Ivan and I feel pretty naive after being ripped off. We were only trying to be nice and build a cake business. But there are those people out there who take advantage of that and we had to learn a lesson the hard way.

We were approached by a woman called Melissa Harvey a few months ago for a wedding cake. She worked for an outfit called Purple Turtle International, an events organising company based on the Costa del Sol and in Hertfordshire, one of the home counties north of London. They were all excited about the possibility of doing business with us and were looking for a specific wedding cake for an upcoming wedding. We were happy to oblige of course; she came up to meet us here in the hotel one busy evening with her boss, a woman called Joy Gunning, a Scottish woman and partner with her husband in this company called Purple Turtle International.

They showed up bringing lots of gifts of pens, paper, mouse pads, catalogues with their products and were very effervescent in their enthusiasm. They stayed for some tapas and said how our business was so lovely and they would love to send some for their clients our way. They went ahead and ordered the cake with a tasting to start.

To make a long story short, we agreed to provide the wedding cake and deliver it as well to a location on Estepona, which is on the Costa del Sol, about 75 minutes from the hotel down the mountain. When I asked for payment, they said they could pay 50% on delivery and the remainder when their client paid. This should have set off alarm bells for me but it didn't. This is a major sign of just not having the experience required to run a business. Even now, months later this sets my head on fire for being such an amateur. I got half the amount due from Joy who so sweetly promised to get the remainder to us in no time. Her assistant Mel Harvey was just as much a liar as Joy was as she quit her job with them after this wedding and that was that.

Joy claimed that her assistant up and left her without notice nor any transition time and so she did not have our invoice and did not know how much she owed us and everything was in a right mess. I'm sure Mel left in a hurry as her boss is a thief and she did not want to work for any more, no doubt. Next thing, Joy is in Scotland for weeks on end due to family problems that I am supposed to have sympathy for. Being the nice person I am, I did have sympathy for it but I began to think as it was getting to be months later and no payment nor equipment we left as well (without a deposit... another amateur point to be fuming about), how professional was she for not making sure her business obligation were met even if she had family issues.

I asked her about it in an email and she sent me a very nasty response about how she has her priorities and family was first and she could do without an email like mine and in fact, this was my own fault that I was not being paid.

Well, she had a point there, not the way she meant it but the way I saw it. Of course she took advantage of us because she is the type of business person that is the slime of the business world; making all kinds of ridiculous promised not even asked for, kind of OTT, acting always with a nice face and being pleasant right up to the moment of payment. Of course she was not going to pay me the amount due, she most likely never planned to pay me as we were naive enough to leave a cake without getting full payment up front. We could have threatened to the cake back with us if they did not pay and that would have been that... I think we would have had our cash in hand had we done that... but naive is the word here yet again.

It should have set off alarms as well when I checked out their website and it was "under construction"; today, one cannot find an address on their site nor contact telephone numbers, also a warning sign of a shifty outfit. I should have had reservations when their phone numbers kept changing. There were several tell tale signs that I just did not cotton on to.

So all I can do now is put Joy Gunning's name in my blog several times as well as her business name of Purple Turtle International in the hopes that when others check on Google to see if Joy Gunning and Purple Turtle International are legitimate, they will come across this blog entry and realise that Joy Gunning is a liar and a thief; her outfit called Purple Turtle International is also a fraud and they prey upon nice people. They are the types of Brits on the Costa del Sol who give the Brits that bad name that they have, ripping off each other (Brits that is) and non-suspecting innocents like Ivan and I.

Well, we have learned a lesson the hard way and hopefully Purple Turtle International (also known as First Consultants Ltd) and Joy Gunning will soon be seeing my blog entry in Google results and help to protect others that they may be preying upon. All one has to do really is look at their website to know they are a fraudulent outfit. She even said to me a couple of times that they were for real.... should that not have said something to us to beware of these people?

Enough of them now. I am writing this to get it out of my system as every time I think about it, I get hot under the collar.

Well, we are having a good Easter week so far. The weather is co-operating, warm and sunny, not hot. Clear blue skies, fantastic light and shadows. Ronda is looking pretty good as well; the hills around Ronda are extremely green at the moment, that vivid, rich green that jumps off the hillside and grabs you.

We've had a couple of adventurous kids and their mother go into the pool yesterday and today; the temps are warm-ish but the water in the pool is not...they were just giving their circulatory systems a jump, I think!

The hotel is full tonight and tomorrow with a couple of rooms available for Saturday night... still may get a taker or two for them at the last minute.

We just placed an ad in the latest edition of the "Olive Press", a locally published English language newspaper that I am not all that fond of as it always making Spain look terrible, from an English point of view and I know there are plenty of people who disagree with what's written in it, including many Brits.; it's not the subject, just the presentation. Nevertheless, we got a very nice offer to be in their special edition of restaurants and decided to go ahead and advertise. We have already had a foursome in for lunch who said they came as a result of the ad.... one can never tell what kind of result one will get from print advertising.

We are also currently running some radio ads on Radio Andalucia.es as we got a great offer on that as well for 12 months of adverts, four times daily... we've not seen any results from that yet but one can hope.

We have a very nice French family with us at the moment, spending a week with us. Next Sunday, a couple from Stockholm arrive who were with us last year. They've even written to us in advance saying they are tired of the long winter of Sweden and look forward to their holiday here in Juzcar.

Well, that's it for today, just a short entry for the blog.