Honestbee is a brand I’m familiar with, I use their app at least once a week to order food from their food delivery service. But unlike other food delivery companies they also deliver groceries, sell discounted tickets to local attractions as well as have a laundry service, all of which can be accessed within the Honestbee mobile app. Recently I was offered the chance to try out Honestbee Laundry, so given that I’ve got a three month old and a mound of laundry to do, this was a welcome break to my neverending list of menial tasks.
Firstly let me start by saying that the Honestbee app is really easy and intuitive to use, you simply select which service you require – in this case Laundry, and then you can choose whether you would like to have your clothes dry cleaned, washed and ironed or just washed or ironed on it’s own. There are pictures of garments so that you can easily select which items of clothing you require to be laundered and you can note any stains so that they can try to remove it for you.
Collection of your clothes can be arranged as quickly as in 45 minutes time and then delivered back in two days or on a date and time afterwards that is more preferable. They operate seven days a week (except for public holidays) between 1pm and 10pm and collection and delivery is free with no minimum spend. Although they say that collection is on demand within 45 minutes, in reality they usually only have time slots available for collection around 2 hours later, which is still very quick. Also they seem to be pretty busy at certain times every day but this isn’t really a problem as they still have plenty of other time slots available so it’s easy to find one that fits in with your schedule. You can also conveniently reschedule your pickup or delivery time with no extra fee as long as you reschedule at least 4 hours in advance. There is a $3.99 concierge fee which according to Honestbee Laundry ensures that your laundry gets special care and attention but isn’t this really just a fancy substitute for a delivery fee?
Prices for dry cleaning, washing and ironing are highly competitive, for example you can get a shirt dry cleaned for $4.90 and dress dry cleaned for only $6.90 which is a lot cheaper than I’ve found elsewhere. They also offer bundle discounts so you could get ten shirts washed and ironed for just $45 instead of the usual $49.
Over the past few weeks I placed three orders with Honestbee Laundry. I tried all of their laundry services and had clothes dry cleaned, washed and ironed. For dry cleaning there are two options – either premium dry cleaning or regular dry cleaning. Premium dry cleaning is eco-friendly and includes insurance of up to $1000 compensation per item (capped at $5000 per order) so if you’re getting that special designer piece dry cleaned I would recommend going for the premium dry cleaning which only costs a little more and gives you that added piece of mind. Honestbee Laundry don’t actually carry out the laundry themselves but they work with a local laundry company to bring their services to you and I was very happy with the job they did. My trench coat was nicely dry cleaned and my hubby’s shirts and my dresses were washed and ironed well. Everything came back in great condition on hangers in plastic wrapping and had a neutral scent. They’d managed to get out all of the stubborn creases on the dresses and shirts that I usually dread ironing and was even able to remove the majority of a huge stain on my favourite white dress that had been there for ages.
When the concierges come to collect your laundry, they will ask you to place your clothes into bags clearly labelled with the laundry service you require i.e. dry cleaning, ironing, etc. and these are then sealed shut so there’s little chance of any errors occurring. I also noticed that items of clothing that come with belts were noted on the order form when my clothes were returned so it’s good to know that care was taken to ensure that the belts didn’t go missing.
Although I was very pleased with the end results, there were a few kinks along the way with the service that Honestbee Laundry provided. It seems timekeeping is not their forte. For my first order they were 30 minutes early, fortunately it wasn’t a problem for me since I was at home at the time and able to let them in. However for my second order they were 25 minutes late for collection and 5 minutes late for delivery and they were 17 mins late for collection of my third order. So you can see it wasn’t just a one-off occurrence unfortunately. However Honestbee Laundry do try to make up for their mishaps by issuing coupons for future orders so I was given a couple of $10 off coupons for orders of $50 or more. Can’t complain! 🙂
Overall though I was pretty happy with Honestbee Laundry. Granted that the service provided by the concierges that come to collect and deliver your laundry may not be as polished or knowledgeable as that of high-end dry cleaners such as Jeeves but considering that Honestbee Laundry is around a third of the price with pretty much the same end result, I know where I’ll be going for the majority of my laundry needs in future.
Hope you’ve enjoyed reading my review of Honestbee Laundry, please feel free to leave a comment below with your own review or if you have any questions!
If you’d like to try Honestbee Laundry, you can get $10 off your first order with no minimum spend HERE!
