I have a friend who recently started a business selling her own handmade accessories online. She was having a really hard time health-wise and had to be hospitalised for a number of months and was making posts openly discussing her situation with her large following (7k followers) encouraging people to buy her stuff to help pay for her hospital bills.
I was keen to help her out so I spent about 150 on some of her stuff and after this she made posts saying there would be a delay on orders due to her hospitalisation by 1 month, which then got extended out to 2 months. I was fine with this as I understood it was a difficult time for her to adjust.
I received notification that my item had been sent, however, I didn’t receive it after a month of waiting and when I followed up with the private shipping company she used, they informed me that she never dropped the item off for delivery.
In the mean time she has been making posts with “high profile” customers, stylists and musicians who have received her stuff and loved it and shared posts by customers with a large following wearing her stuff. She even posted saying she isn’t taking any more orders, as she is full for months to come.
While she was making these posts, the shipping company had tried to contact her on my behalf but didn’t receive a response. I waited a couple of days and then emailed her directly to follow up, but I didn’t hear back. After about 3 days, I then went on to message her on Instagram on Wednesday, explaining the situation but telling her that I am quite short of cash right now and would like to be refunded if she can’t fulfil the order and I understand it’s a difficult time for her right now. In the meantime, she was posting regularly to her story and made a big post where she responded to a number of the people who commented.
I tried contacting my bank to get a refund, but because it was over 30 days they couldn’t issue it to me.
I was very angry about this and sent her a pretty blunt message telling her that I think she was being very selfish by ignoring me.
She finally responded and saying due to mental problems she cant return me my money.