el crispito

I know. It's one of the biggest scams in the hospitality industry, just below the telephone charges and right above the minibar prices, so we should not be all that surprised. I admit, I was livid about the fact that it cost MXN $50 (currently USD $4.60) to wash a single pair of socks, but at least I knew about that in advance and begrudginly agreed. We didn't have enough time to wash the clothes ourselves, let along track down a do-it-yourself laundromat, so it was actually the most efficient thing to do in that case, pay rates like MXN $50 for one pair of socks and have it all taken care of for us.

When I dropped the clothes off at the front desk, I verified that the shirt types were properly indicated on the little form that you turn in with the laundry. I complained at that point about paying MXN $50 for a pair of socks, but the kid at the counter went over it alll with me and verified my markings and calculations. The grand total was MXN $930 (USD $85.52 at the time of this writting). I thought that was ridiculously steep for washing the amont of clothes that would fit in a small grocery bag, but even though it might have been a little more expensive to have them cleaned than to replace all of the clothes with brand-new versions, figuring in the time and cost of driving around to buy those new verisions made it a slightly better deal.

When we checked out though, it appeared that we had two charges from the lavandería on our bil. Instead of just one itemized charge from them, there were two. I asked them to clarify, and they had me wait while they pulled out the itemized bill. The order form, where one marks down the number of various things, looked like it did when I signed it and turned it over to the frond desk staff, but with a few additional marks. They were marks in the dry cleaning column, and I knew that none of the stuff I'd put in to have cleaned needed to be dry cleaned. The people doing the laundry didn't seem to agree though, and they decided for us that our shirts all had to be dry cleaned. They didn't bother to verify it with us first though, so we ended up with a bunch of shirts that cost twice as much to be cleaned as they should have.

I contested this with the front desk clerk, and he apologized, but was clearly not going to do anything about it. If we'd not been in a hurry with a lot to do today, I would have insisted on waiting to see a manager and taken it up with them. Again, it wasn't enough to cause us to raise a stink about it, and perhaps that is why that happened. I'm going to try to follow up and chew them out, but there will probably be no compensation for me. All I can do is to warn people to be CAREFUL in using the laundry serice at Condesa df.

We found out the day after we turned in our laundry that there is a laundromat just down the street. Go figure.