REFUNDS PAID TOO LATE TO AVOID FINE
Sales made but no stock
A Gold Coast business woman was paid thousands of dollars for art and home decor despite not having any stock to sell, leaving clients across Australia and New Zealand out of pocket.
Mother Jamie Pamela Miller pleaded guilty in Southport Magistrates Court to eight counts of accepting payment and failing to supply goods.
Miller was paid a total of $9405.50 by eight clients for art pieces over a 15-month period advertised on her Paradise Point-based online business Earth Homewares.
It included one Western Australian who forked out $5174 for three art pieces paid for in November 2021.
In December 2022, Miller invoiced a NSW client $1109.95 for a sculpture and in January last year she charged another person $1044.90.
Despite receiving full payment upfront, Miller failed to deliver the pieces within a “reasonable time”, the court was told.
Department of Justice and Attorney-General principal legal officer Mitchell Duncan, on behalf of the Office of Fair Trading, said Miller also “demonstrated an unwillingness to engage with customers by being unavailable and uncontactable via email and phone on several occasions”.
Mr Duncan said Miller had continued to accept new sales requests despite ignoring calls and emails from existing clients regarding estimated delivery times and refunds.
A self-represented Miller told the court she chose to continue accepting sales after a fraudulent charge to her business account in 2022 had put her “thousands and thousands of dollars” out of pocket.
Miller said Covid-19 supply chain disruptions had caused “extensive delays” of up to 12 months on all her products, with a significant number of her clients requesting refunds.
“I think in March, I spent more money refunding customers than I had come in,” she told the court.
“I’ve even been putting my personal income into refunding people.
“It’s not that I didn’t want to refund (the eight clients), I simply didn’t have the money to refund them in that time,” Miller said.
Of the eight clients, Miller eventually provided refunds to four of them, including one client who waited 14 months for a refund of $332.90.
Mr Duncan informed the court that on Monday – just hours before her appearance – Miller refunded the remaining outstanding $7909.80 and no further restitution was being sought.
Magistrate Dzenita Balic said while the outstanding refunds had been repaid, the significantly lengthy delay warranted “punishment”.
“There has to be some kind of punishment so that others don’t come along and say ‘Well it’s fine if a year later I come back with the money and pay it back’,” Ms Balic said.
“That’s just not the way it works.”
The magistrate ordered Miller pay a $9000 fine and $103.90 in legal costs referred to SPER.
No conviction was recorded.
I’ve even been putting my personal income into refunding people. It’s not that I didn’t want to refund (the eight clients), I simply didn’t have the money to refund them in that time.
Jamie Miller