Anthony,
Your difficulty with red stains may not lie with the effectiveness of your red removal product, but the application or the decision to use it.
Let me explain.
All too often, people conclude due to preconception that the red removal products they are using are "general purpose" or "all inclusive" red stain removers. Therefore they always associate red stain removal with only one product. What they either don't realize, or forgot is that products labeled as Red Stain Removers are most often reducing agents that are only going to work on a select classification of dyes. OK yes, "red" is the predominant color of this class of artificial dyes, thus the product name. This can cause confusion indeed.
"Red stain remover" reducing agents are generally limited to:
Betadine/Iodine (Oxidizers will often work also)
Candy (Red Food dye)
Kool Aid (red)
Cough Syrup – red
Hair Dye
Hi-lighter –Yellow or Green
Where problems most occur using a red stain remover is on the un-identified stains, especially red ones. Cleaners will often reach first to the reducing agent, apply heat to these un-identified red stains and be dissatisfied with the results.
In actuality, it is preferable to use an oxidizer (e.g. Stain Zone, Stain Magic), first, then gauge the activity or progress using the oxidizer. You might be surprised that these mystery red stains are solved by the application of the product you thought was not going to work, because out of habit you were used to reaching for the Red Stain Product first.
Some red(ish) dyes or stain elements are only going to be effectively removed through oxidation, such as; Blood, Coffee, Tea, Feces,Highlighter red, red inks and marker stains, Real Fruit Juice and Red Wine.
If the mystery stain is untouched by the oxidizer, then and only then switch to the reducer.
The rationale behind using an oxidizer first, reducer second is that with a reducer you often apply heat to accelerate a reducer. If the reducer does not work on that type of stain, the heat itself can chemically alter the stain element into something that will either react with the fiber dyes, or will render that stain element, which would have been previously removable by oxidation, to something that now is not removable by either. Since heat acceleration is generally never applied with an oxidizer, the oxidizer step is highly unlikely to render the situation worse for the subsequent use of the reducer.
p.s. It should be noted that some stains, are chromatically disrupted (color removed), by either a reducer or an oxidizer. Coffee is an example. Thus, when we consult stain guides we might find seemingly contradictory information as compared with another guide. This is the case when the particular guide is promoting a specific product line where the particular formulation of the oxidizer or reducer is most effective on that particular stain type.
