Dozens Of Vendors Accuse Nashua Craft Store Owners Of Bouncing Checks And Not Paying Money Owed Unless They Make Facebook Posts Trashing The Business

 

This is Steven St. Cyr and Mindy Dean from Greenville, NH.

They are the owners of Hand Made-In, a craft store that sells hand made goods in the Pheasant Lane Mall in Nashua, Portland ME, and Wilton, NH.

Vendors can pay them $50-350 a month for a small shelf to sell their stuff and Hand Made-In collects a fee. They sign a contract at the beginning.

As you can see in the contract, vendors get charged if checks bounce or they pay late. But several vendors have complained that they haven’t gotten paid, while others have been given checks that bounced:

I was given a check for over $2,300 in February of 2021 and they bounced it. It took me weeks to get paid they had their family members reach out attacking me on social media because I left them negative reviews about not paying their vendors. I saved screen shots of texts back and forth messages that I’ve received from other small business they did this to. Just this week 4 other vendors have reached out to me saying they have not been paid for December or January and Steve and Mindy are at it again. Some are concerned they may be even not paying for all inventory sold as they are not sending them the inventory sheets

One vendor was owed $2,300 last year after the check they wrote bounced and couldn’t reach them. According to whoever ran the Facebook page they were in Colorado.

Unsatisfied this vendor began making Facebook posts in community groups about her experience.

After she made the post people started commenting and messaging her with similar stories.

The negative reviews they were receiving led to a plethora of positive reviews after Hand Made mobilized the troops.

 

When the vendor who made the initial post asked Mindy when she could expect to be paid Mindy accused the woman of threatening her.

Mindy told the woman that she had lots of other vendors, so she’d have to be satisfied with a partial payment of what was owed.

“Businesses like ours don’t just have money sitting in accounts for things like this.”

And by “things like this” they mean “operating expenses.” It’s like a restaurant telling the electric company that they don’t just have money lying around to pay the electric bill. If you don’t have money to pay for things, then you’re not running a business.

Mindy and Steve eventually did pay her, but only because she was posting negative reviews about Hand Made-In and they wanted them removed.

 

Eventually the woman removed her negative reviews but in the past week many other vendors have reached out to her to let her know that similar shenanigans have been taking place from people who haven’t been paid, and have been told Mindy and Steve are in Oklahoma.

So basically Hand Made-In has a habit of not paying their vendors until the vendors chase them down and post negative reviews about them. Their primary concern is getting these negative reviews taken down so that future vendors won’t be discouraged from doing business with them. Then the cycle repeats itself.