You can find everything on the Internet these days. From dating advice to academic courses, cooking recipes and viral videos – it is all there for the taking. And since it is online, it must be true! I cannot understand how people can be so gullible, even when the tips they read online contradict common sense. Let me give you an example.

A few months ago, I received a call from a woman living near Cleveland Square in the posh part of Paddington. She sounded legitimately upset, saying she needed urgent help with her living room carpet. I guess it was her lucky day – I had only one appointment in the late afternoon, so I could easily fit her around noon. No matter how serious the problem, I believed I could clean a single carpet in under two hours.

My phone bleeped again. I had asked my customer to take a picture of the damage and send it to me. Gosh, what had she done?! I could see a nice clean white carpet with a large yellow-brownish stain, looking suspiciously fresh. It could be coffee or black tea, but then why the panic? It was a straightforward stain removal that would take fifteen minutes tops. Anyway, there was no point in speculating before I could see it. So I loaded my stain-removal equipment in one of the company vans and headed for the address.

I parked in front of a beautiful white terraced house resembling the setting of E.M. Forster novel. Seconds after ringing the doorbell, a tiny blonde woman in her early thirties opened the front door. “Hi, I am Patricia, but you can call me Pat. You must be James, we spoke on the phone. Come on it!” The interior of the house looked even more impressive and glitzy. It exuded wealth without a vulgar display, but you could sense the undertones of class and hereditary money in the air. Don’t get me wrong, I am not one of these judgemental lefties who go berserk at generational wealth. Besides, Pat looked like the sweetest lady in the world.

I took off my shoes, and she led me to her living room. You could hardly miss the ugly stain in the middle of the carpet, close to the coffee table set. My initial assumption had been correct – it definitely looked like a fresh stain, although something was not quite right.

“Do you want to tell me how you ended up with this mess on the carpet?

Pat shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. “You might think this is a new stain. It actually is not. I have the awful habit of leaving my teacup on the coffee table, and a few days ago, I knocked it off. I did my best to soak the tea, but the stain remained. So I decided to search online for stain removal tips…”

“Oh, no!” I thought. I must have rolled my eyes because Pat became defensive. “I know how this must sound to a professional cleaner. But I thought calling for something so negligible would be too much trouble. I honestly believed I could deal with it myself.”

It turned out she had picked the wrong cleaning tip. Pat had mixed baking soda with peppermint essential oil and scrubbed it into the stain. The baking soda part was harmless, even helpful – it is a decent non-detergent cleaning alternative. The problem was that she had put too much essential oil in the mixture, which had become more creamy than it was supposed to be. Besides, you can use the mix for carpet maintenance – after you do the vacuum cleaning, for example. But it most certainly is not a good option for stain removal, especially in the case of old, already embedded stains.

“OK, I have good news and bad news. Which one do you want first?” I asked after I had listened patiently.

“Give me the bad news first”, she said dejectedly.

“You have wasted so much time, energy, and nerves on something I could have solved in probably fifteen minutes.”

“So what’s the good news?”

“You’ve done nothing irreversible. The baking soda, as you probably know, is harmless. The essential oil should come off quickly, too, along with the stain residue. I think your carpet should look like brand new within thirty minutes!”

I always love and appreciate the sense of relief I bring to my customers, especially good-natured people like Pat. I rolled up my sleeves and got to business. First, I sprayed the stain with detergent and used a soft-hair brush to treat the spot. I had taken my manual steam washer, which was perfect for the job. I didn’t have to clean the whole carpet, so employing the big hot water extraction machine made no sense. After giving the carpet fifteen minutes to dry, I sprayed the area with stain-removing foam and repeated the procedure.

The stain was gone for good! Pat had observed the whole procedure, and I could see how her expression changed from worry to wonder as the process unfolded. “Wow, you did a fantastic job, ” she exclaimed, clapping her hands. “I will know better in the future to call an expert and not trust the Internet.”

“Please do”, I pleaded jokingly as I gave her my business card. All is well when it ends well, even if it includes cleaning tips on the Internet.