Complaint Review: Michelle Wendell - Chic Little Devil Style House

I have complete sympathy with anyone who's had a problem with Michelle Wendell.  I had a similar bad experience with her.  I live in the UK and bought an item from her eBay store, which I never received.  Each time I emailed her, she promised to track the item, but then never got back to me.  This went on for weeks.  At one point, she even told me that the item hadn't been despatched until 3 weeks after I'd paid for it (she blamed her shipper), so I took her word and continued to wait.  Eventually, she stopped replying to my emails.  Because I'd waited so long, I'd unwittingly missed the 45 day deadline to claim my money back through Paypal ($146).  Having lost my money and with Ms Wendell now ignoring my emails, I felt it was reasonable to leave her negative feedback.  She responded by leaving untrue negative feedback for me, claiming that I'd never got in touch with her to tell her the item hadn't arrived and she was completely unaware that there was a problem!!  Then she tried to pursuade me that if I withdrew the feedback I'd left her, she'd refund me in full (but she said I had to withdraw the feedback first).  I didn't believe her, so refused.  Her emails then became more verbally abusive and rude.  I eventually managed to get the feedback she'd left for me removed by eBay under their 'defamatory feedback' rule (although they didn't make it easy - I had to go to my local court and get a statutory declaration of defamation).

Even though I explained my situation to eBay (and Paypal), providing proof of my payment and correspondance with Ms Wendell which proved my side of the story (she couldn't provide proof that she'd sent the item), it took over a year before eBay eventually agreed to refund me my money.

Ms Wendell always claims to have evidence to support her version of events, but she never actually seems to provide anybody with this proof in any of the cases against her.  Instead, she just keeps making excuse after excuse and telling lies on top of lies in the face of overwhelming proof against her.  She keeps going on about her 11 years of trading and her 98% positive feedback but, as she states herself, she has such high sales that this 2% actually represents a substantial number of customers over the years and amounts to 1000s of dollars worth of fraud (not to mention that there is about 2% neutral feedbacks, many relating to serious issues, plus the fact that her neg feedback percentage would be much higher were it not for the number of negatives retracted by people desperate to get a refund from her - she has and unusually high number of 'revised feedbacks' showing on her feedback page).

Like another UK buyer who has posted a response to a silmilar Rip off Report about Ms Wendell, I would urge anyone who's had a bad experience with her to file a report at the LA City Attorney's Office, using the link this person has kindly provided (http://www01.smgov.net/communication/cityforms/consumer-complaint.htm), as well as emailing your account to Paula Rockenstein (Paula.Rockenstein@SMGOV.NET), who is apparently investigating the matter - hopefully if enough people email then some action will be taken over this dreadful seller.