The owner of a Te Awamutu op shop has left a trail of debt and frustration with multiple locals reporting missed payments, lost clothes, and threatening messages. Reporter Mava Moayyed tracks her down in this Fair Go investigation.
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On a sunny morning in Te Awamutu the main strip, Alexander Street, is abuzz with activity. Longtime residents, Shaun Blank and Jackie Myra, enjoy a coffee at their favorite café.
But right across the road is the cause of their year-long stress. And it’s not just them; the clothing store Maggie May has created a lot of turmoil in this small town.
“I think it’s had a huge impact,” says Myra.
“It’s the stress of fighting to get what’s owed to you. It’s just so wrong,” her partner Blank agrees.
Racks of ‘the most amazing brands’
Last November, Myra took 56 items of clothing to the Maggie May store including brand-new items and a full-length rabbit fur coat.
Maggie May is a consignment shop where locals take their pre-loved clothes to be sold on their behalf. They get 40 percent of the sale price, and the store owner keeps 60 percent.
“You walk into that shop, and it’s presented fantastically. There are racks with the most amazing brands and great prices,” says Myra.
About a year ago, Maggie May was sold to Leesa Ross.
Ross operates the business under her company La-Di-Da & Co Ltd and since she took over, multiple customers have come forward with accounts of missing payments, lost clothes, and threatening messages from Ross.
Ross denies ever being threatening. She says she doesn’t have the money to pay her mounting debts but disputes the debts are as big as those owed money claim.
Her shop, still filled with clothes, has been padlocked for several weeks. Some locals still visit the store hoping to get their property back but are resigned to the fact they’re unlikely to get their share of the money for clothes that have already been sold.
“We have emailed the local constable, I have spoken to the mayor about it… We had to make it public to try and protect our community. Just simple as that,” says Myra.
When she took her clothes to Maggie May store last year, Ross told her to write down her contact details and she’d be in touch. But months passed and Myra didn’t hear anything.
“I called her, and she said to me, ‘thank God you phoned. I have lost all my data. My computer’s crashed so thank goodness that you’ve let me know your details again.’ I just took her for what she said”.
While Myra waited again for Ross to contact her, “the excuses started coming: ‘Yes, I will pay you. I’ve sold some of your items, I can’t find other items’. In the end, I handed it over to Shaun to deal with.”
In May, Shaun Blank went into the store and asked for their share of the sales for the three items Ross said had sold.
“I said if she doesn’t [pay], we’ll just take it further legally and I left the store. Then the following day, I got an email from her saying that I was threatening and that she’d been to the police about me.”
Blank denies being threatening and says he simply wanted what was owed. He emailed Ross asking for the remaining 53 items of clothing to be returned.
Over the next two weeks, Ross made excuses including that she had “better things to do with my day than look for your clothes”. Eventually she told Blank she couldn’t find them and offered $300. Blank turned down the offer as he felt the clothes were worth much more.
“I put a post up on Facebook and just asked if anyone had had bad dealings with her and I left an email address. Yeah, the emails started coming in. About ten,” he says. These emails were shared with Fair Go.
‘It was just constant excuses’
Te Awamutu mum-of-two, Kira Krieg, is one of the people who saw Blank’s post. She’d taken in about 20 items of clothing to Ross in February.
“I hadn’t received any phone calls, follow ups, texts or emails to let me know that an item had been sold or that an item had been cycling off the floor. There was no communication whatsoever.”
Krieg eventually went into the store to ask Ross about her clothing.
“She would say $80 to $120. That’s how much had been sold. So I kept giving her my bank account because obviously, for a single mum that can help. Teenagers eat a lot.”
“But it was just constant excuses, rather than just being open, honest and upfront.”
Five months later, after messaging Ross numerous times, Krieg was given $40 and three of her 20 items back. She suspects she is owed more but considers herself lucky to have received anything.
“I went ahead and posted [a] Facebook post because I was concerned – what if somebody more vulnerable than myself was taking items and never receive anything back?”
‘I will have you charged’
The post was put on the private Te Awamutu community page and Krieg didn’t name the store.
“At least 20 other women came forward saying in the comments that they had also had similar experiences, and from those experiences, they eventually named the store within the comments.”
Ross wasn’t happy. She sent a private message saying she’d give Krieg 24 hours to remove the post:
“I will have you charged. Understand this Kira I am serious. 24 hours.
Krieg went to the police.
Fair Go has spoken directly to three other women who’ve had issues with the Maggie May store. One local resident who doesn’t want to be named says Ross took 38 items of her clothing and then claimed to have lost them. When she told Ross she would complain to the police, Ross responded: “You honestly think that worries me.”
Shaun Blank and Jackie Myra took their case to the Disputes Tribunal in August. Ross did not attend.
The Tribunal ordered Ross to pay the couple $2801 by the 26 August. Ross is yet to pay.
“She just needs to have respect for her customers that have trusted her,” says Blank.
When Fair Go visited the Maggie May store earlier this month, the doors were padlocked. The owner of the building claims Ross owes a significant amount of money in rent, but Ross strongly disputes this.
Ross originally agreed to an on-camera interview but later changed her mind.
She rents a house in Te Awamutu and the owner says Ross owes seven weeks of rent. Ross accepts she owes some money to her landlord but denies it’s seven weeks’ rent.
Fair Go approached Ross at her house last week. After refusing to speak on camera, Ross agreed to answer questions on the phone.
She claimed she earlier had money to pay Blank and Myra but that was now gone.
“They had an opportunity for me to pay them out when I had money. Instead, I paid everyone else that didn’t have an issue with me. So, you know what? It’s their own fault.”
Ross was referring to the offer of $300 she made to Blank after she claimed to have misplaced their remaining 53 items of clothing.
When asked why she hadn’t returned Kira Krieg’s clothes, she claimed she’d given her “the opportunity to come down to the shop [but] she never showed.”
This is despite the fact Krieg went to the store in July but was only given three of her 20 items.
‘I just did not have the time’
When asked why she had failed to return unsold clothes to other customers who’d requested them, Ross said the clothes were “packed away… It would have taken me a week or a month to go through everything, and at that time, I just did not have the time.”
She denied being threatening to anyone, saying she was “assertive” and tells people “like it is”.
She accepted the Disputes Tribunal has ordered her to pay Blank and Myra $2801 and said she’d pay it off weekly once she had a job. She said anyone else who was owed money would also be paid back.
Krieg says the damage has been done. “She’s failed all of us, which in turn fails the community, because it gives the community a bad name.”
Myra hopes Ross doesn’t cause any more damage. “She needs to just stop, and she needs to accept what she’s done.”
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