I have a small jewelry business and a woman came in who is an assistant to a famous stylist who styles shoots for Vogue, bazaar, etc. As a small business we were so excited that our items would be involved in public shoots, we spent tons of time with the woman and she spent over $3k.

Fast forward to a few weeks later she returned EVERYTHING. Although some were clearly used, we accepted the return because my employee didn’t think to question it and it was technically within our policy of 30 days. After that, we advised the employee to notify us if someone tries to make such a large return again.

She came in a second time and bought only 2 items and returned both items. The woman comes in AGAIN a few weeks later and buys another $4000 with another associate of ours. Since the first incident we changed our return policy and our website to reflect 14 days and the right to refuse worn items.

Of course, 3 weeks later she came back again to return all $4k of her purchase. My associate calls and tells us that she’s making this return and I told the woman we were refusing the return because at this point we are unable to resell these items due to them being worn, plus it’s clearly in our return policy now that the window is 14 days and she is outside of that. it’s basically scam at this point. She’s clearly styling people for shoots and returning the items.

She got very upset and said the return policy used to be 30 days and we let her know we changed it because of her. Now, she’s chargebacked the entire purchase with AMEX and said that she did return the items but we never refunded her. Amex sided with her within a DAY before I could even respond.

We’re out almost 10k because of this person now. I want to go to social media to expose her but I don’t want to be petty and to be honest I just want my items back at the minimum.

This feels unfair and I wanted to ask if anyone knows if I can appeal the charge back after the fact or could help me with advice in anyway?! Thanks in advance.