COLUMBUS (WCMH) — While scrolling through her Facebook feed in December, Julie Hicks saw an ad for a local cleaning company, Maid in Columbus 614, LLC.

“And I thought, this will make great Christmas presents,” Hicks said. “I’m going to get two of these cleaning packages.”

First, though, Hicks did some research.

“I looked up some reviews,” she said. “I wanted to see what other people had to say. They seemed to be fairly good reviews. I didn’t see anything with red flags.”

Hicks contacted the company through Facebook, spoke with the owner, Kayla Padilla Reyes, and bought two cleaning packages, for $370.

Once the money was sent, Hicks contacted the company again to schedule an appointment, but couldn’t settle on a date.

Hicks reached out again, but didn’t hear back.

“I let a few more days pass and when I went back to contact her for a third time, the instant messenger said that the Facebook user was no longer available,” Hicks said. “So now I don’t have any way of reaching out to her, because that was our only point of contact. I didn’t even have her phone number.”

And the company didn’t have a website.

“That’s when I knew I had been had,” she said.

And that’s when Hicks filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.

“They responded saying that the company was dissolving, and they were working on refunds, refunding people their money,” Hicks was told.

Hicks has yet to get her money back, but she did get a letter at the end of May, from Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, requesting more information about her experience with Maid in Columbus.

“This is great because I was considering looking into small claims court,” Hicks said. “Hopefully we’ll get some resolve to this.”

A statement from Yost’s office states:

“We have 26 complaints on file against Maid in Columbus. A quick review of the complaints shows a pattern of similar alleged conduct of paying for housecleaning services with those services never delivered. At present, those complaints are being reviewed. As with everything, we can neither confirm nor deny investigations.”

Ohio Attorney General David Yost