02/12/2024
I don't want to post a passive aggressive thing on fb. I am trying to keep is civil. With that said, this is long. Bare with me.
There is a lady from Huntington, WV that we had hired several years ago to do our yearly home-school review for our son. We learned recently after this crap that she has been banned from several groups that deal in homeschooling stuff because she is shady and conned people aka STOLE money. It also turns out she just STOLE 30 bucks from me, and over ONE HUNDRED bucks from my brother's family...she was always kind of bad at keeping in contact, and perpetually late for the reviews(in my experience). BUT nothing so bad as what has happened recently. Some of these things were only brought to light after contact was attempted to get a refund.
We NOW know that you should not prepay for such a thing, even if there is a discount for prepaying, and that you should utilize someone with a solid business presence. A legit website, good communication, the ability to give you a receipt and probably someone that does not insist that you send money via PayPal as a gift. The grift, here, the con...I did not notice at the time...because for the most part she followed through with the review service until she failed to follow through with my brother’s family’s reviews. She insisted that she sent them when publicly questioned but they never came, then she washed her hands of it by blocking and banning them from communication with her.
I contacted her after I learned of my sister-in-law’s issues with her service, I did not mention anything about that, simply stated to her, “We no longer need your services and since we just prepaid I would appreciate a refund”. She replied with one sentence, "This has to do with your sister's issues, I don't do refunds, good luck finding another reviewer". Then she blocked me from the group and deleted my ability to contact her. I have since emailed and tried reaching out through her husband, but no contact back. This is why you should INSIST on an invoice and if paying digitally not sending it as a gift, you cannot dispute a gift, and she freaking knows that hence why she insisted on that payment method.
BUT the rub is she has no policy, ffs there is no business. If there is, we are not privy to any of it, AND it would take her 30 seconds to do the refunds to people who were not happy or did not need her service. A trustworthy, honest person would have said something like “I am sorry, have your money back...see ya”. BUT nothing.
There are things we could do...I could do. Perhaps go to the magistrate. Yeah I know it is only 30 bucks. BUT, fair is fair...and if memory serves she would be on the hook for court costs. I could file a complaint at the state office of ethics, call and talk to the folks at the office of complaints at the West Virginia Department of Ed. Perhaps contact her county's BOE. The license/certificate she has is endorsed somewhere, and surely there are rules governing how she can use it.
I refuse to be a push over, I will not take lumps that I did not earn without at least trying to get even. Call me petty...but fair is fair.
Finally. And this is really icing. A little google-fu and I found their address, phone numbers, and presumably current employers. Google is scary folks. I also found a facebook group and webpage for a dog breading service she seems to run. One with no licensing that I can see. AND to add to it, it seems I ran across another facebook group where her and her husband are doing some sort of scratch off ticket gambling...which I thought was against facebook policy.
I am curious to know if the 30 bucks she owes me, and the 100ish bucks she owes my brother’s family is worth all this coming to light? I am not against running an add in her local newspaper. Redacted of course.
THEN wait...one more thing.
Her husband seems to have gotten really drunk, abducted a baby, ran into the woods armed, eventually coming out after the cops convinced him to come out, where he tried to grab a cops gun, kicked a cop in the face? Then went to jail. That supposedly happened in 2017. At least I assume it was him. His mug shot, his name, his age, and his address.
Now, I tried messaging her politely, she blocked me after her one sentence. I tried messaging him explaining the issue, and pleading that he help us come to a peaceful understanding, he ignored me. I have little recourse but to try to log a complaint again them at the state level...or take em to court.
That is when I started googling and uncovered the a fore mentioned interesting bits.
What would you do? I would sooner give a man a dollar than for him to think I had taken advantage of him and stole a penny.
