The owner of this business - Mrs Vanessa Salami contacted me in Nigeria via phone from the USA in the 1st week of September. She had seen my details online and knew i had a bridal store and she had dresses for wholesales. I familiarized myself with her over several phonecalls and decided to give her a try. She said she had dresses from Eden and alfred angelo bridals and referred me to their websites. I chose a total of 17 dresses which she said she had in stock ready to ship - 6 from recent seasons at $300 each and 11 from older seasons at $240 each.
I sent over my visa card details for her to charge manually using her POS (i chose to use the card because it will credit her account instantly rather than use a funds transfer which could take 3-5 business days to get to her). She 1st charged my card for 1 dress ($300) and after the transaction went through smoothly, she charged the card for the rest of the
$4160 in 2 installments of $1,940 and $2,200. The initial $300 was for a whitealfred angelo style 206 size 8 or 10
which a customer of mine had already placed an order for and Mrs Vanessa said she had. I emphasized that the dress must be white, yet on receiving the dress 2 weeks later in Nigeria, it was ivory, inconspicuously torn and had no shawl
as depicted in the picture of the dress (She sent a shawl for the dress 4 weeks later but again it was the wrong one).
She claimed these mistakes were made by her staff, so despite the legal action threatened by the disappointed customer, i considered the huge losses Mrs Salami would suffer from shipping expenses back to America from Nigeria and
did'nt send the dress back.
In the meantime, the POS payment for $4,160 was held up by her bank for up to a week and eventually reversed and returned to my visacard. I immediately went ahead to make another payment via google checkout as i didnt want to miss the dresses. I pleaded with Mrs Vanessa to keep the dresses for me considering I was making all efforts to make payment via options available to me. I asked several times if the dresses were still available and she said they were. Unfortunately google checkout took another 10 days to get cleared because she was a new merchant.
After the payment cleared, that was when we told me she had sold some of the dresses. Even though this was already
a breach of contract, i told her i was open to replacing with similar styles. She started sending pictures of dresses from more than 4 years ago for me to choose from. Dresses we agreed on $240 for, she said they were no longer $240
but $300 as she claimed they were from present seasons even though they were not.
The whole transaction started looking fraudulent at this point so i decided to cancel the order. On cancelling she started telling me about charges of more than $400 for the initially cancelled POS transaction and how she had already used my money to place an order on my behalf from her suppliers which i had to wait for. She placed this order without consulting me 1st.inspite of all this i decided to wait for these new dresses, just to give her the benefit of the doubt. After waiting for a week with nothing, i just decided to end it all and take a refund.
Mrs Vanessa then told me i had to wait for her to send the dresses back and get a refund from her suppliers 1st before paying me back. This process took another 3 weeks - 1st it was a story of not using priority mail, then a wrong zip code, then a holiday and many other excuses. When she eventually got the refund from her suppliers as she claimed, she sent me a refund invoice where she deducted $430.51 for credit card charges and $198.91 as a 5% restocking and handling fee.
I dont know of any credit or debit card transaction fees that come to 10% of the transaction and considering i did not take anything out of her store, i dont see why she should charge me any re-stocking and handling fees.
Let me state here that most of our communication had been informally over the phone and via email - she never sent me an official invoice stating her terms of service. And even on her website, there are no terms and conditions for wholesale buyers.
This ordeal lasted a whole 3 months and when she eventually decided to make the refund, it took an extra week with her eventually making the refund in Naira (Nigeria's currency). Making a payment $15 less than the prevailing dollar rate that day. I was hospitalized for the delivery of my baby the day she finally made payment (26th November).
Ultimately this woman has defrauded me of $644.42.
In summary:
1) Mrs Vanessa wasted 3 months of my time.
2) She never stated her terms and conditions of business. She even threatened me with a no refund store policy which is on her website. She threatened me with this policy and said she would convert my money to store credit where i must buy whatever she has to offer me. A no return policy should only apply when a customer has taken items out of the store.in this case i doubt she ever had these dresses to begin with as she kept pushing for me to trust
and let her send dresses similar to what i had previously chosen without sending me pictures to see. She kept telling me these were 2012 designs which werent online yet, so i couldnt google them up. She also didnt have time to
take pictures and send so i could be sure of what i was buying before they are shipped down to Nigeria.
3. Even though i never took a pin out of her store, she charged me phony re-stocking and handling fees.
She made this transaction null and void when she sold dresses i had chosen and allowed me to still go ahead and make payment, then later offer me much more inferior dresses.
I have a ton of emails we exchanged to back up my complaint.
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