Sunrise Herbal Remedies & Garden Girl Bath Products Fraud, Deceptive Business Practices, Credit Card Fraud Bethel & Redding Ridge Connecticut

I would like to clarify that the ownership of Garden Girl changed in January 2007. Garden Girl is no longer associated in any way with Valerie Hawk-Hoffman. At the time of the sale, none of the history of the disputes that are now public were made known to me. I have only recently discovered these issues.

At this time, Garden Girl is a completely different company than it was when it was run by Ms. Hawk-Hoffman. There is no connection to the past company, that was then tied to Sunrise Herbal Remedies and Sage Advice, aside from the logo. The ownership, manufacturers, and products are entirely new. It is run ethically and has grown tremendously due to hard work and solid business practices.

It would be greatly appreciated if future references to the questionable business practices referenced on this site that have been undertaken by Ms. Hawk-Hoffman exclude any connection to Garden Girl.

Sincerely,
Kristin Miller
Owner, the NEW Garden Girl
www.gardengirlskincare.com

Everything Valerie Hoffman wrote about the situation with Fantastibath and me personally, Lee Brown are all lies. I will address them individually as there are so many.
She states I have 60 complaints against me. Where are the complaints and who are making these? NO ONE has EVER contacted me to complain about any of the products we manufacture. We have no complaints with ANY reputable authorities. Please feel free to check, unlike Valerie, Garden Girl and Sunrise Herbal (who by the way has changed their name to "Sage Advice, Inc." probably to avoid legal problems so they quickly incorporated to reduce their exposure) I have nothing to hide. I am more than happy to send out FREE samples to potential clients, as I did with Valerie (she received 6 samples before ordering) so they can test our quality, in advance, prior to ordering from us.
She has never seen our facility so any comments about our "unsanitary conditions" are lies. Again, please tell me the sources of these complaints and whom they complained to. You can't because there aren't any. This is a complete lie. This entire rebuttal is funny, as she knows very little about Fantastibath or about me personally. The 60 complaints don't exist because we haven't even had 20 customers in the 5 years we have been in business. Out of the 20, 15 still order from us monthly. The other 5 are no longer in business.

I think the entire paragraph on me swearing and abusing my clients is so outrageous, it's funny. Why would I do that? It really makes little sense. I would love to see the so-called "Police Reports" I mean really, think about this logically, if this were true, why would someone call the police? Because they were being sweared at?

The so called Rancid product she is talking about I can only assume must be the "rosemary" body scrub, I wondered when she ordered it why on earth she would choose this smell, but she is supposed to be an herbalist. Do you go to herby school for that?

Everything we sell has preservatives in them or they don't leave our facility. Considering the fact we manufactured the items in July of 2005, even if they didn't have preservatives, it would take much longer for a liquid soap product to go rancid. It makes me wonder if the products are so bad, why are they being sold on the Gardengirl web site.

I NEVER stated I personally went to court, I said the matter went before an arbitration judge and we won.

The bottom line is she tried to get away with not paying for products she ordered and tried to rip us off.

Valerie Hoffman never contacted me after we shipped the order to The Home Shopping Network. She never complained to us about any of the products. Our phone number is still the same, why would we change it? This is a complete lie. Had there been a legitimate complaint about the quality of the products we manufacture we would have immediately investigated it and taken steps to correct the problem, replace the items or refund the price. There never was a problem, she never attempted to contact us, and she only used this as an excuse with her bank for not paying what she ordered. Oddly enough, the bank and our credit card processor, NEVER had a problem reaching us at the phone number we have always had. Again, the 68 complaints, up 8 from what she stated earlier in the same letter, are complete fabrications. Where are the complaints registered? Who is complaining? No one but Garden Girl, because their attempt at ripping us off didn't work. They keep saying we have unsanitary conditions yet have NEVER seen our facility. We make soap, how unsanitary could it possibly be? The very nature of our business is cleanliness, when you make soap it is very easy to "clean" up after yourself and would be almost impossible to have unsanitary conditions. That is why I find all the lies and fabrications so completely stupid and not well thought out.

I am so glad the issue was resolved and we were finally paid what was owed to us. I welcome anyone to find one negative comment or complaint written to a legitimate source about Fantastibath. We have nothing to hide. We pay our bills and keep our word.

Mr. Brown sounds like such a fool with this notice but I can see from the SIXTY complaints filed against him and his UNSANITARY ILLEGAL facility why he would have a grudge. He is just mad we would not accept spoiled rotten products and be ripped off like the others!

Let me start with stating Sunrise Herbal Remedies was nominated as the Entrepreneurs of the Year and runs a WONDERFUL company having LESS than ONE PERCENT complaint ratio
( UNHEARD OF these days! ) AND is a A rated organization. The company donates money to animal abuse, does complimentary programs for seniors and is run as one of the most honest, ethical organizations out there but in ALL business environments there will always be a few complainers such as Mr. Brown.

Mr. Brown has had many complaints against him and this is FAR from the FIRST time he sold spoiled, rancid goods! He is also so arorgant and rude that many have refused to do business with him as when confronted he swears, threatens and abuses his clients! SEVERAL EVEN CALLED THE POLICE ON THIS SCARY ABUSE NUT!

THIS is WHY he nearly went out of business last year and was only saved my our large order!

You can probably tell what type of guy he is by the fact that he would use that type of website as a forum to get a free add by mentioning his company name and webiste and saying to order from him in the complaint!!

The bottom line is, Fantasibath got paid the FULL amount as we trusted that Mr. Brown meant it when he said he would replace the spoiled items we had to discard. WE WON the dispute with the credit card company and agreed to pay Mr. Brown as we trusted him-he then STOLE our money!! Little did we know he has sold many spoiled items-thankfully it is going to be looked into and this should finally shut him down for good!

He never went to court with this so he again is lying-this was handled with Mastercard.
However, what happened was they made some items for us and I couldn't believe this happened they had a fould odd smell we discovered -they were RANCID. We called him and tried to work it out so they would send us replacement products sadly they were so rude and dishonest they swore at us, threatened us AND refused to correct the error so naturally we disputed it ( we found out they had over 68 complaints with other issues!! ). When they agreed to correct the items they were paid by us in full ( yet we STILL never got the correct items and had to discard all the spoiled ones). When we called and called to try and get him to do what he promised and replaced the 60 spoiled pieced he disconnected his phone!!
THAT right there tells you what a small crooked place his business is!
We have learned a HUGE lesson from this and are soooo glad his sanitary conditions are being looked into!!

PS How stupid and a typical OTHER LIE from Mr. Brown to say we were not on the tv shows and in the magazines on the website when our site posts copies of several articles and even offer clips of our wonderful owner on tv-WE ARE SUCCESSFUL -we don't need to lie Lee. PS cked it out and it terms out Mr. Brown even lied about his doctor title AND his education in the industry SCARY-STAY AWAY FROM FANTASTIBATH they are crooked and their owner is UNSTABLE not to mention you WILL NEVER FIND WORSE CHEAPER QUALITY!!