AIBU to expect the birthday cake booking date changed without extra charge?

yeah, her comment about putting it in the freezer was ambiguous and because you intended to book her again, you assumed she meant she would re-use it in cake number 2...

Only you don't know whether she meant that at all

The fact she casually mentioned she'd given the sponge away to her neighbour indicates she'd previously and erroneously decided the sponge was hers and not paid for by you.

She didn't sort of owe you a cake up until she acted like it was her property and stupidly gave it away.

She owes you a sponge and delivery

have you read through all your messages with her? Because that will form the contract - try messaging her again - she charged professional prices so she should honour what you most recently agreed to.

The baker hasn’t actually said that though, OP doesn’t no if/what she’s going to charge yet

And see what she says perhaps you could polyask her if she would like you to review the cake she offered to bake you on social media

Did you agree to her freezing the cake in writing?
if so then you should be provided with a frozen sponge of the specifications of the cake you paid for

she has been incredibly unbusiness like - I can’t imagine you would want to rock the boat when you live in a small village but you probably have case for small claims court!

try and take emotion out of it - and send her a brief message summing up exactly what she offered to do for you most recently- and put ball in her court asking how she suggests you go from here because you are £200 down and you have no cake. Also you did not give permission for the cake you paid for to be given away

i think sometimes people get confused when there are lots of details in the first post!

You booked her to make your cake so she allocated her time for that, time which she could have used for other orders. The fact that she put the cake in the freezer is immaterial, she still used ingredients, her time and gas/electricity.

imagine you’ve been running a cake business for the last 15 years and this is exactly how you feel.

All this

as you paid she should have given you the cake

neighbour did well with a £200 cake

fwiw I’ve frozen a birthday and wedding cake sliced and tasted fine when eaten later

lol!!! unexpected free time on a Saturday, bliss how ridiculous can you get.

imagine you work for a company, in an office. One day you get to work and they say ‘there is an electrical shortage and we can’t work today.’ If you were still getting paid you might think ‘bliss unexpected free time off.’ But what about if they said ‘so we’re not paying you for today.’ ? So, not your fault, it was a working day that you thought you were going to make £100 for, but now you’re not. Of course you’re not thinking ‘bliss, an unexpected free time off’

If she was going to give away the cake that you have paid for, she should’ve given it to you.
if it had been finished, you would have gotten it.

I would find another cake maker, as she’s essentially charging you for 2 cakes and only giving you one

I just hazarded a very wild guess at the cost of ingredients (saved or given away). I'm not a baker so I have no real idea if 25% is at all accurate. I just guessed the bulk of the cost would be allocated to the time to be spent on decorating, rather than on the ingredients.

She chose to give the sponge away without asking OP. My point about that was that it wasn't hers to give. Though it's complicated that OP cancelled so I can see the baker thought "she doesn't even want this sponge and I haven't got room in my freezer after all".

I've not seen any mention of them both living in the same village, nor have I see evidence of OP attacking other posters, they have pushed back, but attacking?

Your post opens with "I am actually on your side.. " but quickly slowly decays into introducing imaginary, vague opponents like "service providers" and then warn them about ending up on a Reddit in a Karen thread because they're AtTacKinG pEopLE.

That's certainly some change of pace from being on their side... one could be forgiven for mistakenly believing you were never "on their snide" in the first place

How are they going to end up on a Reddit thread anyway?

You can screenshot mine and add it on Reddit if you makes you feel better 😀

It's a perfect storm of events

• unprofessional baker who is not clear about her canx policy and also her terms for resupplying a new cake
• a mother stressed by her daughter's illness and therefore didn't ask the terms for what would happen to her cake and money

If she's this blasé with a customer, I dread to think what shortcuts she's taking with the cake.

And I absolutely support you in that, as I said. It's completely unreasonable on behalf of the baker to ask for further payments when you've had no benefit of the first payment you made. I think that it's possible that because neither of you mentioned rebooking or using the cake in your original messages you might have been talking at cross purposes and for her this is a whole new transaction but it's still a one sided deal with you at a loss.

What I'm saying to you is that she may challenge you, she herself may question you or be rude and how you react to it matters even if you are in the right. I have seen people challenge you and because their opinion or understanding of the situation is different, then your reaction is disproportionate and confrontational. You don't need to be defensive if you are in the right. You just answer honestly and ignore attempts to troll or bait you (if there are any which I haven't seen).

Useful advice is to go back to her and say that you are disappointed and confused that a cake you brought and paid for was given away without consultation after agreeing that it would be frozen for future use and, whilst you understand that some of the cost represents her time and skills, it seems unreasonable to be expected to pay in full again for a second cake when you have had no benefit from the first payment made, including a delivery charge when nothing was delivered.

This is where you've gone wrong I think.

You've thought she was putting it in the freezer to save for you. She's thinking she'll put it in the freezer to save wasting it. Then she's given it to Doris next door instead, still not wasted.

She didn't say she was saving it for you, you've assumed that. She thought the cake order was cancelled, because you didn't tell her you'd want it at a later date.

When she knew she couldn't freeze it I think she should have said that she would have to decorate & deliver as agreed.

I would have thought that the time for decorating is the most expensive part & that's what Op would be paying for again.

You might have missed it because it was buried 20 posts in by the op, but the cake maker hasn’t actually confirmed that she will be charging full price twice. The op made out that in her op, to get people on her side, but it hasn’t actually been confirmed yet.

I’m with you OP.

If all she’s done is bake a sponge, that’s about 5% of the time needed to make a decorated cake. Whether she freezes it, repurposes it or gives it away, the lost time and cost is small.

She has perhaps turned down other work that day thinking she’d be busy making your cake, perhaps she hasn’t. She’s got some unexpected free time on a Saturday, bliss on a baker’s busiest day.

You’ve already paid for the cake and she should surely have known you’d want the cake in the near future. if she’s too busy on the new date, she can refund. If she can do it, she can fulfil the original order.

If she wants to charge a few pounds extra for the lost sponge, I could see where she’s coming from if she hadn’t given it away.

What she is losing is goodwill from a customer who could potentially order cakes for years to come and give recommendations. To me, that is far more valuable than a bit of flour and sugar

If anything she owes you a basic sponge for the miscommunication but that would still be a good will gesture.

But a cancelled other in under 48 hours till the event is exactly that unless explicitly stated otherwise I’d say. Some places give goodwill others don’t because they cannot afford to.

She’s being a cheeky fucker!
If she’s going to charge you twice, she should have given you the original cake at the very least.

I’d find someone else and tell her why.

How have you calculated 25%? She made the sponge and chose to give it away rather than storing it or giving it to the OP.

I have no idea. Neither do you. I cannot for the life of me understand how you don’t get it. You are paying for the ingredients, and her time slot between x and x on a set day. You took the time slot BECAUSE SHE COULDNT DO ANYTHING ELSE WITH IT by the time she found out it wasn’t needed.

you absolutely need to pay for the time slot at whatever her rate is. Just because you can’t grasp why for some reason, doesn’t absolve you of needing to pay.

yes, you should have had the sponge and been refunded the icing ingredient cost, unless they go off.

but you don’t know if she is charging you full price yet anyway, which you only disclosed after a few hundred responses, some of them in your favour, which was misleading if you.

I would agree except you cancelled the order. When you cancelled the order you terminated your request to receive the cake without any clarity on what would happen with your money. There are probably different moral and legal positions on what should happen with your money but the legal route is probably not worth pursuing and the moral route…well you can’t make her give you another cake unfortunately.