Cintas’ faded shirts have cost me $30,000 and my company’s image
Rebecca Morris,
Morris Construction Co,
Harlingen,
Texas
I own a construction company that works with Time Warner Cable and Texas Gas, so our employees are on the road a lot and interact with customers on a daily basis. Our company has been leasing uniforms from Cintas for a year now. We need bright orange shirts for our employees to secure safety when working in highly congested traffic areas. After less than a year with Cintas, instead of bright orange, I seem to have tan shirts.
We need to look professional. If someone comes to your door looking like his shirt was donated from the Salvation Army saying “Ma’am, I’m here to work on your cable,” you’re not gonna let him in. I have lost up to $20,000 in business because my employees are getting written up and sent home for wearing faded, brownish shirts instead of the required bright orange color.
Cintas refuses to replace faded garments
I have complained several times to the company that some uniforms need replacement. Cintas just says they are not responsible if garments fade due to washing, they only replace items due to “normal wear and tear.”
If washing is not “normal wear and tear,” then what is it? Washing the garments is necessary to maintain a clean image when working in the public eye; if washing them is causing the fading, what are we to do, not wash them?
Cintas told me if I want a garment replaced due to fading, I need to pay another $18 for a new one. I already pay $150 each week just to lease the shirts. Our agreement with Cintas is supposed to cover repairs and replacements, but basically, I pay for a Cintas driver to bring an invoice to my office every week and sometimes mend a button or tear. The guys have their wives replace the buttons so they won’t be without a shirt the next day because Cintas takes so long to mend them.
Service problems put my employees out of work
I also have had problems getting a name change on our garments. The company took two weeks with the order and returned half the shirts with different names on the front than on the collar. Some garments were different sizes and some sets were incomplete. The driver took them back, but two weeks later, the order was still incomplete. I have had up to eight employees at a time without uniforms for up to four weeks.
I have spent over $10,000 on replacements
Cintas has cost me at least $10,000 because I have gone out and bought new T-shirts for my 50 employees to replace the old, faded uniforms. In addition, I have had to pay for emblems on those shirts.
Either I pay $13,486 or use faded shirts for four more years
When I tried to cancel service because of these problems, Cintas sent me a buyout letter stating that I would have to pay $13,486.77 for the year-old, faded garments. Because it’s a lease, they say the garments must be returned. When you lease a car, you return it with some resale value, but these shirts wouldn’t sell at a yard sale. You’d have to give them away!
|
