RONDINELLI TUXEDO RENTAL Name confusion causes problems for business

Rondinelli Tuxedo Rental is not connected with the closed dry cleaning shops.
By CYNTHIA VINARSKY
VINDICATOR BUSINESS WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Frank Rondinelli could never have guessed that a decision to sell his family name along with his dry cleaning business in 1973 would still be causing trouble for his sons Gino and George Rondinelli 30 years later.
The brothers, owners of Rondinelli Tuxedo Rental, Tuxedo 2000, Dutchess Dry Cleaners and Alterations Express stores around the area, said they still get calls for the competing business that kept their father's name, even a year after the company closed.
The most recent case involved a Canfield woman who filed a theft complaint with Youngstown police, contending her two fur coats worth $18,000 were missing from the Rondinelli Cleaners at 3518 Canfield Road.
The victim, 46, told police she'd left the coats in storage at the dry cleaners in April 2002, but when she tried to check on them last week, she found the phone disconnected and the business closed.
Reports say the woman called Tuxedo 2000 in Boardman, the formal-wear wholesale warehouse that George and Gino Rondinelli operate. When an employee there told her the two businesses were not connected, she contacted the Better Business Bureau and filed the police report.
George Rondinelli said his father, Frank, sold the Rondinelli name along with his dry-cleaning business in 1973, preferring to concentrate on the tuxedo business.
Later, when the brothers decided to get back into dry cleaning, they named their stores Dutch Girl Cleaners, later changing the name to Dutchess Cleaners.
What happened
The Rondinelli Cleaners chain had stores on McGuffey Road, Boardman-Canfield Road and Canfield Road until about a year ago, when it closed. The Rondinelli brothers ran a series of newspaper advertisements then to advise customers that there was no recent connection between the two businesses.
The Better Business Bureau of Mahoning Valley reports that Rondinelli Tuxedo and its affiliated companies are members of the BBB with a satisfactory complaint record.
But Rondinelli Cleaners had an unsatisfactory record with the BBB because of a pattern of unresolved consumer complaints.
vinarsky@vindy.com