Austen Jewellers Refused to Send Paid For Item Until BBB Complaint Filed, and Tried to Scam Me Into Giving Them Info Sought By Identity Thieves Okotoks AB

On 12/31/21, I paid almost $600 in American dollars for a pendant from Austen Jewellers. It is undisputed that they received my credit card payment for this. Wayne Austen and I spoke on the phone on 12/30/21, and we agreed that he would ship the pendant on 1/4/22 and text me the FedEx tracking number. They did not ship the pendant on this date.

Since I did not get a tracking number, I texted them on 1/5/22 about this. They demanded that I send them a photo of my ID (presumably my driver's license) before they would ship the pendant. I told them I would not do this because it was high risk for identity theft and there was no legitimate reason for it. They lied and said customs required this. I get a fair number of international--including Canadian--shipments, and customs has never required this.

They then left a voicemail saying that they required IDs for all purchases greater than $1500--but this purchase is much less than that.

They also lied in the voicemail by claiming that customs would not allow packages to be sent to a UPS Store, which is my official mailing address. I have gotten many international--including Canadian--packages at this store without ever having a problem.

I then texted them saying that if I did not get a valid FedEx tracking number by the end of the day, I would report this as fraud to my credit card company. They then sent me a text with a FedEx tracking number.

When I put the tracking number into the FedEx website, the website informed me of the following:

"3:47 PM Shipment information sent to FedEx."

"3:50 PM Shipment cancelled by sender."

So Austen scheduled a shipment just to get a tracking number to text to me, and then canceled the shipment 3 minutes later. The pendant was still for sale on their website.

I then filed a Better Business Bureau (BBB) complaint and notified Austen Jewellers that I had done so. At that point, they got the pendant sent out, but Elyse Austen demanded that I “retract all previous allegations, including the BBB complaint.” I obviously will not retract statements that are true and documented by texts and voicemails.

Austen Jewellers also somehow found out my email address, even though it is not public, I never authorized anyone to give it to them, and they had no legitimate reason for having it.

Even though I finally received the pendant, it took filing a BBB complaint to make this happen.

In addition, Austen Jewellers’ demand for a photo of my ID, repeatedly lying in an attempt to find out my home address when they had a valid delivery address, and getting my private email address without my authorization, are very disturbing. Identity thieves are very interested in obtaining this kind of information.