My very good friend, someone with a good heart and the person who would help anyone even their worst enemy has precisely this experience with Steve from Thonk too, it is uncanny how similar the stories are. My friend even reached out and apologised a good 6 months later and said look mistakes happen, it's a small community, can't we just get along or at least just do business and there was a flat out rejection and a lot of nastiness - my friend ended up in hospital having panic attacks because of it :(((
There's yet another story on Trust Pilot that also sounds very similar, maybe it's the same one, I don't know!
I have no axe to grind here other than I was upset that my friend was upset, seems there's something going on though - where there is smoke there is fire!!