Every complaint a laundry gets about price comes from the same place: a figure the customer first heard after the work was done.
When we started we did what every laundry on the street did. The bag was collected, taken to the shop, weighed in the back, and the figure appeared on the delivery slip that evening.
Almost every argument we had in the first year came out of that arrangement, and almost none of them were about the amount. They were about finding out. A customer who is told forty five a kilo and hands over a bag has no idea whether it is two kilos or five, and when the slip says four hundred and ten they feel it was decided without them.
So the rider carries a scale. It costs us eleven hundred rufiyaa per van and it is the best money the shop has spent. The bag is weighed on the step, the shirts are counted out loud, and the docket is written and read before the van moves.
Two things happened that we did not expect. Customers started sorting their own bags, because they could see that a towel weighs as much as four shirts. And the number of bags with one curtain hidden at the bottom went to almost nothing, which saves us the telephone call and saves them the surcharge.
The only figure that can change after the docket is one we ring about first. There has been no third figure in five years and there is not going to be.