BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WBRC) – We know it’s expensive these days to get your dog groomed. It can cost hundreds of dollars or more. Some local dog owners are upset after they say they paid for dog grooming packages but did not receive the services for which they paid.
For the past few weeks, 6 On Your Side Investigates has been trying to track down the dog groomer to figure out what happened.
Up until recently, Gennifer Allen was getting her dogs groomed by Asher Jace at Paws on 5th in Homewood. She says Jace would always do a good job with her dogs.
“One of them is highly anxious and he always did really well with Asher,” Allen says.
Earlier this year, Allen said Jace and his team sent out fundraising flyers to customers raising money for cancer treatments for Asher and his dog.
“He was providing packages like a lump sum of grooming for a certain price, so I bought two of them separately at separate times,” Allen says.
Allen bought two dog grooming packages between February and April worth more than $1,000. She says her dog did not receive a majority of the services she paid for. Allen kept receipts showing where she paid Jace through Venmo.
Then in mid-May, Allen got a message saying due to Jace’s health issues, the dog grooming salon just off Scott Street in Homewood was closing temporarily until July. A few days later, she got another message saying Jace had been hospitalized and the salon would close earlier than expected. That message once again asked for donations.
When July rolled around, Allen started checking the business’s Facebook page for updates and found that it has been deleted or archived.
“I messaged him first and asked and got no response and then every day I would look up his name on Facebook to see if anybody else had posted and I found River’s post and a lot of these girls has commented on that post,” Allen says.
Allen made a TikTok video about her ordeal and recently filed a police report in Pelham that describes the allegations. She also found out she wasn’t alone and met Maggie Hillhouse, Nicola Robson and Kristin Lange. They shared similar stories with WBRC about buying dog grooming packages recently from Asher Jace.
“It was buy one, get one. A hundred and fifty dollars and so he said I could use it when he gets back in July and then I come across her TikTok, a friend sent it to me and then I realized, oh he’s probably not coming back and I reached out to him on his other social media accounts and he never responded,” Hillhouse says.
For two or three years before, most of the women had been getting Jace to groom their dogs with no issues. They say the problems popped up over the past few months.
“Both of my dogs got groomed once and both of them got bathed once before he cancelled on me a total of 3 times, tried to call him multiple times because I had not been told he was going to close and he didn’t respond. My dogs were never groomed by him again,” Lange says.
After that TikTok video, Allen and others got a message on Jace’s business app and an email from someone claiming to be an attorney representing Jace saying, “His client has been advised to keep silent and let his legal team take measures needed against the owner of the salon’s building”.
The message also talked about Jace’s medical condition and threatened legal action against people making false accusations against his client. That message sent by someone who claimed to be “Mr. Spina” but didn’t have a first name, so WBRC reached out to local Criminal Defense Attorney Tommy Spina who says he didn’t send it and doesn’t know who Jace is.
“I don’t know what’s going on here other than somebody held themselves as me as their lawyer or one of my cousins or nephew as their lawyer,” Spina says.
WBRC also reached out to Spina’s relatives who are attorneys and they say they do not know Jace in any way. Spina got his IT department to investigate the message but didn’t find anything.
“With all the technology, if someone is of bad mindset, I think you can pretty much accomplish anything you want to accomplish fraudulently,” Spina says.
Through the investigation, WBRC found out Jace also goes by at least two other names and is connected to at least two other businesses out of state. Allen and other people we’ve spoken to have tried contacting Jace through his multiple social media pages, but so far they haven’t had any luck.
We tried contacting Jace at a dog grooming business in South Carolina. A man on the phone told us he would have Jace call us back. WBRC also overnighted a letter to Jace hoping to get a response but we haven’t heard back yet.
We found a handful of social media pages for Jace. His TikTok page is filled with lip- sync videos and one appearing to show a husky being groomed. On Facebook and Instagram, we found a few pages connected to Jace and sent messages as well.
The women we spoke to aren’t optimistic they’ll get their money back, but they want others to be aware.
“I referred so many people to his salon and kind of feel embarrassed really for backing him up,” Hillhouse says.
“It’s scary knowing that he could be out and could potentially be doing it to other people. A thousand dollars is a lot of money and who knows what he’s saying to these clients,” Allen said.
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