Great American Cleaners

I told the owners of the store I’d give them a review a while ago, but I’ve put it off until now! Sorry! But I’ve really gotta commend this place on the excellent and quality service they offer.
The couple that works here are very friendly towards customers and they offer excellent service. I had to get a suit jacket altered, and they did everything I wanted them to do very well and for an affordable price. I’d highly recommend this place!

This place ruined 4 pair of my wife’s pants. Would not take care of the issue. strung us out for months. I would never use this company again. stay away from this business at all costs.

These folks are just amazing. This is the kind of business you see in old movies, idealized small towns, fantasies of communities built on trust and symbiotic, genuine concern. They put their customers first and trust that your good word is as reliable as theirs.
Their absolute devotion to their customers is plain. This is worth four stars to me alone.
Add on to that that they offer delivery and pick up service, that their prices are more than reasonable and I’m determined that I’ll never go anywhere else for dry cleaning as long as I live within 50 miles. I am so impressed with this business that I’ve even started to buy more dry clean only apparel — because its not a hassle or hurdle anymore.

I am not a tall person and need shirts and pants/​jeans altered constantly. Every city I move to (Hayward, Alameda, Emeryville, Richmond) the challenge has always been finding a cleaners who is also good at sewing. Most times, one is better than the other and not both. This place does both very well. Not a lot of reviews say anything about alterations and thought this needed to be said. Anyway, great cleaners.

Great service. Got my Christmas pants altered and I was pleased with the overall job. The staff was courteous and helpful and took proper measurements. My pants was done earlier than expected. Thanks again! Won my 4^th Christmas outfit contest

The staff at Great American Dry Cleaners were friendly and accommodating. The clothes were cleaned professionally and pressed to my satisfaction. I received confirmation via email when my clothes were ready and how much the bill would be; this was extremely helpful since I was out of town at the time. When calling the staff were friendly and were able to take my payment over the phone and then delivered my clothes to the Hotel I was staying at. I would firmly recommend Great American Dry Cleaners to anyone looking for a long-​term company for all your dry cleaning needs. You won’t be disappointed.

Hello,
I am writing to tell about my experience so hopefully other people won’t have to experience it.
I had wash and fold service in addition to dry cleaning service. It was $ 94 total. My fiancé and I had a large amount of laundry so I expected it to be expensive.
We drove to El Cerrito from Berkeley to pick up the service. We had two large bags full of laundry and our dry cleaning. When we got home and were unpacking our clothes, we opened one of the bags and found that the bag was full of SOME ONE ELSE’S CLOTHES! Great American Cleaners had NO IDEA that we had additional clothes or WHO they belonged too. This is very concerning. I certainly do not want my clothes to end up in just anyone’s hands. We immediately called the business and they drove and picked up the clothes.
Our wash and fold service was fine but our dry cleaning service was horrendous. One white Cal polo was turned pink. The owner picked up the polo with the misplaced laundry. He assured me that he would fix the polo and have it delivered back to our apartment in Berkeley. The owner emailed me a week later informing me that the shirt was ready to be picked up. Considering El Cerrito is 30 minutes from where we live and the owner messed up our shirt, I figured he would make it right by delivering it to our apartment like he said he would. I emailed him back and asked if this would be an option, to which he replied that they don’t offer delivery in Berkeley.
We had to drive another 30 minutes to pick up a shirt that the owner turned PINK!
A week later, we found a very very nice Polo had a HUGE HOLE ripped in the back.
So in SHORT I PAID $ 94 for: A ruined white polo that was died pink, a $ 60 polo that was RUINED by ripping a huge hole in the back and getting someone else’s laundry.
In the 2 month long time period that this lasted, never once did the owner offer to make this right. He ruined two different shirts and never once even apologized.

I was initially pleased by the idea of a drycleaning service that picked up and dropped off my clothing. So convenient, right? I’ve been a customer for over 2 years now and although I’ve been patient with their mistakes and granting them the benefit of the doubt, I’m done with this place for good.
I have to wonder what kind of management or type of people actually work here because the mistakes are so frequent and simple to avoid… I mean, this is not rocket science.
Yet:
(1) It took nearly 2 years for them to drop off my items at the correct location, not my neighbors’ house, despite detailed instructions and leaving the laundry hook outside on my door to indicate where to hang my laundry.
(2) They failed to do the hemming on a dress. (Owner said I should have included a note with my drop off instead of an email; however, prior experience has shown that no one really reads my instructions anyway and I wanted a record of my instructions via email instead of the note which would be tossed and then I have no proof of what I dropped off and what the instructions were.)
(3) Picked up my items really late one time, which isn’t a problem, just no communication that they were running behind, so given my past dealings with this business, I’d concluded that they skipped my pick up.
And, they’re rather pricey for all this hassle.
Owner offered to «make it right» with this final straw of effing things up, but I really can’t be bothered with this.
Long & short of it: probably nice people, but utterly incompetent and mismanaged business.
Not worth it.

Been here a few times. Compared to other dry cleaning services around the area I feel Great American actually cleans my clothes. They are all about the planet by making available for purchase reusable bags. The delivery and pick up is for no extra charge.
Staff and Owners have a try to please attitude. They send emails with specials, send an email when your clothes are ready for pick up.
My new choice for dry cleaning. Keep it up guys.

Great service, speedy turnaround. Best overall experience, hands down.
I needed my pants hemmed and my suit jacket altered for a wedding on Saturday. Paula gave great suggestions and offered to rush the alterations at no additional cost just to make sure I would have the suit by Thursday. I brought in my suit on Tuesday morning and it was ready for pickup by Wednesday evening.
When the pants came back, they were still a little long for my taste so I asked if they could be adjusted again. Paula put another rush on the pants and I got them back Thursday night.
The suit fits great and I was able to get them well before the wedding at a reasonable price. Thank you, Paula and Great American Cleaners!

Ankit and Rachana are so wonderful! Their team as well! I took my bridesmaids dress in to get the length taken in because the wedding is in dirt and dragging would have been a problem.
I took my dress in the first time and turned out too long still. I took it in 30 min later and they got it done in 30 min and were very understanding! They are good at their job and I will be going back!

For the tldr crew, this place is great.
I had a mishap with hemming a bridesmaid dress elsewhere, and searched my local options for a tailor who does: 1. Great work, and 2. Quick turnaround. I brought the dress in on Monday for a wedding (200+ miles away) the following Sunday. Great American Cleaners were able to fix the issue, make it look better than the original, all before Thursday morning. No worrying about getting the dress last minute before booking it up to the venue! They saved so much stress!
Folks were friendly, price was great, and I’m incredibly thankful to have this place in the community.

I brought in my dress to have it cleaned & they gave it back dirty. They said I stained the dress when I never even worn it before. Said they washed it 3 times & couldn’t get it clean. But offered to do it again free of charge. Does that make sense? You wash it, say you did the best you could, then offer to was it again. I did the Unilocal ad & paid $ 5 in advance, they didn’t give my money back & wanted another $ 1.50. Just WOW!

Open the door sit in the seat turn the key and go!
This is my experience — I submitted two pants for alterations, good results, friendly ladies with good customer service, fast return– and free candy at the counter. I highly recommend Great American Cleaners, I will return to their service.

This place goes above and beyond to make sure that their customers are happy.
Here’s my experience:
I came in on a Friday to get two pants altered. I told them that I needed the alternation done by Monday evening since I was leaving town Tuesday morning. They did not have an issue with the short time frame and told me that they could have the pants ready by then.
I returned Monday evening and the lady at the front looked at the alterations before taking my payment. We both noticed that only one of the pants were altered. She told me that she can have the pants done by Tuesday. I told her that the lady who took in my pants promised me that the pants would be ready by Monday evening.
She spoke with her coworker and a gentleman came out from the back. I’m assuming he was the owner? He offered to alter my pants on the spot if I did not mind waiting. I waited no more than 10 minutes and my pants were ready.
As I was getting ready to pay they told me that the service was on the house. I insisted on paying but they did not want to take my payment. I am very satisfied not only with the alteration but most importantly with their excellent customer service. I will definitely be coming back.
I highly recommend this place for alterations.

Ankit and Rachana took on this business after the previous owners retired maybe a couple of years back now (?) and they simply bend over backwards to provide outstanding, prompt, reasonable, friendly service. What’s more, they’ve added new features to the business: pickup and delivery (free, apparently), as well as emails notifying their customers when their orders are ready. I’ve had nothing but truly excellent experience with them.
I’ve read some of these negative Unilocal reviews, and am bewildered. It IS impossible to please everybody, of course, and these reviews are proof of that truth. It’s the only explanation I can come up with for them. These are the most dedicated dry cleaners I’ve ever dealt with in a lifetime of interacting with service providers. They even have it in my records that I don’t want plastic protective material over my orders. (I just don’t want to waste material that I don’t need, so I don’t take the plastic or the hangers, or even the tissue paper – and they recycle all that, which is perfect.)
Try ‘em! You’ll love ‘em!

Ok I orig. did my review before checking my coat. So I ate my words. This place is good. They replaced my zipper and hemmed slits onto my maxi dress. I will be returning here provided they communicate better in the future. The price was fair for both items.

They tried to overcharge me and I had to be on my toes. Other than that, they are friendly and social media aware.

So, there IS something wrong with this place. I didn’t realize until I went to put on one of my shirts, but Great American cleaners permanently attaches (iron-​on, from the looks of it) a bar code sticker to the underside of the tags of your clothing. I did not take a picture of the barcode itself because I took all 6 pieces back to have them removed in a fury but now, where they have been removed, I’m left with glue spots.
They are small, concealed, and most people probably never notice they’re there. However, it doesn’t matter how good you think your reasons are, or how concealed it is, you do not have the authority to permanently alter peoples’ clothing IN ANY WAY without their permission.
If you believe this method of identification to be superior to other methods, that’s fine– then ask your new customers if they are okay with it before they hand over their clothes to you. Asking each new customer once doesn’t require much effort or time and most people probably won’t mind. However, when you don’t ask permission, it’s absolutely not okay for you to permanently tag my clothing with your company’s stickers.

I went to Great American Cleaners to get a formal dress (that was ruined by another place) fixed. They did an AMAZING job. When I got the dress back from the first place, the hem was uneven, the thread was turquoise when my dress was green, the straps were folded and sewed instead of cut and sewed, and the stitches were uneven. It was the worst job ever, and I didn’t think it could be fixed.
I brought the ruined dress into Great American Cleaners, and they were very professional. The lady fixed everything. It looked like a whole new dress! I was so happy with the work and highly recommend you bring any alterations to this place. My dress was not easy to alter and not only did they fix the dress and reverse the damage that was done, but they also did it in only TWO DAYS! This place is really amazing at what they do! Check out my pictures of the before and after!
Also, when I went to pick up the dress, I came two minutes after they closed and the lady that fixed my dress was already walking to her car. I waved her down and she was nice enough to open up the store to give me my dress. I am so grateful and cannot thank them enough. This is the place I will take all my alterations to from now on and you should too!!!