Dry Cleaner giving my cleaning to charity

tinkabelle

I left several garments with my cleaner two months ago for dry cleaning. I went to collect thee weeks later offering to pay via debit card. He preferred cash, but I don't ever carry that sort of money on me. By the time I had returned to pay he wad closed. Unfortunately, I then went abroad for five weeks, not taking my UK sim/number with me. The cleaner left several voice messages whilst I was away, which I did not pick up until my return. I have now been told that he has given my clothes - over £1, 000 worth of clothing - to a charity!!!
Is there a period of time required to elapse before he can do this. What on earth do I do now??
Any advice gratefully received.

deedee71

I'm sure I read an almost identical post a few weeks ago. If you search the forum you'll find it and see what advice was given there.

photome

Does it say anything on the ticket about not collecting clothes after a set period of time

tinkabelle

Nope, being a bit of a div and I can't find the previous blog, and with regards to the receipts from the cleaners... no, there's no mention of 'time frame' for garments to be collected...

LilElvis

Have you asked the cleaner what his policy is? The cleaners I use have a board up on the desk with their terms and conditions on it.

tomtontom

Did the voice mails advise he intended to dispose of the clothing?

ConsumerGuy0016

tinkabelle wrote: »

I have now been told that he has given my clothes - over £1, 000 worth of clothing - to a charity!!!

Have you asked him which charity he gave your clothes to? To give away a £1000 worth of a customers' clothes (after they had already shown intent to pay) with such haste seems fishy to be perfectly honest.

Try and find out more about the charity he supposedly gave away your clothes to and/or ask him to produce some evidence to substantiate his claim.

The clothes are certainly not his property to just give away - even if his T&Cs say so, you had already shown intent to pay him and he should have acted more reasonably with your expensive clothing.

LilElvis

ConsumerGuy0016 wrote: »

Have you asked him which charity he gave your clothes to? To give away a £1000 worth of a customers' clothes (after they had already shown intent to pay) with such haste seems fishy to be perfectly honest.

Try and find out more about the charity he supposedly gave away your clothes to and/or ask him to produce some evidence to substantiate his claim.

The clothes are certainly not his property to just give away - even if his T&Cs say so, you had already shown intent to pay him and he should have acted more reasonably with your expensive clothing.

Your opinion, but obviously not one shared by the cleaner.

The OP went to collect the goods, but left the shop when she didn't have the means to pay. The cleaner then repeatedly called and left messages over a protracted period without receiving a reply. It would be fairly reasonable then to assume that the clothing had been abandoned. Why shouldn't he have a mechanism to recoup his losses?

ConsumerGuy0016

LilElvis wrote: »

The OP went to collect the goods, but left the shop when she didn't have the means to pay.

Again, if you'd bothered to spend any time reading the original post you'd see that the OP offered to by card but quite dubiously the owner requested a cheeky cash-in-hand transaction. Yes, the owner is within his rights to select the method of payment, but if he's only accepting cash he should expect people to have trouble like the OP did in paying on the spot.

Why shouldn't he have a mechanism to recoup his losses?

Wait, so now you're saying that the dry cleaner is justified in selling £1000 worth of his customers' clothing as an exercise to recoup costs?! A dry clean doesn't cost that much, darling.

esuhl

LilElvis wrote: »

Why shouldn't he have a mechanism to recoup his losses?

Giving clothes away to charity won't help him to recoup any losses.

shaun_from_Africa

LilElvis wrote: »

Why shouldn't he have a mechanism to recoup his losses?

There is a mechanism in place to help a trader recoup their losses relating to uncollected goods:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1977/32 (section 12)


The retailer can sell goods but they must first inform the owner of their intent to do this and they must attempt to get a reasonable price for those goods and the money obtained still belongs to the owner. The trader can keep some to cover their costs but they can't keep all of it.


By giving the goods away they have broken the law and the OP has every right to attempt to recover the money through legal action.