I started a law firm with my friends. One of them will be joining us after the first of the year. I would love it if anyone who visits the site would give me their feedback. It can be seen at CRLawGroup.com. If you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to contact me on the website or here. We are bankruptcy and consumer protection attorneys. We help people file bankruptcy in Portland, Vancouver, and the surrounding metro area. We genuinely care about the people we help, and between the three of us, we have several decades of experience. If you know anyone who needs help with a bankruptcy, please do not hesitate to contact us. We like to help!
consumers
Pure Med Spa/Brite Smile
Something weird has happened. Maybe it isn’t weird. Maybe it’s normal. I don’t know. In any case, it used to be if you searched the internet for Pure Med Spa, Brite Smile, et al, my blog would come up and people could see the number of people harmed by this company. There are hundreds of comments on my posts from people who have been robbed or injured by them. Now you search these terms and my blog doesn’t show. In fact, it brings up all the current locations where these thieves are still operating. Want a burned face? How about some severe skin damage on your legs? Better yet, how about having a lot of your money stolen? If you do, head on down to your local Pure Med Spa/Brite Smile,GRF Medspa et al. Free pain and stealing awaits you!
To see those previous posts that have virtually disappeared, here are the links:
You Be Sorry You Mess with Me, Pure Med Spa!
Pure Med Spa, Brite Smile, Crooks All
Order By Bankruptcy Court for Pure Med Spa
Pure Med Spa/Brite Smile is Now Pinnacle
Pure Med Spa/Brite Smile is Now Pinnacle
I’ve heard from several sources that Pure Med Spa/Brite Smile is now Pinnacle. I’ll write more as I find out information.
Order by Bankruptcy Court for Pure Med Spa
Below is the text of the order by the bankruptcy court in the Northern District of Georgia for Pure Med Spa:
On the 17th day of December, 2009, came on to be heard the Motion to Dismiss Chapter 7 Cases of Non-Operating Debtors (the “Motion”) filed on behalf of Edwin K. Palmer, duly appointed Chapter 7 Trustee (the “Trustee”) for Pure Laser Hair Removal & Treatment Clinics Inc. (“Pure”), John Street Holdings LLC (“JSH”), GRF Medspa Broadway Plaza, LLC, GRF Medspa Redmond Town Center Mall, LLC, GRF Medspa Santa Ana, LLC, GRF Medspa Santa Clara, LLC, GRF Medspa Southcenter, LLC, GRF Medspa Washington Square Mall, LLC, GRF Medspa Village at Corte Madera, LLC, GRF Medspa Clackamas Town Center, LLC, GRF Medspa North Town Mall, LLC, GRF Medspa Alderwood Mall, LLC, GRF Medspa Bellis Fair Mall, LLC, GRF Medspa Fashion Show, LLC and GRF Medspa Sherman Oaks, LLC (collectively, the “Jointly-Administered Debtors”).
Pursuant to the Motion, the Debtor has represented that the Chapter 7 cases for each of the Jointly-Administered Debtors are to be dismissed, other than the Chapter 7 cases of In re Pure Laser Hair Removal & Treatment Clinics, Inc., Case No. 09-62038, and In re John Street Holdings LLC, Case No. 09-62039 (collectively, the “Remaining Cases”).
After reviewing the Motion and the pleadings on file, the Court is of the opinion, and so finds, that no written objections were filed with regard to said Motion and that good cause exists to grant the Motion. At the time the Motion was called for hearing, no parties appeared to object to the Motion. Accordingly, it is hereby ORDERED AND ADJUDGED as follows:
1. The Motion is GRANTED as set forth herein;
2. The above-captioned Chapter 7 case of GRF Medspa North Town Mall, LLC; Case No. 08-85315 is hereby dismissed.
3. Upon entry of this Order, the Remaining Cases will no longer be jointly-administered and any future pleadings, motions or other filings that relate to either of the Remaining Cases must be filed in the applicable Remaining Case unless and until such Remaining Cases are jointly-administered or substantively consolidated by a future Order of the Court.
4. Notwithstanding this dismissal, all orders previously entered in this Chapter 7 case or any of the Chapter 7 cases of the Jointly-Administered Debtors shall remain in full force and effect.
Why Hire a Bankruptcy Attorney?
Filing bankruptcy can be one of the most difficult choices a person makes. Often you have been struggling to meet your financial obligations. Something happens and the house of cards comes tumbling down, leaving you faced with a proposition that seems like failure. It is difficult and frustrating. You go to see an attorney and realize that even though you have no money to pay your bills, the attorney wants over a thousand dollars or more to represent you.
You discover there may be an alternative. You could pay someone much less to prepare your petition for you. You think Why not? Your case isn’t complicated, at least you don’t think it is. You pay a few hundred dollars and file your case. You may be okay. More likely, after things go very wrong you will realize that you should have hired an attorney.
Bankruptcy is more complicated than it appears on the surface. People who have seen or attended a bankruptcy hearing testify that the meetings are often over quickly. What is not apparent from the meeting is that most of the complicated work is done before the meeting takes place. The hearing should go smoothly if everything was done right ahead of time.
Having sat through countless hearings while representing debtors in the bankruptcy cases, I can assure you that bankruptcy is often more complicated than it looks, especially since the changes that took place in the bankruptcy laws in 2005.
Bankruptcy is more than what bills you owe. People often do not realize that all of their belongings are assets that may or may not be exempt. Other intangible things such as claims, insurance policies, and retirement accounts could also be assets. You may fail to disclose an item that could have been protected, only to lose it because of the lack of disclosure. The actions taken in the years and months leading up to bankruptcy can have consequences, and can cause unintended ramifications for friends and family members.
Every consumer bankruptcy case is assigned to a trustee. That person is responsible for ensuring the interests of your creditors are protected. When you hire a bankruptcy attorney, this person is there to represent you. Your attorney can help you to determine which debts you can discharge or pay off. Your attorney will help you protect assets that are not exempt, and will help you to do so legally. Your attorney will make sure you list every asset and that every asset that can be is protected. Your attorney will help you ensure that bankruptcy is what it is intended to be: a fresh start.
When you pay an attorney, you are paying that person to ensure you file everything you are supposed to file, turn over all the paperwork you are required to turn over, help you maximize your assets and minimize your losses, and to represent you against your creditors. In short, you are paying for the best fresh start you can muster.
What can a petition preparer do? Legally, all a petition preparer can do is fill in the blanks on your bankruptcy documents. If you choose to pay someone hundreds of dollars for this service you are, in effect, paying hundreds of dollars for data entry service.
If a petition preparer does more than enter information into your petition, that person is breaking the law. Both federal bankruptcy laws and state rules governing the practice of law forbid anyone except a licensed attorney from giving you advice.
Why? To protect you, the consumer. If an attorney messes up your case, there are protections in place to help you. Attorneys in Oregon,Washington, and many other states are required to carry malpractice insurance. They can also be sanctioned by their bars for failure to adhere to a basic code of conduct. There are no systems in place to help you if a document preparer messes up your petition or gives you erroneous advice. You may be able to file a complaint claiming they practiced law without a license, and while the person may face fines or sanctions, you will not get anything to cover your losses.
Hiring an attorney to represent you during your bankruptcy can be expensive. After suffering through financial difficulties and falling behind on your financial obligations, handing over a large sum of money to an attorney can seem like a real hardship. But bankruptcy is not an area to shortchange yourself. Filing bankruptcy is your opportunity to make a fresh start. Make it the best start it can be by hiring a good attorney to represent, protect, and advise you. Think of it as your first investment in a new financial future.
I am a bankruptcy attorney. I help consumers file for chapter 7 and chapter 13 bankruptcy in Oregon and SW Washington.
Pure Med Spa Again
In spite of the rather large number of comments I received on my posts about Pure Med Spa, not one of the commenters responded to my request to interview them for an article I am doing on the company. I am posting this in an effort to find people who were harmed by Pure Med Spa, employees who would like to tell their story, or even those who had a great experience. If you would like to speak to me, please comment on this post and I will contact you. If you would like to remain anonymous, that request will be honored.
Thanks much.
Original posts:
America the Ugly
Milla’s dad informed me that a store I was looking for was in Longmont, Colorado. Considering I have explored the south and the east of Boulder fairly well, and also considering Milla was spending the day with her dad, I decided to traipse on over to see if I could find the store and check out the town.
No offense to Longmontites, but what a disappointment. Longmont is covered in ugly, bland, spread-out big box stores and their smaller corporate cousins. The houses were modern bland equivalencies, the sort preferred by developers who buy their blueprints from Plans-R-Us. Maybe I turned around to leave too soon, but I did not discover a prettier town center. I had to get out. The place sucked the life out of me. Like so many truly homogenized American towns, the place had no aesthetics, no character, nothing. No wonder so many Americans are depressed.
Going to Longmont, Colorado was exactly the same as going to Redding, California, which was exactly the same as going to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, which was exactly the same as going to Beaverton, Oregon, only flatter. With few exceptions, American towns have zero character. It is impossible to tell you are in another city in another state other than the fact that the license plates are different. People lament the lack of community in America today; perhaps part of the problem is that we can’t tell one community from the other any more.
Longmont resembled the tri-cities area of eastern Washington nearly identically. One thing Oregon has that seems to be sorely lacking in both Washington and Colorado is an urban growth boundary. In both Colorado and Washington, buildings sprout seemingly out of nowhere, randomly placed wherever the landowner had a whim, regardless how well it fits with the landscape or where a town ends. Lots of developers in Oregon bitch about the growth boundary, but I’m all for it. It forces people to be creative with the space they do have. In towns in Oregon where the boundary has been extended, the decimated orchards and fields are replaced with cloned McMansions, cloned townhomes, and hideous utilitarian corporate chains. In the coming weeks, yards will be filled with hideous, plastic, walmart holiday atrocities. Wretched.
While I’m not a huge fan of overly ornate, clean has translated into purely utlitarian, which basically means completely ugly. Who knows, maybe clean wasn’t the culprit. Perhaps it has more to do with rape and pillage development, make as much money as possible and get out. Whatever happened to wanting to make something look nice? Whatever happened to originality? It was all sacrificed at the alter of the almighty dollar.
There is that Cree proverb that states, “Only when the last tree has withered, the last fish has been caught, and the last river has been poisoned, will you realize you cannot eat money.” It seems when money is the only consideration or the highest consideration, not only are life and nature sacrificed, so too is beauty. What a shame.
We should change the name of the song “America the Beautiful.” It does not hold true any longer. We are now America the Boring, America the Utilitarian, America the Ugly. We don’t need some futuristic, sci-fi warning of a world in a plastic bubble to worry about. We’re already there.
Let’s Eliminate Pure Med Spa
See my post on the Pure Med Spa bankruptcy here.
I am writing an article on Pure Med Spa. For info, please click here.
Because I have received so many messages in response to this post, and since it seems not many of these commentators have read my later piece on the Pure Med Spa bankruptcy filing, I have included this paragraph to inform any readers of that filing. Effectively, if you received your treatment or they stole money from you BEFORE they filed their bankruptcy case in 2009, this means you may NOT file a lawsuit against Pure Med Spa, except through the bankruptcy court, and there only for certain causes of action. You may NOT contact the company in any way about the money they owe you. You may NOT call the CEO and harass him. In short, you may not do anything to them. That is the point of the bankruptcy stay, to protect the company from creditors, and I absolutely support this, even when the filer is as abominable as Pure Med Spa. The same laws that protect Pure Med Spa protect you if you ever had to file, and speaking from experience as a bankruptcy attorney, that relief means a lot to people who are being harassed night and day by creditors. Don’t think this means you don’t have options, just follow the rules to ensure you don’t violate federal law.
Original Post Let’s Eliminate Pure Med Spa:
I admit it, I do make my title statement without actual and personal knowledge of how well they perform their spa services. I have only my customer-no-service experience with them stealing my money to go on (I am planning to sue here in a couple of weeks once I get the paperwork together). However, Pure Med Spa needs to be run out of town on a rail.
In spite of my lack of spa services, I can glean from the feedback I get here that Pure Med Spa has a lot of people really upset. See my previous post on them here. By far, I get more hits on my blog because of Pure Med Spa than any other. WordPress has a feature where we can see the searches people use to find us. Every single day, without fail, someone connects to my post on Pure Med Spa because they searched for it with some derogatory descriptor like Pure Med Spa complaints or Pure Med Spa sucks or Pure Med Spa steals money or Pure Med Spa ripoff. These are all actual searches and the list is by no means complete. I received a comment from a woman asking me to contact her about her horrible experience. I received others describing their horrible experiences.
Here is a quote:
I paid Pure Med Spa thousands of dollars, in return received cancelled appointments, broken equipment, refusal to honor the packages I purchased, and overbooking, in addition to extreme difficulty and delay in even getting an appointment due to overselling and short staffing…. hat really bothers me is the company’s indifference and arrogance. It seems to just be an effort to take money from clientele without accountablity to perform the services people pay for. Michelle
Here is another:
I’ll kick Pure Med Spa’s ass too. They are liers (sic). They sold me a treatment which they had known that the machine will burn my skin because of my skin type. But they still talked me into buying it. Then later, they told me the machine would burn my skin, and they are trying to give me some other more expensive treatment which I do not need at all. They have a stupid ‘no-refund’ policy, they would not give my money back, that is for sure. Lucy
Considering the number of people who are searching for Pure Med Spa because of problems with the place, I would suspect there may be enough people out there who could file a class action lawsuit against them. That said, even though I’m an attorney, I know very little about class actions, especially since the feds made them harder to file. I do think though, that someone ought to look into it. That place needs to have its ass kicked straight out of business.
You be Sorry You Mess with Me Pure Med Spa!
See my post on the Pure Med Spa bankruptcy here.
I am writing an article on Pure Med Spa. For info, please click here.
Because I have received so many messages in response to this and my other Pure Med Spa post, and since it seems not many of these commentators have read my later piece on the Pure Med Spa bankruptcy filing, I have included this paragraph to inform any readers of that filing. Effectively, if you received your treatment or they took your money BEFORE they filed for bankruptcy in 2009, this means you may NOT file a lawsuit against Pure Med Spa, except through the bankruptcy court, and there only for certain causes of action (which include fraud). You may NOT contact the company in any way about the money they owe you. You may NOT call the CEO and harass him. In short, you may not do anything to them. That is the point of the bankruptcy stay, to protect the company from creditors, and I absolutely support this, even when the filer is as abominable as Pure Med Spa. The same laws that protect Pure Med Spa protect you if you ever had to file, and speaking from experience as a bankruptcy attorney, that relief means a lot to people who are being harassed night and day by creditors. Don’t think this means you don’t have options, just follow the rules to ensure you don’t violate federal law.
Original Post You be Sorry You Mess with Me Pure Med Spa:
I kick your ass little med spa stupid place.
I have lots of lawyer girlfriends. Because I am a lawyer, of course I have lots of lawyer friends. It goes with the territory, you know? What I find amusing is how often my lawyer girlfriends have to pull out the lawyer card as part of their ass-kicking when some stupid company fucks them over. My lawyer boyfriends do not seem to have this problem, and I mean friends who are boys, not actual boyfriends. I only have one boyfriend and he is not a lawyer, thank GOD…anyway, I digress. I think sometimes us girls get hassled by companies who would not hassle boys just because they think us girls are pushovers. Small problem. We are not all pushovers, especially lawyer girls. Lawyer girls in my experience have a little extra something that likes to kick asses, if you know what I mean. Something of that ass-kicking mentality pushes us to do things like go to law school and become lawyers. I am sure there are other professions like this as well, but as a group, my lawyer girlfriends are ass kickers.
ANYWAY. So my friend Kathleen has had many instances where she has had to kick company ass. It’s fun to listen to her because you can tell by her story that she is always right and the company is always wrong and I am not being facetious here, she really is. Like the time the bank told her she could have her deposit in 7 business days so she deposited a rather large sum based on that assertion, then the receipt the bank gave her after the deposit said she could not have that money for like two or three weeks or something. Um. NO. Bank wrong. Kathleen kick ass. Or another time, I don’t remember the details, but she was bidding at a furniture auction and bid on a piece of furniture and the auction people gave the furniture to someone else who bid earlier. Kathleen kick ass again. I think she lost on that one but the company was sorry they had crossed her and her husband looked sheepish. The company was wrong, no doubt in my mind. Fuckers. I would have kicked ass too. Kind of like when the bank in Hawaii thought I was a terrorist and would not give me an account even with a very large sum of money, a valid driver’s license, a social security card, and a passport. Very large ass kicking there. I ended up at another bank. Upset Lara. Oh, and then there was the time the air filter company tried to mess with my lawyer friend Sara. Their ad said Free In Home Estimates. So they came and did their estimate and it was too high so of course Sara used another company. Then they tried to charge Sara. Um. No. Sara pointed out the various laws their attempts to collect violated. Needless to say, they didn’t get the money they did not deserve. Jerks.
ANYWAY. So the point of this rambling diatribe is that I gave this med spa fifty bucks to hold my appointment back in July. They said We need a fifty dollar deposit to hold your appointment. If you don’t show or cancel within 24 hours of the appointment, we keep the fifty bucks. Okay. I can deal with that. Well, I called to cancel the same day I made the appointment.
Oh, we don’t do refunds. This isn’t a refund. I didn’t get anything. It is outside the 24 hour period, I want my money. Well we won’t give it to you. Okay then. Have you heard of the Oregon Health Spa Act, ORS 646A.030? It allows the right of rescission of any spa service within 72 hours of requesting or paying for service. Um, let me get my manager. Yeah, you do that. So the next several conversations were not pleasant. I described all the things I would do to them, including writing about their spa on my blog (doing that now), calling the Oregon Attorney General’s office, and telling Clackamas Town Center, the mall where they are located. During all this, I also promptly sent off the written notice requesting the rescission, as required by statute. Finally the manager spoke to someone who would allow a refund. She told me the money would be in my account by the end of the day. Nope, not there. I called again. Within three days. Nope, not there. It is now three and a half months later and still, no refund.
So I’m going postal on their asses. I filed my complaint with the Oregon AG. I am going to call the mall where they are located. And I’m writing about them here. I did some research and discovered MANY forums lamenting the many problems with Pure Med Spa. They are a terrible company. They have huge problems giving refunds or returning deposits. They also use technicians who are not properly licensed and forget to follow health regulations when performing spa services (this information comes from the forums, not my personal experience). Too bad I did not know this when I walked by them in the mall. They are counting on people not knowing this when they walk by in the mall. This is part of why I’m going to tell the mall. I don’t know if the mall will care, but there should be some public service message to let patrons know the company they might deal with is a giant crook who will steal their money and could possibly perform some atrocious health violation on them or something.
The problem with stupid companies assuming customers are stupid is that their assumptions are often WRONG. Guess what? I know where to look for the statutes about stupid asses like you. I am happy to let others know there are statutes out there to protect consumers from shitty companies. Oregon and many other states have rights of rescission statutes in many areas (though not in car sales, as is often believed). Anyway, in Oregon anyway, there are statutes to allow you to change your mind about gym contracts, time share contracts, things sold door to door, certain home sale contracts, and other consumer contracts. Usually you just have to send them a letter. It’s not difficult, people just don’t know this is their right. It would be better if the statutes required these jackasses to post something prominently stating as much, but for now, at least the laws are there so if some crappy company like Pure Med Spa tries to rip you off, you can fight them if necessary. Fees to sue them and damages for causing you the trouble are often included in the remedies, so all you are out is your time. The next time a company gives you trouble, go look through your state’s consumer statutes, you might find you have certain rights. It is so empowering when some ginormous company who couldn’t give a shit about you tries to steal from you and you kick them in the ass.
Ranting
As a bankruptcy attorney, I dealt day to day with the fallout of the “sub-prime” mortgage crisis. It’s getting worse. ARM loan rates go up, people have less money to pay their other bills, they get behind, call the bankruptcy attorney. I heard story after story, helped when I could, but the system is broken. There are no safety nets for people.
What I find ironic, and what really actually pisses me off, is that these huge banks have been screaming Deregulation! Deregulation! Deregulation! for years and they got what they wanted. Credit card companies do what they want when they want. Sub-prime home loans are commonplace. What few laws that are left are ignored by greedy lenders looking to suck in any consumer desperate enough to want a home. And now the house of cards is falling all around us and what do the big banks do? Go crying to Congress to fix it for them.
Two years ago these banks asked Congress to punish the shit out of consumers filing for bankruptcy claiming they were losing too much and consumers were getting away with something. Consumers need to take better responsibility for their financial decisions! They need to pay for their mistakes! Congress jumped on board and passed some of the worst legislation ever designed. It ignored reality and served a very rich few. It has not stopped bankruptcy, it has only made it a bigger pain in the ass. Now the banks are suffering from their own stupidity and greed and they want Congress to fix it for them. What happened to RESPONSIBILITY? What happened to paying for your own MISTAKES? How about we create legislation like the bankruptcy laws and stick it to their asses? Oh no, they’ll whine. You can’t do THAT. It will hurt the ECONOMY! Fuck, the economy is a mess. Anything that looks like stability is an illusion. Consumer purchases are paid for by borrowed money. The US is in debt up to its eyeballs. It’s going to come crashing to the ground. It is inevitable. Congress can pretend to try and bail out these stupid fucking banks, but it’s only going to be a bandaid.
Capitalism is a triangle. It requires a bottom to keep the shit running. It also requires a down to every up. We have been in a pretend up for a very long time. It’s going to come back down. Everyone who is on the deregulation boat is going to get what they deserve. There is a reason we don’t want pure laissez-faire capitalism. There is a reason we need to regulate. We only need to look at China to see what capitalism without regulation looks like…children working horrible hours for worthless pay, no safety standards, a good deal of the country in poverty while a rich few sit back with guns, shooting those who dare to question them.
Okay. I have to stop. I’m getting all irritated. I just find it ironic that the same banks who worked so damn hard for deregulation are the same ones that want us to bail them out.
Random Thoughts on Everything and Nothing 