service cleaning complaint

Have you met my favourite sailor jumper?


A few days ago, I took it for a deep clean at a supposedly high-quality service shop. Took it back earlier tonight on my way out to town. I checked for tears and frays on the spot - the most serious of professional cleaning sins (as done by Aqualis on two of my dad's batik shirts) - and there were none. So I went out, came back home and hung it on my wardrobe door. That was, until I noticed something was amiss. The jumper went slightly pink, and its pilling had spread from primarily at the sleeve hems to all around the bust area.

So OK, in a badly lit distribution outlet (i.e. the one near home) it's difficult to discern whether there were any unwanted cleaning-triggered changes. But this jumper in my room? Of course I've seen it many times before. Being someone who has two crates of nearly-white fabrics in all sort of shades, and under constant lighting condition, of course I know there was some red-tone bleeding my jumper had picked up during the wash. To make it worse, the jumper's yarn is primarily cotton: colours only set into cotton when it's wash-treated at temperatures above 40 degrees, so it must have been chucked into the washing drum along with some other suspect-coloured garments. Knitted garments are not meant to be agitated when they are washed to prevent surface lint from forming; it happens more obviously on wool than cotton ceteris paribus... meaning it was agitated pretty bad while wet. To make it even worse, it wasn't supposed to even be washed in the first place - the care label says bloody dry clean it!

I think I will give the head office a call on this matter. If people in there are ashamed enough with the way they do business, they would compensate me. The supposed tenfold-of-cost compensation (as written on their bill) is not high enough as a deterrent for the company to do its work dilligently, nor will it get me any good replacement for the damage done. What I could do with it, though, is to pay for a nice dinner with my peer group and spread the word about the [unpleasant] experience.

Moral of the story: do NOT use Londré to clean any of your expensive knitwear.

(There, I've said it.)

Point #2: must get more cute Sonia Rykiel items to placate anger.