A nursery owner ordered what she thought was equipment tailored for special needs kids - and received an Ikea mosquito net with the old price tag still attached.

Wendy Franks paid Yorkshire company Spacekraft £50 for a projector tent, designed to stimulate disabled children.

So she and partner Tracey Rose - who run the Daisy Chain Nursery at Falmer School, Brighton - were horrified to receive a mosquito net, still carrying the original £20 tag.

Spacekraft advertises itself as providing "interactive multi-sensory environments" for people with physical and mental disabilities.

Ms Franks said: "When we spoke to a girl at the company she just laughed and said it was one of their emergency supplies."

Bruce Todd-Hunter, manager of Spacekraft, said: "My normal supplier said the container had gone overboard on the South China Sea and told me I wouldn't get any for three months. I had to do something.

"But where I bought it from is irrelevant. At the end of the day the customer got the product they were asking for."

Mr Todd-Hunter said the cost of his products had to be high for the firm to make a profit.

Wednesday August 20, 2003