Capitol Cleaners and Tailors

Took a very expensive pair of suit pants in for dry cleaning and 3 belt loops came back destroyed, unrepairable. Very disappointed.

Awesome!
Been going here for over a year now and they are on it. Best day to go is wed when its super cheap to wash shirts. The staff is super friendly and outgoing, and they havent yelled at me once for leaving shirts there for over two weeks.
They do a great job and wouldnt go anywhere else!

Capitol Cleaners on South First.
Date: 02÷25÷15
Time: 9:00 AM
Customer for 5 years, as least $ 900 annual revenue.
A staff member who collects and retrieves dry cleaning berated me in front of customers when I asked if the laundry shirt special applies today for my clothes dropped off yesterday after 9 AM but not cleaned or ready until 5PM today. It’s a logical and legitimate question. Frankly, I was half joking, but she was extremely rude and accusatory in her response, that I never want to return to the store again and will find another cleaner. Life is too short to have someone get red in the face and yell at you over dry cleaning. And for what! A few cents off the dollar per shirt! A simple response of «nice dry, but our policy for discounts is only on the day clothes are dropped off» would have ended the conversation. There are plenty of dry cleaning businesses that would love my business. Time to find another one.

Awful! We used them for the first time last week and one suit came back with 4 missing buttons. It was crazy. I’ve never had this happen before. The button on the pants was missing. The buttons on both arms of the coat were broken and the button on the front of the coat was replaced with a cheap brown button. They didn’t even tell us that they replaced it. They just added a brown marbled button on a black suit coat. Stay away!

Great place to get your clothes dry cleaned and taken care of. The super friendly staff knows and will take care of all your clothes cleaning needs. If you bring your clothes in the early morning they might be able to have it done by that afternoon at no extra charge. You will not be disappointing on the service you will receive here.

I handmade my friend’s wedding dress out of silk charmeuse. Unfortunately, a mishap with a leaky iron caused water to spill on the silk and stain it. Drat! No problem, such stains are not permanent and are easily washed out with — guess — water! Simple fix, and the dress needed to be cleaned anyway. Considering the delicate material, I recommended that she take it to a professional cleaning service to ensure that the dress was taken care of rather than risk washing by hand. She took it to Capitol cleaners days before the wedding.
Sadly, it turned into an ordeal. The cleaners chemically cleaned the dress without treating the stains first. When returning the dress, they accused my friend of lying that it was just water, saying that it had to be blood or something. What? They essentially blamed her for their inability to properly clean the dress. She begged them to re-​treat it, going so far as to show them online via a simple Google search that the stains were NOT permanent and would come out with a simple rinsing in water. They asked for permission to do the rinsing and did, finally, get the dress clean.
I was pretty shocked that professional cleaners would be so clueless as to how to handle silk and stains on silk. The dry cleaning dulled the silk’s sheen, but that was considered acceptable. But the pressing of the dress was horrible! I literally spent several hours — several — repressing the dress (with a completely dry and working iron this time — lesson learned). The skirt was a flowing, full skirt, with a band for trim on the hem. Obviously, someone was either lazy or didn’t know how to handle curved seams and just ran the iron over it without caring about the shape. Hence, crease after crease after crease. Not only that, but there were popped seams as well. We were scared it was ruined. After a full day dedicated to fixing it, the dress was repressed, clean, and repaired. It looked beautiful on her.
If I had known it would cause that much hassle, pain, and panic on top of nearly ruining the dress, I would have just cleaned it myself. I had thought it would save time and worry, but it turned into the opposite. I recognize this was perhaps an extreme case because it was a wedding dress made out of incredibly delicate silk. Still, I just can’t recommend them if you plan to clean similar fabrics.

Reasonable Price. On Time Service. Friendly Staff.
I don’t need anything else from my local dry cleaners.

Sadly, service has gone way downhill over the past year. I can tell as they’ve gotten busier, they’ve hired new people, because I see a lot of new employees in there.
Unfortunately, along with the new staff has come dour, unfriendly attitudes and a lack of knowledge that had been there for years.
Ken had waited on me for several years and always greeted me by name. He knew how I liked things done and had knowledge of recommended drycleaning or laundry.
However, today was the last straw. I walked in and a new blonde girl didn’t look up, didn’t smile, just grumped «Last Name?». I said to her «Hello, how are you?», and she replied «Last Name?!». I told her there were three drycleaners within a mile and I would be taking my business elsewhere.
I found a friendly owner-​operated drycleaner at 914 W Mary around the corner who smiled and took good care of me, and I will not be back to Capitol Cleaners.

As a new customer, I had 10 business shirts laundered. 5 were mis-​pressed and could not be worn without repressing. This happened both times I used this cleaners. I won’t return.

For two months I passed by Capitol Cleaners on my way to work. When I finally had a pile of ‘dry clean only’ items that needed to be taken to a cleaners, I figured this would be my best bet since it was on my daily commute.
I should have done a little more research before taking 9 shirts and 2 dresses here. With 4.5 stars on Unilocal,I thought I could trust this business with my clothes, I was wrong.
3 of the shirts came back with rips, designs that were once sewn on were now hanging off and my wallet was empty.
When I called to complain, they insisted that it hadn’t had those rips/​tears when I took it in. I DON’T THINK SO.
Anyway, I’m not in the mood to really fight them for my money back or a shirt that can’t be replaced but this is a warning for all of you Unilocalers to not take anything here that you can’t replace or don’t want ruined… which should mean you should stray away from Capitol Cleaners.

Truly horrible. Used them several times due to location but never again. Consistently wrinkled shirts and slacks.

So this is a shout out to Ashley, specifically!
This is a WONDERFUL place though.
My jeans had a zipper that malfunctioned. Not like Janet Jackson style at the Superbowl, more like a problem that Justin Timberlake might have had, lol.
I checked around at least seven places in hopes of fixing my favorite seven jeans…
This place was the winner!
It was $ 16.95 to replace the zipper. They had to send off the jeans for about a week. They were excellent with communication and follow up throughout the process, which meant a lot to me.
Keep up the stellar work, Ashley, and the whole team there is super cool.
We all have busy lives, and this place is trustworthy with your items.
In the words of Sugar Brown, when it comes to the hassle of finding a great place, «ain’t nobody got tiiiiime for that!»
So try this place out! You will be glad that you did!

Cheap and good — a rarity in Austin. ‘Nuf said.

Sure, this company has 5 different locations, but BIGGER ISN’T NECESSARILY BETTER! (McDonald’s has 5,000 locations, but would you want to eat there?)
I brought in one of my favorite & most expensive velvet sportjackets to be dry cleaned here, and it came back STIFF AS A BOARD. You could literally go SURFBOARDING on my sportjacket… just add wax and take it out to the ocean!
I never asked for any starch in my sportjacket; I have never even HEARD of adding starch to a sportjacket before! So I called the company and the woman said, «Sorry, yeah, we’ve been getting a lot of complaints about that lately… it has to do with one of the chemicals in the dry cleaning machine, we think we put too much in so it makes things stiff. Your sportjacket might be ruined… if so, we’ll reimburse you for it.»
So apparently, this company has been in business since 1980, but they still don’t know the right level of chemicals to put into the dry cleaning machine? And multiple people are complaining about this problem, but they haven’t fixed it yet? And these chemicals are at high enough levels to RUIN my sportjacket?
I wanted a clean sportjacket… not reimbursement for a sportjacket that can no longer be purchased anymore. However, they get 1 additional star for at least giving me the lip service of reimbursement… I have no idea how that would hold up if I went into the store to demand a reimbursement.
Needless to say, I would never go back here again. So now I’m going to drive much further away to go to a different dry cleaners (Royal Touch Delwood Cleaners on 38 ½ Street), and I will keep the Unilocal community posted on my experiences there.

Since moving to Austin from NY I had yet to find a dry cleaner with solid reviews on Unilocal.Capitol was the exception and after bringing a huge pile of men’s shirts, dress pants, formal dresses, silk shirts and cashmere sweaters in, I can see why! Excellent service, fast and reasonably priced… especially with the weekly specials. I highly recommend Capitol Cleaners!

I had a great experience here! Dropped off a bunch of shirts to get laundered and pressed on a Wednesday because they have a special rate that day. Came to pick up my shirts the next day and they were nicely cleaned and starched, and in individual plastic bags. Very satisfied with the service!

They are fantastic. I work for a non-​profit group that supports local children and they are always needing their clothes cleaned. We generally need a pretty quick turn around and Capitol is always there to make it happen. They are reasonable and friendly. I know the owners and they are just always such great people. They also do charity work in the community. Some of the children’s clothes are very old and they have them looking like new in no time!

I’m very impressed and pleased with Capitol Cleaners. I brought in five cashmere and wool sweaters for dry cleaning (never wash these at home– they’ll shrink a size or more!), and two days later picked up my items. Everything was folded nicely, the inside of the folds separated with tissue paper, all hung on hangers for getting it home.
My only complaint is the smell that was on my clothing after I left. It was odd, like White Diamonds or some old lady smell. Not horrible, and definitely something that my drawer sachets will correct, but not desirable, either.
They were, however, more than $ 2 cheaper per garment than Reid’s, and in my opinion, friendlier. I’ve now heard that they do inexpensive alterations as well, so I’m sure I’ll be back for some jeans to be hemmed in the future.

Capitol Cleaners isn’t perfect, but with the closing of Washburn’s and both of the cleaners on South Lamar near Barton Skyway, it’s one of the dwindling number left remaining in ’04, and in my opinion it’s the best of the bunch. I appreciate the fact that they hired some of the Washburn’s folks after they lost their lease after decades in business. Unlike, say, Jack Brown, Capitol doesn’t manage to break at least one shirt button every other visit.
I do concur with the comment about clothes coming back overly stiff. I haven’t had that problem with shirts, but my cotton khakis have come back literally stiff as a board.

I’ve taken two things here: a dress and a pair of jeans.
My experience went something like this: When I called for pricing on Monday, the lady told me that dry cleaning for regular dresses is $ 9.50, but they’re only $ 7.50 on Tuesdays. She suggested I wait until Tuesday for the cheaper price. So I did.
On Tuesday, as I waited for them to add me to the system, I looked toward the back of the store and found a lady waving and smiling at me all friendly-​like. I waved at her and wondered if I knew her, then realized that’s just her way of making people feel welcome. Mission accomplished. My dress was ready the next day after 5 p.m. When I went to get it, the same friendly, waving lady brought me my dress and commented on how pretty it was. (Ego boost, as I’m not a dress wearer, and I certainly don’t have an eye for dress fashion.)
I asked her about the broken zipper on my jeans (that I’d conveniently brought with me). She said they could replace it, but the issue is the cost. It’s about $ 17 for a new zipper, «so you’ll have to decide how much you like your jeans.» I sat there debating aloud. «That’s what I paid for them, but they’re my FAVORITE jeans. I guess I could just say goodbye to them. But they’re my FAVORITE jeans …» She just stood there and offered sympathetic statements about finding the right ones and sticking with them. Looking back, it was kind of like therapy.
In the end, I opted to replace the zipper. She told me it’d take about a week, but to call a few days early because they’d probably be done much sooner. They were. My only very slight hesitation is that the pull tab on the new zipper is much bigger than the original, but it’s not noticeable when I’m wearing the jeans, so it’s really not an issue.
The lady was right: There’s nothing like finding the right pair of jeans. And all in all, there’s nothing like finding the right dry cleaner/​alteration shop, either.