'I was done with it': Small business owner in Wake County takes refund frustrations to social media

A Wake County small business owner said she faced months of frustrations while trying to get a refund. She eventually resorted to posting social media.

Courtney Bowman, the owner of Raleigh Cheesy wanted to make ordering easier for her customers and employees at her Raleigh and Apex shops.

"We hadn't found a way to sync online orders and the point of sale in the store. We were manually importing it into a spreadsheet for everybody to see it was just very complicated. So we were looking for basically something that seamlessly put it all in one place," Bowman said.

Bowman thought she found the answer in Toast, a point-of-sale system.

"We met with a salesperson who was very optimistic. They promised it could do basically everything we were needing it to do," Bowman said.

She ordered the system and said after hours of training on it, Bowman said they ran into problems.

"It was the most complicated thing to set up. The sales rep had to come set it up. They came back multiple times during the week. It was so not user-friendly. We couldn't make edits on the orders," she said.

Bowman said they kept having problems and she gave up trying to make it work.

"I was done with it. I was like we can't we're a small business we can't afford, like affording to be losing active sales."

Bowman said she then decided to apply for a refund and returned the system.

According to Bowman, she followed the steps to cancel the service, which included using the shipping labels the company sent her to return everything so she could get her refund. More than a month later, despite calls and these emails from Toast promising a refund, it didn't happen.

"We are a small business like the initial investment we made, and that was huge was very big for us; to get that kind of a refund back like we need that. We're a functioning small business, and we're just getting the second store off the ground."

With no sign of a refund from Toast, Bowman went on social media and aired her frustrations.

ABC11 Troubleshooter Diane Wilson also reached out to Toast. While no one from Toast got back to Diane, it didn't take long for a company representative with Toast to reach out to Bowman and that company representative apologized for the delays and then also processed her full refund.

"I'm mostly hoping it promotes some sort of change there. It will allow them to handle their customer service better," Bowman said.

Bowman said she can now focus on running her business and no longer has the stress of trying to get a refund.

If you ever find yourself in this position, the best advice is to research any system you want for your business before agreeing to purchase it. Also, keep detailed records of each step and the process when there are issues.