21 reasons NOT to choose a true quality cleaner (short version)

Here are 21 reasons why you should not choose a true quality cleaner:

1. You’re mesmerized by the “sizzle” (the glitzy brochures, technological gizmos and fancy packaging) and have no interest in the “steak” (the quality of the product).
2. You’re willing to accept tired, superlative-laden and jargon-sprinkled cliches as a substitute for specific technical information about processes and craftsmanship employed.
3. You're delighted that your cleaner glues or heat seals bar coded labels onto all your fine garments and household textiles.
4. You don’t own any designer, hi fashion, specialty (garments with trims or embellishments) or couture garments. So you’re not particularly concerned with the process and craftsmanship used to care for your garments.
5. You’re happy to turn a blind eye to the fact that your fine garments are being tossed into a cleaning machine with little or no pre-spotting.
6. You appreciate the fact that your fine garments are being cleaned in a relatively aggressive, dye-stripping dry cleaning solvent such as perchloroethylene (aka perc), synthetic petroleum or formaldehyde dibutyl acetal.
7. You don’t care that your fine garments are being cleaned in a dry cleaning solvent that, in all likelihood, has not been both continuously filtered and purified.
8. You insist that your fine garments be cleaned in a dry cleaning solvent that’s not dermatologically friendly.
9. You’re not averse to wearing garments that smell of dry cleaning solvent and/or other soluble impurities such as food oils, food fats, body oils, creams and lotions.
10. You favor the “washed out look.” So you want your fine garments to fade. The sooner the better.
11. You love the feeling of stiff, scratchy garments against your skin.
12. You prefer fragranced or perfumed garments over odorless garments.
13. You don’t care that your fine garments are machine pressed at a rate of 20 to 40 per hour per presser and not hand ironed as promised.
14. You believe the verbal claim that your sweaters and knits are measured before cleaning and blocked to those measurements after cleaning. And you insist that they provide no proof that the garment was, in fact, blocked.
15. You’re unconcerned that your laundered shirts are brushed, bleached, boiled and baked in 4 to 6 hours.
16. You don’t care that your laundered shirts are machine pressed at a rate of 40 to 50 per hour per presser and not hand ironed as promised.
17. You like your laundered shirts “starched” with cheap synthetic glues.
18. You don’t believe that creases in the sleeves of your laundered shirts is a sign of poor craftsmanship and display an I-pressed-this-shirt-myself-while-watching-TV look.
19. You’re satisfied with a cleaner who stuffs multiple laundered shirts into a single bag (hangered shirts) and who machine folds your laundered shirts into a rumpled mess (folded shirts).
20. You require all your fine garments and household textiles returned in 1 to 3 days. Always. Even if that means compromising and short cutting the quality of care.
21. You believe that quality has no inherent value and that garment care, like sugar and salt, is nothing more than a commodity: all cleaners are the same, the only difference is price.