My daughter took their JUST BASIC plan in this year as her dorm, the first time in her high school career, does not have a laundry facility. We had one time dry cleaning request for her precious dress in 2017, which was completely damaged. So we know their quality thus prepared all her clothes do not require any special care and can be damaged.
The price was $729 per year, just wash and hold, no dry cleaning or gentle care included. This was maximum we could afford. Then I realized that E&R charged $107 to my card without sending a bill. We found out they dry cleaned cheap t shirts, jeans, and sweatshirts. We also realized by signing up the Basic Plan they have right to dry clean or gentle care any items at their discretion and charge any extras to your card. You cannot object nor contest. They also told us that since they use extremely high heat for washing and drying, most clothes would be damaged. To avoid this they need to send most items to dry cleaning and gentle care.
Therefore if you can, avoid their service as the quality is very bad. They lost and damaged many. If you really need to take the service, take Look Sharp Plan which includes dry cleaning and gentle care and you don’t need to worry about high extra charges.
Many CC families might not care about the cost but we do. E&R is monopoly in over 50 schools so you can’t have any other choices. I hope schools will make efforts to procure a laundry facility to each dorm so that students can do their own laundry easily and without replying on expensive external vendors. Also I hope schools introduce several competitors for health competition and consumer choices
One of the things we love about our kid’s boarding school is that all students are expected to do their own laundry. The school provides hypoallergenic, environmentally-friendly detergent.
Doesn’t matter whether you grew up in a mansion or subsidized housing, you do your own laundry and muck for your assigned horse. Great preparation for adulting!
@thumper1 Presumably OP is talking about boarding school kid, not college kid. I would never pay for laundry for my college student but my 14 yo away at boarding school, sure. There are no facilities in his dorm, he plays sports so often only has 2-3 hours at most on Saturday or Sunday free, and that’s when the demand for machines is at its highest. I did my older kid’s laundry till college and she is managing it just fine now so I don’t think it is a problem doing the same for the younger one. If they had the machines in the dorm and could do it at night would be another story, but that is not the case.
I agree E&R is far from amazing, but if you have a busy kid and no laundry in the dorm it may be the best option regardless. They seem responsive when I call with issues.
OP posted this thread across multiple forums. I’ve merged them and placed where most relevant. Although, IMO, this topic has been done to death on other threads.
E&R sucks. We never used it however as my kids had machines in their dorm (fee). Many, many stories of E&R ruining clothes. For girls’ clothing that is more delicate, it was a no go. There were also plenty of stories of clothing going missing or showing up in another student’s bag, even someone of the opposite gender, like a guy getting a thong in his laundry. I always wondered if the E&R crew did that out of boredom.
E&R was really the only option for my DS at boarding school. They physically do not provide more than one machine in a dorm and that’s really meant for emergency use. Use of a service is encouraged. It is an added cost for sure. The service has been “fine”. I think only one item lost in the first full year. I can’t complain vs the idea of my DS somehow getting to the in town laundry machines. I understand how that sounds ridiculous to some pending your child’s own campus, but these dorms are not the same as my college experience where doing your own laundry was expected and ample machines provided.
What, guys don’t wear thongs? (Don’t tell me; I don’t really want to know.)
@thumper1: Some of the boarding schools require formal attire and, for guys especially, those jackets/ties/shirts often do require dry cleaning/special care, so having laundry service is almost a necessity at those schools.
When our son was at BS (before Choate had the on-campus laundry options they have today), he opted for E&R one semester and they tried to charge us once for dry cleaning an item that absolutely did not require dry cleaning and gave the same run around the OP describes. I demanded to talk to a manager about requiring ANYTHING he put in his bag to be laundered. Period. I don’t care if he put his cat in there–launder it–NO dry cleaning or special care. Eventually, she admitted that they DO have a waiver form which she e-mailed to me and I returned the same day. No issues from then on, but we never used the service again after that semester.
Looks like it might be time to resurrect one of this forum’s all-time favorite threads:
I feel like I am in a laundry commercial!! OK, so we got sucked into the E&R contract last year because I didn’t listen to you smart parents on CC. By the time Fall Parents weekend rolled around, we were aware that half the kids on campus use a local laundry/dry cleaner with their own drop off & Pick up spot that is even more convenient. THe E&R prices were higher and kiddo ended up doing laundry in the dorm much of the time, anyway.
On another note: I do think it’s a good idea for schools to provide free washers & dryers for students. I think that would also encourage some kids to do their laundry more often.
Like @PrepDad2018, DS doesn’t have a good option on campus (there are some machines but the laundry cards seem unreliable…) plus with a formal dress code 6 days/week, doing his own laundry is possible but not realistic. Our experience with E&R also has been fine. DS says he’ll wash something “important” (I.e. favorite hoodie) himself to avoid loss, but he has hardly mentioned anything disappearing in 3 years. You do have to read the fine print — as with anything else — and I’m sure they have made a bundle off of people buying the regular service and paying per item for dry cleaning.
We used E&R for 13 school years between 4 kids. Actually very little truly damaged or lost clothes. Wouldn’t say we were 100% satisfied, but overall, they did a pretty darn good job for our family.
We are not having the best experience with E&R, but as DS school has formal dress, I felt we needed to do it the first year and then reassess. We get bills every so often for items that are not dry clean. And it’s impossible to get someone on the phone or to get back to your email.
DS is finding he prefers to do his own wash as he doesn’t like to wait a week to get things back, especially workout clothes, so he has only been sending his dress shirts. We took the mid price plan and wash his comforter and dry clean his blazers when he comes home. Our dry cleaner is great about getting it done quickly for us.
Next year we will not be using E&R and I noticed there is a dry cleaner downtown accessible by the campus shuttle. I will go in next time we’re there and see about either setting up an account so my son can bring in blazers and shirts, or I’ll just have my son put it on his debit card. My son has also run the financials and has informed me that with 12 shirts rather than 8 he can easily get by between breaks, and still come out ahead financially. I think he has taken it upon himself to test exactly how many wearings he could get out of a dress shirt before it either disintegrates or stands up on its own. I told my son I’d split the savings with him and he can apply it toward Winterim travel.
