The whole label At the counter
What should I do when I hand my dress to a cleaner?
The moment a dress changes hands is the moment the record starts. The sources set out exactly what belongs in it.
General information from the ACCC and state consumer bodies about care labels and cleaning. It is not advice about your dress.
Before the counter: what the label asks first
Before taking your item to be dry cleaned, make sure it is the right way to care for it, NSW Fair Trading says on the same page that carries the care labelling rules. That is the first line of the docket in plain words, and it is a check rather than a formality: the ACCC’s guide sets out the marks a label uses to give the instruction, the washtub, the triangle, the square, the iron and the circle, in the standard’s fixed order.
If the label carries a professional-care circle, the letter inside it is what the cleaner is being asked to work within, and the ACCC’s table is the reference for what each letter and bar allows. A cleaner who treats a P dress as an F one, or runs a mild process as a normal one, has departed from the instruction the label carries, and that is exactly the kind of departure the docket is designed to make visible in advance.
NSW Fair Trading gathers the rest of the preparation under one heading, a few things both you and your dry cleaner can do to ensure that problems do not occur: cleaning in line with the manufacturer’s instructions on the care label, the docket note if you insist against advice, the pockets, the recorded damage, and the receipts kept.
The docket, taken line by line
Here are the five lines NSW Fair Trading asks for, in its own order, each beside the sentence that asks for it. A docket filled in this way records what was already true of the dress before it was cleaned, and what you asked for.
| The line | What NSW Fair Trading says to do |
|---|---|
| Clean it the way the label says | Make sure cleaning is done in accordance with the manufacturer’s instructions outlined on the care label. |
| If you insist against advice | If you insist an item be dry cleaned, despite the advice of the dry cleaner, ensure the dry cleaner notes this on the docket, and you should acknowledge it. |
| The pockets | All pockets should be checked to ensure that there are no foreign objects that may spoil the cleaning process. |
| The damage that is already there | Examine the item carefully with the dry cleaner and note any damage on the docket: NSW Fair Trading’s examples are cloth blemishes, fading and tears. |
| The docket itself | Keep your dockets and receipt in case a problem occurs in future. |
Two of those lines are the ones people skip. The damage already there is the whole of the first half, because it records what was true of the dress before cleaning; and the note about insisting against advice matters because the consumer guarantees give no repair, replacement or refund for a service done a certain way against the business’s advice. NSW Fair Trading asks for the note on the docket and your acknowledgement before the dress is left.
When it does go wrong, the same page names the route: if you are unable to resolve the matter with the business, the NSW advice is to contact the Dry Cleaning Institute of Australia on 1300 134 511, which handles consumer complaints for member companies. The docket is what you are holding when you make that call, which is why NSW Fair Trading asks you to keep it in case a problem occurs in future.
A dress left with a cleaner, read against the uncollected goods law
Most dresses come home on time. The state law is written for the ones that do not, and it is worth knowing which side of it a dress sits on. Uncollected goods are goods left or abandoned with someone who is not the owner, and the examples NSW Fair Trading gives are a car left with a motor repairer and clothes left at the dry cleaners.
The owner stays responsible for the goods, and the person holding them has a duty to safeguard them while they sit there: the owner, or anybody with a legal interest, can reclaim the items at any time. The Uncollected Goods Act 1995 then gives the person in possession the right to dispose of the goods after a certain amount of time, and both the time and the manner of disposal depend on the type and the value of the goods. For a dress, value is the whole question, and NSW Fair Trading sets out three tiers.
| The value | Notice and time | What may happen next |
|---|---|---|
| Under $1,000 | Notice can be verbal or written, and the notice period is 14 days. | Disposal can be by any appropriate manner. |
| $1,000 to $20,000 | Written notice is to be given, and the notice period is 28 days. | Disposal can be by public auction or private sale for a fair value. |
| Over $20,000 | Notice is in accordance with any Tribunal order. | The goods cannot be disposed of without applying to the Tribunal. |
So the worked case is short: a dress valued under $1,000 can be disposed of in any appropriate manner after 14 days of notice that may be given verbally or in writing; a dress valued between $1,000 and $20,000 moves the cleaner to written notice and 28 days, and to a public auction or a private sale at fair value rather than any disposal at hand. The value in that table is a reasonable estimate of market value, which NSW Fair Trading defines as the estimated amount the goods could be sold for after reasonable efforts to sell them, and a dress is valued as itself rather than as part of a set unless the goods clearly make up one, the way a dining table and its chairs do.
Victoria runs the same idea through its own rules, and it names the dress directly: clothes left for dry-cleaning that are never collected are uncollected goods there, alongside items only temporarily left with a business. A business in Victoria must notify the owner if it intends to dispose of uncollected goods, and hold them for a certain time before disposing of them, which depends on the nature of the goods. The way to stop a disposal there is to pay the relevant charge and collect the goods, make arrangements for their delivery, or apply to a court or to VCAT to resolve the dispute.
None of that is a reason to leave a dress sitting in a shop, and this page does not read the tiers as advice about a particular case. What they do is put a date and a value on the risk of doing nothing, which is the one thing a storage question and a counter question share.