I rent out a large room in my house for nine months of the year through Airbnb.
The first visitors for 2026 were due to arrive on Good Friday for the Easter weekend and I took the curtains to be dry cleaned.
The windows are huge and the curtains were made to measure in 2020, costing just under £1,000.
I paid my local laundry service, Norfolk’s Little Laundry, £230, and it sent them off to a dry-cleaning company in Norwich, Smart Image.
Two weeks later, I collected the curtains but when I went to hang them they had shrunk badly. Before, they draped luxuriously on the floor, but now they hung like clowns’ trousers.
When measured, they are five inches shorter. I took them back to the laundry, which in turn contacted Smart Image. It offered a refund of £140 and an attempt at repairing the curtains.
Laundry fail: A reader has been left without curtains for their Airbnb just days before the first guests were due to arrive
I told the firm I would accept the offer if the repair could be done in time for Easter, but Smart Image said it couldn’t do this.
I’m fully booked for the season and must have curtains in the room and it’s impossible to buy temporary ones for a window that size. Please help.
J.I., Norfolk.
Sally Hamilton replies: When a disaster such as this happens, the shop that you paid to carry out the service should sort things out for you.
That’s a valuable protection under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, saving customers the hassle of chasing third parties or manufacturers when they have a complaint.
When you complained to the laundry it contacted Smart Image, and to give the dry cleaner credit, it offered to refund its share of the bill (£140) and to repair the curtains – but, unhelpfully, it would not guarantee when this would happen.
What you needed was a swift alteration enabling you to hang the drapes in time for the arrival of your paying guests. You couldn’t let the room without any and there was no way you could find temporary alternatives that would fit the window’s mighty dimensions.
On scrutinising your before-and-after photos, I could see they really wouldn’t do in their post-cleaning state.
The laundry couldn’t persuade the dry cleaner to move any faster, so I stepped in and told Smart Image that you couldn’t hang around indefinitely for your curtains to be fixed and that the best solution would be to either bump you to the top of its alterations list, or if it could not guarantee this, then let you find your own repairer and invoice the firm for the sum charged.
Smart Image would not agree to meet a third party’s bill. But after some persuasion by me, it finally agreed to prioritise your repair.
A spokesman says: ‘We will ensure they are placed at the head of our queue.’
A few days later, with four days until your first guests arrived, you informed me the dry cleaner was as good as its word.
Its repair team had successfully unpicked the deep hems so that the curtains were now back to near their previous luxurious length.
The firm apologised to you directly and made a £140 refund. I was dismayed to learn Norfolk’s Little Laundry held on to £90, its portion of the charge. But you were happy to put the matter to rest as at least the curtains were clean.
It is not always about the money when things go wrong – it is often the willingness of companies to put things right quickly in urgent situations that matters more.
You said you were ‘immensely grateful’ that I persuaded Smart Image to bump you to the top of its alterations list.
As for how the curtains got damaged in the first place, Smart Image says that since there was no care label or fabric information provided, they were treated using ‘standard procedures for general textiles’.
It seems the interlining didn’t shrink but the main fabric did. Had you known of such risks with made-to-measure curtains, even in the hands of experts, you would have simply spot cleaned the material yourself and aired the curtains on a line outside.
A spokesman for Smart Image says: ‘We’re pleased that the
matter has now been resolved and that a satisfactory outcome was reached for the customer.’
Norfolk’s Little Laundry stated it was pleased with this outcome.
Being wrongly taxed on late husband’s pension
When my husband died in 2017, I inherited his ReAssure (formerly Guardian) pension annuity worth £2,500 a year.
I did all the necessary paperwork and ReAssure sent me a letter saying that as my husband died after 2014 and under the age of 75, this annuity would be paid to me as a tax-exempt death benefit under HM Revenue & Customs rules. It said I did not need to notify HMRC.
But in December last year, I discovered that the annuity had found its way on to my tax coding notice and I am now having income tax clawed back on it. Can you help?
C.O., Waltham Cross, Herts.
Sally Hamilton replies: Since the end of last year, you have made many calls to ReAssure, which admitted there was a problem but could not seem to resolve it.
Many weeks passed and each time you phoned to check progress you were promised a letter confirming the tax-exempt status of the annuity, but it never arrived. You even sent a letter to the chief executive with no reply.
In frustration, you wrote to HMRC, which eventually explained ReAssure had entered the wrong tax code for your plan on its payroll system for 2024-25, leading to the tax charge. It confirmed that once this was corrected your annuity would be back on track.
When I got involved, ReAssure contacted you and promised the mistake would be rectified swiftly.
You recently confirmed this has finally been done. It paid you £350 as an apology.
A spokesman for ReAssure says: ‘We are sorry for the inconvenience caused to C.O. An administrative error resulted in incorrect tax information being issued and we have now put this right.
‘We can confirm the annuity remains tax exempt and we have confirmed this with C.O. directly.
‘We apologise for the frustration this caused and have offered a compensation payment for the distress caused and to recognise the delay.’
You were relieved your worry was finally over. You said you will use the goodwill payment to cover future energy bills.
- Write to Sally Hamilton at Sally Sorts It, Money Mail, Northcliffe House, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT or email sally@dailymail.co.uk ¿ include phone number, address and a note addressed to the offending organisation giving them permission to talk to Sally Hamilton. Please do not send original documents as we cannot take responsibility for them. No legal responsibility can be accepted by the Daily Mail for answers given.