Hey, it happens. You have a couple of friends over, Settlers of Catan gets heated, someone spills red wine on your best white tee. A regular wash just won't hack it, so you have to send it for dry cleaning. But where?
To find out, we absolutely decimated ten 39.99rmb V-neck t-shirts from H&M, using a bottle of the cheapest red we could find at Family Mart. Then we left the t-shirts to fester for like a week because who has the time to organize laundry these days? You dump it in a plastic bag on the windowsill and keep putting it off and putting it off…
Then we got in touch with ten dry cleaning companies to pick the t-shirts up and do what they could with them.
Their judgement was palpable.
So how did they all come out looking?
Like this. They all came out like this. Turns out that any one of these companies can absolutely flawlessly remove a serious red wine stain. In retrospect, I should perhaps have used a differently colored shirt so that they couldn't just bleach the sucker. The take-away is that unless you're dealing with something very specific or very delicate, or you manage to book a particularly crap service, any laundry service in Shanghai will basically do what you need.
If we can't judge them on the quality of their work, we can judge them on speed, quality of service, how easy it was to organize pick-up and delivery, and price. All payment was done by private transfer on WeChat unless otherwise stated.
Easy Life Laundry</1>
Easy Life has been around since 2012, with a location on Lanxi Lu. You can order through the well put-together English-language website (it has discounts for first-time users), but I just added their WeChat and it was even easier than filling in a form. I told fluent English speaking rep on the other side what I needed washed, agreed to the minimum price, gave them a pick-up address.
Their courier arrived within 30 minutes, and they had the shirt back to me, crisp and white as the driven snow in a branded garment protector by the next day.
Price: 100rmb. Dry-cleaning a t-shirt costs 20rmb and there's a 38rmb delivery charge for loads less than 300rmb, but there's an unwritten "minimum 100rmb" spend for pick-up.
Josephine Laundry</1>
Josephine Laundry is a chain with about a dozen locations. They don't seem to have much of an official portal to organize things, so we just added the phone number on WeChat and spoke there. Tencent's translate feature came in handy, as the staff at Gongping Lu didn't speak English.
Service is a little more rough-and-ready: unlike most other places, they asked us to arrange the delivery to their location using SF Express or Shansong. Here's how to Shansong/SF something. They said they had a minimum ten item load but also didn't complain when I said I just wanted to wash a single t-shirt. They assessed the damage after, quoted me a price, and had it back to me five days later, though I did have to prompt them to send it back to me.
Price: Cheap as hell! 16rmb to fix that t-shirt... plus the 58rmb (29rmb both ways) courier fee to send and have it delivered. If you have one close to you, this is your economy option.
Uclean Laundry</1>
Uclean Laundry is smallish chain with nine locations. They have a WeChat official account and a Weidian store that you can order through, but I recommend just adding their phone number and contacting them directly on WeChat. It's faster and it doesn't require you to navigate all-Chinese menus.
Dry cleaning takes a week: they arrange the Shansong or SF themselves to come at a specific time, and they had the t-shirt back to me exactly six days and fifteen minutes later.
Price: The service cost me 49rmb sending to their Xizang Bei Lu location, and they didn't charge me for their delivery. That's the third cheapest option on this list (second if you include the delivery fee for Josephine).
Laundry Town</1>
Laundry Town is an Asia-wide, online-only laundry service, with locations in Beijing, Shanghai, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and Taipei. Everything is handled via a pretty slick and professional English-language website; they even send you an invoice to your email, and you can pay using credit card or PayPal.
Dry-cleaning turn-around was three days in my case, and delivery was handled by SF Express. I also connected with them on WeChat, and I was added into a group chat with their delivery manager so I could arrange drop-off at a different address on a Sunday. They either spoke English or were very adept with a translator app, so that was a nice touch.
Price: Price for dry cleaning is advertised as 30rmb per piece, and a flat 20rmb pick-up and 20rmb delivery fee: it came to 70rmb in total.
Wash Me</1>
Wash Me is a city-wide laundry franchise with 20-odd outlets, doing their washing in-store. The one on Shaanxi Bei Lu, which I reached out to, was a bit of a hassle: their WeChat account couldn't be added for some reason, and a call to their land-line resulted in a bit of moaning and complaining before I finally got a friend request from the shop manager.
They didn't speak English and seemed to like sending voice messages, but we managed to communicate. Threw in a couple of stickers and it felt chummy, even! They arranged pick-up via Shansong, and had the shirt back to me within six days, though I suspect it took that long because it fell over Dragon Boat Holiday.
Price: A bit pricy at 88rmb. Dry cleaning a t-shirt is normally 68rmb, plus 20rmb for the delivery and the pick-up. However, they gave me a 10% rebate as a first time customer, so I only paid 78rmb in the end. I've almost forgiven them for sending me voice messages.
Oookay</1>
Laundry service chain with more than 30 locations, Oookay (or Haodi in Chinese) was the only service I ended up doing entirely without adding someone's personal WeChat. Their mini-program is all in Chinese but it's pretty easy to navigate. Get a Chinese speaker to help you out the first time. Pick-up and delivery is handled by SF Express.
Cleaning is handled at a facility in Changzhou, and you can track the process on the SF mini-program. In my case it took four days to get the shirt back.
Price: 40rmb! That's it! No cost from delivery, nothing, just a flat rate of 40rmb to take my t-shirt, ship it to another city, dry clean it and then ship it back. Oookay got the closest of any of these places to just charging the cost of a new shirt.
Fornet</1>
The second biggest chain in Shanghai according to Dianping, after UCC, Fornet Laundry has over a hundred locations.
I added the phone number on WeChat and the (non-English speaking) store manager at Jianguo Dong Lu arranged the pick-up for me: minimum three items required, so I threw in a dish towel and a black sweatshirt covered in cat fur. They do their own pick-up and drop-off, carrying branded closet protectors.
Turn-around was a speedy three days. Incidentally, the black sweatshirt came out pristine too.
Price: 84rmb (for three items, being the minimum load). Not the cheapest, not the most expensive. Solid middle-of-the-line option, good because they probably have a store near you.
UCC International Laundry</1>
UCC International Laundry on Wuding Lu, part of a franchise with apparently 300 stores around town. They say their price is 38rmb for a regular wash, or 76rmb for more intensive cases. Me, I got charged 280rmb to dry clean a t-shirt. Oof. Ouch.
At least they waived the delivery fee, because the store manager came to pick it up and drop it off in person.
Price: It might not normally be this exorbitant, but this was my experience.
Wash Club</1>
This one's a bit of a mystery: there's no Dianping page that I can find, and the website we have on our listing, dating from 2017, is dead. The phone number works though: you'll have to arrange pick-up and delivery via a personal WeChat. The address listed is their office, not their washing location, so don't try and drop in.
It seems like a small operation. But hey, they do pick-up and delivery, and that's what we're here for! I'm not even sure where they do their work, but considering the turnaround, at least it's probably in Shanghai.
Price: In total, it came to 70rmb: 20rmb for a regular t-shirt, 30rmb pick-up and delivery, and 20rmb for the sheer horror I had inflicted with the red wine. That's decently priced. Communication on WeChat was especially attentive, friendly and English-speaking.
Wuyuan Lu Lady</1>
Okay, this one's the odd one out, but the lady on Wuyuan around the corner from Avocado Lady has been my dry-cleaner for years. Not for any particular reason, I just like her gregariousness. I like that she'll yell at me to speak louder rather than turn the volume on her soap operas down, and she's constantly trying to hawk me some fresh fruit or other produce she's selling.
I've selected her to be the stand-in for all the other one-to-two person operations around town. I called her up, and she refused to pick the shirt up because pssssh she's not coming to get just a single shirt, are you crazy? I ran it down to her, suffered her tut-tutting over my red-wine drinking habits and declined her offer of fresh yangmei.
Price: A solid 60rmb, and the judging glare. Would have been another 30rmb or so if I'd arranged delivery and pick-up myself, but I'd have spared myself the derision.
Deliver The Conclusions
Honestly, with the exception of UCC, I'd probably use any of these again. If I had to choose, based on this process, I'd go with:
Easy Life, for the fastest turn around and minimum fuss, or Laundry Town if I had a particularly nasty case that requires some personal consultation.
Josephine Laundry would be my economy option, but only if I can find a spot nearer to me. If not, Oookay is another cheap option, even if they do send it out of town.
Oh, and the Wuyuan Lu Lady when she's got lychee. Love me some lychee.
Wait, So What Happened to All the Clean T-shirts
White isn't really our color. We're donating them all to charity, clean and good as new. Look at them dance!
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