[Colin Day]

While cleaning a sofa today, a black marker sinature appeared when I presprayed the arm..... The custy quickly eased my worries and said that when they had the sofa cleaned a few years ago, the guy cleaning it signed his name in black marker pen

It takes all kinds I suppose, maybe he thought he was worthy of signing his autograph on people's funiture

[Neil Williams]

I've heard of manufactorers using a marker pen to mark up which panel should go where, when they should have used a chalk, but I guess this was someone who was trying to protect his customer base.
Unknowing cleaners would have panaicked and probably done a runner if marks like that came through which would have resulted in the customer calling the previous cleaner back in to correct the 'mess'.

Very clever idea.....might try that myself
 

[Ken Wainwright]

If the mark only appears when the fabric is wet, it is on the reverse, not the face, side of the fabric. How could anyone write on the reverse of the fabric once it was made up?

This phenomenon is rare, but we all should know about it. It's for identification during manufacture.

On the other hand, there may be an invisible ink that is an indicator/pH sensitive

I suspect someone was injecting some humour into the situation, either the previous cleaner with the custy, or the custy with you.

Safe and happy writing
The Ken

[gwrightson]

youv,e got me confused here colin !!! you say a cleaner signed the arm with a marker pen.
was it a loose arm cushion? because that the only way I could imagine him putting a marker on it, providing of course it was the inner cushion and not the material.
did you check on your survey for any form of felt markings on the inner cushions? which of course you should do really, therfore you can take action using preventative methods to avoid the transfer .
the more i think about it the more it intriges me, I wonder if perhaps the cleaner does this on all upholstery, so in the future if it is cleaned by another cleaner and not him , a trap awaits for the unwary , therfore teaching the custy a lesson so to speak. " we should have called the cleaner we had last time" scenario.

this imho is the only logical reasoning behind the practise

any one come up with other reasons?

Geoff

[gwrightson]

neil and ken, both beat me too it with similar theory,s

geoff. 
great minds think alike 

[Colin Day]

There was no way of getting into see if the foam had been written on as it had no zip..... The lady told me that the offending cleaner/writer doesn't clean now but did so for a company that no longer trades. I quizzed her as to why he would do it and she said he'd done it in anger because the job was taking him longer to do than he wanted

Anyway, when it first appeared she said that her husband had cleaned the sofa himself using a RD (Inbetween the other cleaner and myself cleaning it) and it came up then, then of course it came up today.... She assures me it completely disappears once the fabric is dry....

I always check for makers marks in any case if the foam is accessable, as per upholstery cleaning course, Day 1, Rule 1

[Mark Lawrence]

Blimey, the previous cleaner sounds like a bit of a twat to me.

If there was no zip then there was no way he wrote on it : so sounds like he said that for whatever reason - maybe thinking he had a problem, and tried to worm his way out of it by saying something daft?

He couldnt have hung around to see what it was like when dry, and this comment probably stuck in her head.

Mark

[Stu.Clem]

The custy is obv a complete nutjob who has nowt better to do than wind up the gullible tradesman (no offence intended merely a generalisation)

lol  class sense of humour  tho :