By Timothy Oommen, Owner — Laundini Laundromat | laundinilaundromat.com
This is the post most laundry services don’t write.
Not because it never happens. Because admitting it can happen feels like bad marketing. But I’ve built this blog on transparency and this topic doesn’t get an exception.
Things go wrong sometimes. Here is exactly what we do when they do.
First — How Often Does This Actually Happen
Rarely. But not never.
Across hundreds of orders, the vast majority come back exactly right. The problems that do occur are almost always minor — a fold that wasn’t quite right, a scent preference not honored, a small item separated from its pair. These get resolved with a $5 credit and a note in your profile so it doesn’t happen again.
Serious problems — a lost item, significant damage — are genuinely uncommon. But they exist, and you deserve to know what happens when they do.
The Minor Issues — $5 Credit, No Friction
If something about your order isn’t right — not catastrophically wrong, just not up to the standard we hold ourselves to — reach out. Email info@laundinilaundromat.com or reply to your order confirmation.
You get a $5 credit on your next order. Applied immediately. No interrogation, no lengthy back and forth, no making you prove the thing was wrong.
We’d rather absorb the $5 and keep your trust than argue about it and lose both.
The Serious Issues — Case by Case, Customer First
If something significant goes wrong — an item is missing, something came back damaged in a way that wasn’t there before — here is the actual process:
Step 1 — Contact us immediately. Email info@laundinilaundromat.com with your order details and what’s wrong. Photos if you have them. The sooner we know, the sooner we can investigate.
Step 2 — We investigate. We trace the order through our system — which driver, which location, which machine. We check our facility for missing items. We review the order log. We take it seriously as a process, not as an inconvenience.
Step 3 — We talk to you directly. Not an automated response. A real conversation about what happened and what we can do about it.
Step 4 — We make it right. My single goal in any serious complaint is to make the customer happy and have them come back. That’s not a policy statement — it’s a practical position. A customer we’ve made right is more valuable than the cost of whatever it took to make them right.
For a genuinely catastrophic situation — a lost order, serious damage to something valuable — we discuss a full or partial refund. Every situation is different. Every resolution is handled with the goal of keeping the relationship intact.
What We Won’t Do
We won’t refund because a delivery was late. Late deliveries are frustrating and we work hard to avoid them, but a late delivery is not a damaged or lost item and is handled differently — usually with priority on the next order.
We won’t accept claims for pre-existing damage. If something arrived already worn or damaged and came back the same way, that’s not on us. This is rare — we check items during sorting and flag anything that looks unusual before it goes in a machine.
We won’t be unreachable. If something went wrong with your order, a real person will respond. That’s Sonu. He picks up fast.
The Honest Bottom Line
The $5 credit is what I can stand behind consistently without it breaking the business. A full refund for a genuine disaster is something I’ll do because keeping a customer’s trust is worth more than the order value. Everything in between gets handled with the goal of making you want to come back.
That’s the policy. It’s not complicated. It’s just honest.
Something went wrong with your order? Email info@laundinilaundromat.com. We’ll fix it. Book your next pickup at laundinilaundromat.com.
Timothy Oommen is the founder and owner of Laundini Laundromat, with locations in Evanston, Bucktown, Skokie, Wheeling, and South Shore, Chicago.