Well, June has been a complete Sh**storm. We have so many customers who are upset with us and I am SO sorry. We will do everything we can to get you refunds or product – depending on which you choose. We really have no excuse not to have backups to our backups. 
Some of you know one of my best friends, Dana, was diagnosed with terminal cancer on April 14th. Sadly, she passed away 9 weeks after her diagnosis. It was such a big surprise to all of us. I still feel like it was a really bad dream/nightmare and like it’s not real at all. Dana was one of my loudest cheerleaders and one of our beautifully fierce Curvy Girl models. She modeled in two of our fashion shows and was in countless videos and other photography project for Curvy Girl.
Dana and I met in 2009 at an eWomen Networking Event. We hit it off immediately and we loved helping each other with our respective businesses. Since Oct. 2012, when I opened Curvy Girl, we got VERY close. And, she was one of the founding members of our Curvy Girl Book Club. Recently, she even told me that Curvy Girl Book Club changed her life because it really helped her to gain confidence in herself and her value. We became very close since 2012 and we even got into a practice of texting each other at night to check in on each other. It wasn’t 7 days a week, but pretty close to 7 days a week. We had each other’s back.
She was such an amazing friend to me and my heart was crushed when she texted me on April 14th that she had cancer. (I was her 2nd person on her medical In Case of Emergency list… her sister and than me.) Dana lived very close to me so it was easier for me to go and see her at her place or go meet her in the E.R. at Kaiser. We were in there a few times these past few months before her diagnosis. The most memorable day was President’s Day when she thought she might be having a heart attack. I raced over to meet here in the E.R. and sit with her. There is not much worse than sitting in the E.R. alone. That was the very beginning of a horrible, hellish night mare. (BTW, Dana was 46 when she passed.)
After a hellish few months of in and out of Kaiser and a nursing home, Kaiser informed us it was time for home hospice care. Dana asked about coming to live with my roommate Karen and me and my roommate Karen said YES immediately. We were going to spring Dana from the dreaded hospital and bringing her to our place in Willow Glen. The moment she arrived, she looked so much more content. And, because Karen’s home is so beautiful, clean, open and extra large – we were able to invite lots and lots of her friends and family to come by and say their goodbyes. Her beautiful sister and family advocated for her so hard. They all loved her so much. Her family and her close friends meant the world to Dana.
It was truly a privilege to be with her for her last few weeks. I am so glad we could make it work and give her all of the love we could possibly give her.
While all of this was going on we had a whole bunch of other stuff going on at Curvy Girl that I will not go into detail about here, but basically we were closed for business for about 3 weeks. I finally changed our website to reflect that we had some family emergencies going on and warned people that it could be 2 to 3 weeks before we shipped their orders. But, by that time, we already had a whole bunch of people mad at us – – RIGHTLY SO.
Our backups to our backups – all of our systems broke down. And, I am so sorry there are so many people unhappy with us. I was basically unavailable for about 3 weeks and so were all of our processes and systems. We will learn from this and improve our processes and we appreciate your feedback. A business can only grow when we hear from our customers. We are definitely open to discussions and we need and want your feedback. If you do not get your refund promptly, I do invite you to do a charge back. I know I probably would if I was in your position. No hard feelings. We hope we can improve enough to regain your trust.
I am back to work now and trying to get everything caught up and people refunded. Lots of chargebacks have happened and if I were in my customer’s place, I would have done the same thing. It is scary to shop online and even scarier to buy from an indie business like mine. I get it. We are not Amazon. We are not Macy’s. We dropped the ball and all I can hope to do is get everyone right with our books and then move forward trying to regain our customer’s trust.
If we owe you money or product you can email me at CBOUGON at Yahoo dot com – my personal email – and I will start working through each incident as they come in.
Sincerely and my apologies,
Chrystal
Dana and Me