Colour Loss and Delamination
The information and pictures below concerning colour loss and delamination is a common problem. The shops selling this quality of furniture know this can happen and will do there best to fob the customer off. They sometimes send technicians to give a report but remember, they are batting for the retailer.
Pictures 1 & 2 show massive colour loss and delamination of a sofa less than 1 year old.
This sofa was bought from Land of Leather, who have now gone out of business. When our customer complained to the shop and their technician viewed the sofa they were told the fault is nothing to do with the leather but down to lack of maintenance, body oils and cats running around the flat and possibly cat urine contamination had caused the colour to come off...
This is one of the worst cases of delamination and colour loss that I have come across caused by a poor pigmentation process and top finish.
Picture 3 shows a small test area I did on the back of one rear cushion on an area that would get no day to day contact. I only used an edge of a clean white cloth moisened with water. The colour of the leather came off onto the cloth instantly.
Does that tell you something?
As the retailer was not really interested and on instructions from our customer samples of leather were sent to an independant Leather testing authority which was UKAS approved.
The findings which can now stand up in a Court of Law basically state the leather finish on our customers suite is of a poor quality and failed all tests. Pictures taken when examined under a microscope show just how bad the surface of the leather was.
PS the tests showed no urine contamination.
The retailer had offered £300.00 as settlement. This was rejected. Our customer was offered a new suite to the value of the original. This has taken 18 months to resolve.
The motto is, do not let the retailer grind you down. They know some of their products are dodgy but if anything goes wrong by spinning out the process they hope you will give up.
April 2012
In our local newspaper recently was about a lady who had bought leather wipes from a well known supermarket.
On using the wipes the colour had come off on one area of her chair, namely the front of the arm.
Rightly she was not amused and was calling the supermarket all names as it had not responded to her problem.
The next day was an article she was going to take the supermarket to court,
I was not envolved but the article mentioned she had bought a second hand leather suite and wanting to look after it had bought the wipes.
From the picture shown in the paper this was an older suite with wear and tear.
I do not know if she had bought from a second hand shop or privately.
With many older leather furniture trying to clean with any type of cleaner is always a chance.
As I have said before, once the top finish is worn away any cleaner will wipe off colour.