry. I have one day off per week in which to do my laundry, and Kirkland Cleaners has wasted countless hours of my time. Today was the last straw– both change machines were out of service, and when I asked to get quarters at the counter, the cashier simply told me, «No.» When I tried to use their website to submit a complaint, the contact form wouldn’t submit– nobody at this business cares, and they don’t want to hear from you.

Great, convenient location. Friendly staff. And a perfect environment to do your laundry in and relax while it’s being washed.
One warning: NEVER use a front-​loading washing machine from the row opposite the coke machine. The timer says 31 minutes when you start, but it will randomly add time to the wash. Mine went almost twice as long as expected.

The dry cleaning service is horrible. My long coat came back without buttons and parts of the fabric were damaged. I should have paid attention to the Unilocal reviews. It looks like damaged or lost clothing is a common occurrence at Kirkland Cleaners. This is the first and last time I’ll use this place for dry cleaning.

I live in very close proximity to this location of Kirkland Cleaners, so it’s my default place to go. It’s clean inside, which is always nice and I manage to always find open machines. I’ve never used their wash/​dry/​fold service.
Bit of a warning though — there are always MANY out of order machines. And they’ve been that way for a while. It doesn’t seem like any get fixed or updated at all. Some of the working laundry machines may leave some weird streaks on your clothes. These aren’t permanent but kind of annoying, considering you have to wash again to get them out. Also, the driers aren’t consistent on how long you should allow clothes to dry. Also had a drier not get hot at all before which was frustrating.
If you live in the area going to the dry cleaners IN teele sq (forget the name) is a better bet. They are renovating the outside of this particular Kirkland Cleaners and I wish they’d put that money towards fixing and updating the machines instead!

I was a customer of this place for 7 years, laundry and dry cleaning, and the following story is 100% true:
THU Aug 29^th drop off clothes
— Was told I could pick up TUE morning, Sept 3 (MON was a holiday)
TUE Sep 3^rd
— Store supposedly opens at 7:00am, drive across Somerville from Winter Hill and arrive at 7:30 to attempt to pick up clothes, gates are shut
— Call store at 10:45 and ask if my clothes are ready, am informed by the young employee that 2 of my orders are there, and the 3^rd of 3 orders should arrive within 5 minutes. I request confirmation that I can come now and pick up my clothes, she says yes.
— Drive from Andover where I work to Somerville and she says two of my orders are ready, but I will now have to wait until tomorrow to pick up the 3^rd order
— Go to my 1 meeting that I run every week on Tuesdays at 1:00pm in Jeans
WED Sep 4^th
— Due to strict deadlines for my group at work, we have an impromptu meeting from 9:00am-12:00pm where everyone important sits in a room and reviews documents. I am running the meeting, once again, in jeans and a polo.
— Fantasy football draft at 7pm, cutting it too close for me to attempt to pick up clothes after work that day. Girlfriend gets pissed at me during draft, am unable to attempt to pick up pants Wednesday evening.
THU Sep 5^th
— Attempt once again to go to the store in the morning at 7:30, once again gates are up
— Go to store after work and the older Hispanic woman is working and my pants aren’t there. She says it’s with the 3^rd party dry cleaners, Quest Cleaners in I want to say Waltham. I ask if she can call them, she says she can give me the number and I can call them. I tell her I don’t think that is my responsibility, she says she will have another (better English speaking) employee call me. I agree to this since it seems promising, and take the Quest Cleaners number. I also asked her to confirm that my order was in the computer system, and to confirm the quantities in case they tried to delete my order and claim I never dropped it off. 7 pants in the system confirmed.
— Quest Cleaners does not pick up the phone, can not get a person on the line.
FRI Sep 6^th
— Due to us still having a strict deadline (of Monday) for some things in my group at work, we have another impromptu meeting from 9:00am-12:00pm where I am expected to run the meeting, once again, well below company dress code due to not having any pants.
— 8 total hours of me in meetings at work during this week under dress code
— No one calls. I call after work, once again get the older Hispanic lady, and she says that the previous night she watched the employee that she promised would contact me call me twice and told me that I never picked up the phone. This is absolutely false, and my phone records will prove that I was never called from Kirkland Cleaners on the night of THU the 5^th. I said please have her call me ASAP, and told her that I too would be attempting to contact them.
SAT Sep 7^th —
— I am running a race in NH, but before I drive up there I decide to call. No answer.
— I decide to drive by before I go before I as usual, the gates are up.
— At this point I write a note saying that I either want them to find my pants, or concede that they are lost. I write I will begin requesting compensation for my lost pants if they are not found by close of business SAT Sep 7^th, 9 days after I originally dropped off the pants.
— Because at this point I am very irritated, I call the Cambridge location. I get a woman who on the phone seems like she will be very helpful and explain the whole situation. She tells me that she will make some calls, will contact Quest Cleaners on my behalf, and assured me that she would have someone call me. I told her that I was running a race and might not be able to answer during the day, but to please have anyone with information leave a message. No call ever comes.
SUN Sep 8^th
— Football, I take the day off worrying about this.
— No one ever calls
MON Sep 9
— I call at approximately 8:30 and finally get the woman on the phone who I had been promised would call me since Thursday. She says she remembers me dropping off the pants and will look into it for me. I get a call at some point in the afternoon from Kirkland Cleaners that I missed, but when I call back at around 3:30 she says they have the pants and they were at a different location.
— I go to pick up pants after work
— Am literally shocked when she charges me full price, no apology.
— I tell her that I have been a customer for over 5 years, and that if I have to pay full price for this order I am never coming back to the store. She says «I don’t blame you.»
Hopefully you guys won’t come back either. I couldn’t get them to give me the name of a manager, an owner, nor could I even get them to relay my messages to a manager or owner and have someone contact me. Completely unprofessional.

If I could give them zero stars I would. I recently brought a dress to Kirkland Cleaners for dry cleaning and expressed very clearly I would need it back by Thursday. It was a Monday when I was dropping it off, so I said I understand if they couldn’t do it that quickly, and if that was the case to let me know. I also said I would be fine with paying extra to get it rushed, but that it was very important to be cleaned by Friday. They assured me that it would be ready for pick-​up by Thursday morning. There weren’t any stains or anything severely wrong with the garment, it just needed to be cleaned before I wore it to an event because it was very wrinkled. I stopped in Thursday evening and the incredibly rude employee informed me that it wasn’t ready. Apparently they don’t the the dry cleaning there, and the service they used didn’t drop it off that morning as they said they would. She then literally said to me, «There’s nothing I can do, and it’s not my problem.»
When I expressed that I was very upset by this because they assured me it would be brought in time, she just shrugged her shoulders. No apology, no trying to make it up to me, literally not caring at all. So I asked her to call the company to see if they would be bringing by Friday morning and she made it clear she found this request extremely annoying. After huffing and puffing, making a big show out of finding the number to call, she told me they weren’t answering and that maybe it would be on Friday at 9:00am.
She then told me she would call me the next morning when she got in touch with them to find out when the dress would be in as I wanted to take it with me on a 5:30pm train Friday night. I never received a call from them.
This place is fine if you want to do your laundry here, but DO NOT use their dry cleaning service! Incredibly rude, didn’t provide the service they said they would, and caused me to change my dress plans for a major event, and overall inconvenienced and frustrated me.

I’ve only ever used the laundromat here, and in general, it’s a perfectly good place to do your laundry. I’ve never seen more than one or two washers/​dryers out of order at any given time, and the place is always clean and well-​lit. The few times that I’ve interacted with the staff here, they’ve been nothing but friendly and helpful.
There are two reasons why Kirkland Cleaners is only getting three stars from me. First, I can never be sure they’ll be open when I stop by. Because I am what many would consider to be «crazy,» I prefer to my laundry as early as possible in the day. (In addition to quelling my OCD, it saves me the trouble of dealing with the Saturday laundry stampede.) Anyway, on multiple occasions, I’ve shown up at 7 AM with a huge basket of laundry only to find the place locked. The doors are supposed to be set up to unlock automatically at 7, but about 30% of the time, someone forgets to set the timer. This is infuriating when you’ve woken up early on a Saturday specifically to get your laundry out of the way.
The second reason for the three stars is that the change machines seem to be out of order on a near-​weekly basis. This isn’t a problem if you show up during their staffed hours, but if you come by before the staff have arrived or after they’ve left, it can be pretty frustrating.

This is my first review. This place is so bad that I felt moved to write about it. I usually go to this place to do laundry because it’s close to my house. However, there’s another place that’s WAY better (Teele Sq. Laundromat) that I go to when I have more time. It’s well worth it.
Because at Kirkland you can expect:
1) Some of the dryers to not really work
2) For the attendants to take off before the closing time (10 pm), leaving you in there alone
3) For some of the attendants to be incredibly rude
4) Wouldn’t bother everyone, but they play the WORST music in there!
But to #3. I once had an attendant not give me any money back even though my clothes weren’t dry. Today, I had an attendant snap at me and tell me I couldn’t use the dryers I’d already loaded my clothes into because she needed to use it. That would have been ok if she’d been polite. But when I pointed out that it would have been helpful if there were signs on those dryers telling customers not to use them, she read me the riot act about how there were «50 other dryers» free, so I should know better. {!} First of all, there are currently 4 or 5 dryers in there that don’t work! I told her she didn’t need to be rude about it, and she said, «Wasn’t trying to be rude!»
So I took my clothes and put them in the dryers at Teele Sq. Laundromat. And she didn’t say a word. This place BLOWS. Go to Teele Sq.

Here it is I am writing about this place at 530am, as I cannot sleep about this situation. I currently live extremely close to Kirkland Cleaners in Teele, thus consider it quite the convenient place to do laundry and get my dry cleaning needs taken care of. For the most part, it has been. The laundry is clean, and affordable. And I adore the women who work there…
The difficulty comes with the dry cleaning service (provided by Quest Cleaners). I had no problem with this until February of 2012. I left a black suit to be sent out and cleaned… this was on a Saturday (due back on Tuesday), not a problem in the world with this as I have done that before. My suit was lost. It took another three some odd weeks to get something back (this is after being told I would receive a call from the company manager, which never came). I got a suit back, and as soon as I saw it knew there was something wrong… it did not look like the suit I gave to this place nearly a month ago, but I am a happy-​go-​lucky man content to have his suit back. Needless to say the suit was not mine, and too small (I am a 42 and the suit I eventually learned was a 41). I have been in conversations with the company owner (Ed) regarding this issue, and let me say it has not been a pleasurable experience. I have been accused of tampering with the suit tags for my benefit (where they found the sizing information was in the jacket), and for being a dishonest person. There have been a number of promises made to rectify this situation (monetary being one), but the latest being the one I would like to share with Unilocalers… I was asked to meet with the owners seamstress to have the suit jacket taken out, and to receive a credit with the company. I don’t feel this is suitable compensation, as I would never wear this suit that has caused distress, nor knowingly use a business that called me a liar to my face (well over the phone). I honestly have to thank the lord above the suit in question was not the more expensive ones in my collection…(more to come).

I’ve never used the dry cleaning service, but I love the laundromat. Clean and big. Good prices. Machines rarely out of commission. There is almost always an attendant on duty that is straightening up. The only reason I have a star off is because the parking can be tough. There is no lot and it is a more than a block to non metered parking.

I wish that I could give this place no stars.
My friend did some laundry there after her washer died. Her partner left a load of laundry behind in one of the washers — it was full of expensive clothes, including two Christmas presents from me. When she realized that the clothes were still @ Kirkland, she called so that they wouldn’t get thrown away before she could collect them. Then she gets the flu and can’t pick up here clothes for about five days. She called every day to make sure the clothes were still there. She was assured that they were there for her to pick up. When she finally gets there five days later, she is told that the clothes were actually GIVEN AWAY THE DAY AFTER SHE LEFT THEM! Not only is the owner mean spirited but she is a liar. USE THIS PLACE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Horrible customer service. Actually *GAVE AWAY* items that were left behind. (My bf said that he checked and made sure that he got everything, but nobody’s perfect). I called and was told that my items were put aside for me to pick up. I couldn’t get there for a couple of days.
I was assured that they were there, as I called every day to make sure.
When my bf went to pick up my clothes, he was told that *THEY WERE GIVEN AWAY BY THE OWNER* the very day that they were left. BEWARE!

I have been going to Kirkland Cleaners for a while now since it is so convenient to our place, but they are horrible.
My first bad experience came when I rushed to get to the dry cleaners at 4:58 on a Sunday and the doors were locked. I knocked and the girl working slightly opened the door and said «we’re closed.» I then preceded to tell her that it didn’t close for 2 minutes, she said «on my clock it’s 5» and closed the door on me.
My second bad experience came today (Saturday) at 4:15 pm. I came to pick up my pants that had gotten hemmed and dry cleaned (took a week and a half) and brought another pair of pants to be hemmed. However, the seamstress decided to leave early today, which the girl behind the counter she tends to do on Saturdays. I asked what her normal working hrs are and was told M, T, Th, F, S 9 – 5, which if you work (and I do) those are my exact hours. So, looks like I’m going to have to wait a week to bring them there (if she decides to come in), then wait a week and a half to get them back.
I am finally going to give in and look somewhere else. I would not suggest this place at all.

Just wanted to post an update to say that I finally spoke to Dave and, after a bit more back and forth, finally received a check for the lost shirt.
It’s frustrating that it took two months to figure this out, but I do give them credit for finally coming through. And, again, Nancy was extremely helpful and sympathetic throughout the whole process. While I still won’t ever step foot in Kirkland Cleaners again, kudos to her for excellent customer service.

I’m going through a divorce, and my wife got custody of my washer & dryer (along with my house and tomato plants). The place I’m renting is just around the corner from Kirkland Cleaners. I would have gotten divorced a long time ago if I’d known about it earlier. Fear of doing my own laundry was pretty much the only reason I stayed in that failed marriage for as long as I did.
The wonder woman (Nancy?) who runs the place, & the house elves who must work for her, washed, dried, folded, and packaged a bag of my clothes, as well as clothes my kids left lying around, for less than I would have spent on bad takeout chinese.
Now, thanks to Kirkland cleaners, the time I save can be devoted to writing entries on Unilocal and to earning wages I will pass along to lawyers — the place where all good money goes to die.
Oh and one more thing. After I picked up my load, Nancy came running out into traffic to return a wad of cash that must have floated out of my jeans pocket in the wash, and that the lawyers must somehow have overlooked.

This business is a laundromat and dry cleaning service.
Pros: The facilities are the cleanest and most reliable I’ve ever seen in a laundromat before. I tend not to expect much, but I almost enjoyed doing my laundry here. They’re a tad more expensive than other places I’ve been, but the difference seems insignificant. Also, the staff is exceedingly friendly.
Cons: I would be careful of this place’s dry cleaning service. I left a rather large order (a lot of dress shirts and some nice pants) and received all the shirts back at one time (this was yesterday), but I’m still waiting on the pants (the order went in 5 days ago). They seem concerned enough about customer satisfaction that they’ll make sure I get them back, but at the end of the day, I just don’t want to buy new pants. period. My shirts are beautiful, so the quality is not a problem, it’s just the waiting that’s a killer. You’re better off bringing your dry cleaning to a place that does more volume than here in my opinion.
Bottom Line: Great for everyday laundry! Spotty on the dry cleaning.

I don’t normally get verclempt speaking about laundry, but these guys are absolutely wonderful. We used KC recently & will be their customers as long as we’re in the area. Everything was very clean, organized & neatly folded &/​or hung on hangers. I often wonder why I waste so much time on laundry & now realize I have the perfect excuse not to do it. For $ 1.15/lb, it’s well worth it!
Btw, even doing laundry @ home & folding straight away, the quality pales in comparison to KC’s magic touch. It looked liked they ironed everything.
Keep up the wonderful work Kirkland Cleaners!