The abrupt closure of a downtown Lethbridge business has community members upset, and left with a lot of questions. Former employees and customers are claiming they haven't been compensated for their work or their belongings left at Redtag Kids.

Redtag Kids customer Amber Keller, a mother of 4 young children, says she's out a big store credit at the recently closed business. 

"It's kind of like money is just being thrown away,” said Keller. “We dropped off used clothes there, so that we could get a credit to purchase more clothes there. Now we have a $200 credit that we can’t use."

The store, which buys gently used children’s items for re-sale, had its doors shuttered October 12 at both its Lethbridge and Langdon locations.

CTV Lethbridge approached Jenn Wright-Hall, one of the nine employees that worked for Redtag Kids. Wright-Hall, an assistant manager, says the landlord entered the store and kicked her and another employee out in the midst of their shift, stating the rent had not been paid.

Wright-Hall has been in contact with the owners and was assured she would receive her final paycheque and record of employment in the mail by October 20.

As of Thursday afternoon, Wright-Hall has not received her final cheque and instead wass erved a termination notice from the business. 

While the stores are closed, the Redtag Kids website is still up and running. 

CTV spoke to staff at the Better Business Bureau to see what people can do in situations like these. BBB representatives say consumers need to ensure they get everything in writing, from contact information, dates of agreement and possible expiry, warranties and more.

"It would give them more options obviously because they'd be able to take that general information, certainly the contact information more importantly, and would be able to process with whatever they need to do,” said Ron Riemann with the Better Business Bureau. “If it has to go to a small claims procedure then they have that written information with them."

Riemann says the BBB has processes to help with mediation between consumers or businesses. He also says consumers need to know the moment a dispute becomes a legal matter, they can't involve themselves.

CTV Lethbridge reached out to the owners of Redtag Kids for further explanation. Company officials provided the following statement:

"On Wednesday October 12th the landlord entered the premises and kicked out the staff and customers in the store and gave a notice that he was terminating the lease. He immediately changed the locks and gave us no access to the store. We contacted the landlord's lawyer to get access to the store and the lawyer forwarded our email to the landlord directly. The landlord wouldn't reply to arrange or accept a time for Redtag Kids staff to enter the premise to collect our belongings. After several failed attempts to get access, we notified the landlord's lawyer that there are items in the store that aren't the property of Redtag Kids Inc. and belong to the public. We never thought we were locked out for good so I had instructed the staff that as soon as we get access to the store, the first thing we need to do is go through the list of customers that we currently have items for in the store and let them know to come pickup their items immediately as we were locked out of store and landlord terminated lease. Unfortunately, to date the landlord has not allowed us access. Furthermore, the landlord's lawyer notified Redtag Kids Inc. that he is suing for the remainder of the lease plus damages totaling over $200k. Redtag Kids Inc. was forced to immediately cease operations and close down. 

Around 10 customers were unfortunately not given access to the store after this happened to come collect their items or offers. We didn't have a record other than inside the store or we would have called them even from our homes to ensure they got their items back or could have updated those customers as to what was happening.

A customer that emailed said they ran into the landlord and had "a very nasty experience." He told the customer that he was liquidating everything in the store. We had not been notified of this at all and had no control over this happening. I'm quite shocked at the landlords actions. We worked very hard to purchase thousands of dollars of product from the public and it saddens me that this has just been taken. We care about the public not receiving their items back

There's no customers that weren't paid for product that was sold to Redtag Kids Inc. and the remaining 10 customers that had product at the store we hadn't made an agreement yet to purchase their product and under normal circumstances they would simply collect the items we didn't purchase. In this case, unfortunately the customers weren't given access to he store to collect their items.

Regarding store credit and gift cards, due to the landlord's intentions to sue Redtag Kids Inc. it has caused the company to be insolvent.

There was a ongoing disagreement with the landlord regarding certain things about the lease agreement and expenses for utilities at the store. In the first month we were open in September we received an electricity bill for almost $10,000 for one month. This was not expected. The landlord never disclosed that the electricity bill would be so absurdly high to run the store. With an electricity bill like this, it would put any small business out of business. It makes me wonder if the previous tenants had a similar issue and closed down in the past. The building seems to not have been updated in years and he somehow gets away with it. I would hate for this to happen to another small business - tenants beware.

Lethbridge store - All employees were always paid on time. The last pay period was interrupted when Redtag Kids Inc. seized operating and became insolvent last Wednesday after the termination of the lease and pending lawsuit. 

Langdon store - All employees were paid for each pay period prior to the closing of store, except there was one employee for one pay period that was supposed to be covered this pay due to a legitimate administrative error.

The Langdon store was a completely different situation. Due to lack of sales we had originally planned to move locations into a busier spot in Calgary. The staff contacted all the customers giving them the opportunity to collect their items that we were not purchasing. After having to seize operation in Lethbridge and the pending lawsuit, we have had to close both the store locations at this time.
 

I would advise people to contact the landlord and see what he's done with their items as we have no access and no knowledge of what he's done or planning on doing with the public's items as well as Redtag Kids' items.
 

Any delay in calls to customers to receive their offers while we were operating was for one of two reasons: Either we were very backed up getting offers made for other customers from being very busy or since we changed to doing cash only payouts, as that's what we saw customers preferred, we would contact customers when there was enough in float to payout cash for the amounts for the offer from the days sales, which slowed down the process a little bit.

Redtag Kids Inc. is very disappointed with this situation especially in Lethbridge as we had no intention of having to close that store as we had nothing but compliments with the store and people were very happy we were open. The store was getting busier and busier and after all the hard work put in the last few months to get up and running to be shut down after being open just two months when we were just getting started. There were also plans to expand into other areas in AB and BC. We thank the public for all their support and hope that they are able to recover their items. I also would like to advise all prospective tenants opening a small business to do their research with the landlord and building thoroughly so that a situation like this doesn't happen to anyone else."