The Great Brooklyn Brassiere War of 2005

I could sure use some advice with this, so I'd very much appreciate any suggestions you guys have to offer.

Four weeks ago today, I went to pick up my dropped-off laundry from the cleaners I'd been using for five or six months. I always put my bras in a separate zippered bag, with instructions to wash them but not dry them, and then I hang them up at home to dry (less chance of breaking an underwire that way).

The bras are always returned to me in a separate bag from the rest of my laundry, although once or twice they've put that smaller bag down in my large laundry bag. So when I didn't get the separate bag and asked the woman at the counter about it, I believed her when she said the bras were in the larger bag. I paid up, took the bag home, and discovered upon putting my laundry away that eight bras were missing.

I won't bore you with every detail of what's happened since -- just a lot of stopping by, calling, playing phone tag with the owner, etc. and hearing excuse after excuse. They finally agreed to reimburse me for the bras they lost and asked me to bring a printout from the website of the store I bought them from showing how much they cost each. I did so, played phone tag with the owner for another week, and came home tonight to find a message from him on my machine saying he could only give me $50 to replace the bras.

I called back and left a message saying that's not good enough and that I'd like to know where he thinks I'm going to find any decent bras for $6.25 apiece. They cost me about $25 each and had all been bought within the last year. I'm willing to take less than the full $200, given that they weren't brand new, but $50 is just plain insulting. Not to mention that it's going to cost them more than $200 in the long run to lose me as a regular paying customer, but whatever.

If they don't budge on this, it's ON. I'd like suggestions on what I can do to get them to cough up a more reasonable reiumbursement. I know I can call the city department of consumer affairs, although I haven't dealt with them and don't know whether they'll really do anything that will make a difference. Any suggestions? I'm pretty pissed off, so I'm not above playing dirty here.