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

I agree with this. I understand you pay partially for the time, but that’s only part of it. You are also paying for the materials to make the cake. Imagine you asked a builder to provide a fitted kitchen, but you cancelled the day before she came to fit it. Would you reasonably expect her to keep the kitchen you had ordered (or even give it away to a neighbour) Or, would you quite rightly say, give me the kitchen you’ve bought and I’ll have it fitted by someone else, or, I’ve already paid for the kitchen, what will it cost for fitting.

The woman is at it. If she had a contract and her terms were that a last minute cancellation was for the full price, English law would class that an unfair term. Under that counteract she could only insist on her actual losses being covered which is her time, and any mark up she puts on materials.

OP, she is, at the very least, owe you the undecorated sponge cake she gave to her neighbour.

I think you're entitled to a modest deduction to reflect the ingredients of the first cake. The frosting ingredients were not used and she chose to give away the sponge to someone for free (different if she'd offered it to you and you had said no). I don't think you can say you won't pay for her "saved time". She spent time on the sponge and had likely reserved time for the frosting, which she wasn't able to allocate to another customer at short notice, so it has cut into her income anyway.

Suggest you politely ask for a 25% reduction on that basis and see what she says. She may accept or negotiate but be warned, she may decline to make a second cake at all If she thinks you are being too cheeky.

that's where it went wrong.

It was too late to cancel your order, and you owe her full price

BUT she should have told you: too late to cancel, I will deliver as planned. Or possibly, I deliver at a discount because it wasn't finished, but she would accept a loss of earning because she was set up to finish and counting on her order. So entirely up to her.

But taking your money (that you owe her in full) without providing the cake: wrong.

I would message about that, you understand what you owe her, but you didn't get anything?

To counter this, you cancelled the order with a very short timeframe. Even though I wouldn’t expect you to have a contract or t&c for this kind of order, I think you could reasonably expect that you would not get your money back for a cancellation this close to the event.

I also wouldn’t expect the cake maker to be able to use your cake for another order. I would expect all the orders to be personalised on size, shape, and sponge/frosting flavour. Given that you had also requested an allergy specific cake, I would assume that it wouldn’t be suitable for another customer.

I cannot explain why she said she would freeze it even if that is what she was planning to do. I’m not sure why she said that to you and I agree it does imply that she might have been saving it for you for when your child was better.

I would still suggest that you should have taken the cake order as planned, even though you no longer needed the cake because then at least you had what you paid for. I think the analogy with a hairdresser stands here in that if you cancel with short notice, you can expect no haircut and no money back. Not helpful now, but maybe for the future, although hopefully it won’t happen again. As I said before, I still hope that she would offer you some discount given the confusion.

It does NOT matter. I don't know why you are fixated on that, because that's not the issue.

You book a slot, you pay for the slot.
When you cancel "last minute", it's too late to do anything with it, so you still pay.

It's none of your business if she had declined someone, if she didn't advertise availability, if she didn't comment on a local group "I am available" when someone asked for a last-minute booking
It was too last minute, you owe her the time

You are ready to pay a lot for an expensive cake, so you agree that her time is valuable!

Giving it to the neighbour is just bizarre and another problem😂

The way I see it is you handed over £200 for her time, ingredients and delivery, but cancelled after your cake had successfully achieved "sponge stage".

Her accrued costs when you informed her last minute was the pre-booked time to make the finished cake, sponge ingredients and gas/elec.

As she hadn't used any filling or icing ingredients, you'd also paid an additional premium to costs of sponge + delivery. The sponge was in her possession, however, she already sold it to you for £200 incl. delivery.

You'd paid for the complete cake - therefore, the sponge was never hers to put in the freezer in the first place.

She's decided on some level, that "the cake is in my home, its mine for freezing and potential re-use in another order, or randomly gifting it to my neighbour" and not the business fact that its your £200, pre-paid customer order.

The "I've now given it to my neighbour", is at best, a moment of poor judgement and completely unprofessional.

The minimum discount off any further cake order is icing/filling and delivery

But as she's 'given the sponge to your neighbour", I'd be telling her to enter a marathon and jog on.

She didn't "save time", she had booked out the time that you paid for her to decorate it. She wouldn't have been able to get a new booking in that time at such short notice. She didn't decorate because you you cancelled.

And yes, you should have been offered that cake if she was unable to freeze it due to lack of space!

I agree that it would be reasonable to go back to her and say that 'because she saved time and ingredients with not having to decorate the cake, and because there was no delivery also, you would expect to just be charged extra for the sponge cake only (not the other bits). It is definitely worth negotiating that with her.

The time is lost but a cake was made and paid for in full by OP.

The cake maker offered to freeze the sponge and didn't.
She should have then offered the cake to the OP on the date anyway.
If OP didn't want it, then that's different.

You should have just let her decorate the cake you paid for and had it delivered. Surely your DC would have eaten some when the s&d was gone. You could have cut it up and given it to your own family.

We had a party cancelled the week of the first lockdown. I couldn’t cancel the food or the cake (and I didn’t have the heart to…and I didn’t think I’d get my money back) but was able to rearrange or get a refund on everything else. That was a relief. In any case, in your situation with a late notice need to cancel the party, I would have expected to lose my money on the cake BUT instead of telling the cake maker this and getting her to stop making part way through, I would have just collected the cake. Most cake freezes really well. Even sponge. The comments above about it being subpar - I’ve never ever found that to be the case. Also this was a massive cake - two tiers for about 40 people. There are 4 of us in my family and we somehow managed to eat it all… 🤣

In summary, I would expect that I would not be getting a refund from a cake maker that late in the day, so I’d would just collect the cake. Better to have a cake you don’t need for £200 (that you can share with others or store) than to have spent £200 on nothing. I hope she does give you a discount if you re-book. I agree that you need to factor in the time and ingredients that she had already spent. Also think she should have given you the cake. Strange all round.

I am actually on your side. I think it is unfair of her to have charged you £200 for both the cake and prep time and she has a cake either in her freezer or in her neighbour and you have nothing but the option to pay again and I think, in fairness, you shouldn't need to pay in full a second time. What I do have a problem with is how you are addressing people on this forum you came to for help. They are advising you, asking you questions and trying to help you find a resolution without a conflict. Especially since, if you both live in this small village, it could blow up much worse.You are frankly being rude and confrontational without cause and if you approach a service provider with the attitude you have shown on here, expect to see yourself on reddit Karens. Curb your (justified) frustration, remember your manners answer their questions, use their advice and stop attacking them.

These things happen but there is some confusion.
She offered to freeze the cake - then it transpires she didn’t.

She actually told you she had given the cake to a neighbour- that you had paid for. She should have given you the sponge cake if not freezing it as you had paid for it.

I can see why you are a bit peeved, but you don’t actually know what she is intending to charge you for a new cake on your new date. This is rather key here as it might be a token amount or it might not. Until you have this information it’s all rather difficult to judge.

That's not how the majority of people have read what you've been saying.

How about instead of being snotty to posters saying they understood something different from your posts (most of us?), you say oops wasn't I clear? XYZ is the situation.

Yeah but I suppose she may have turned down other work?

Mm... tricky because theres no clear contract, and your message to her wasn't exactly clear that you intended to rebook, just couldn't say when at the point of postponing the cake...

But she did offer to freeze it - and for those thinking that means a deteriorated cake, it doesn't, in fact it is standard practice to freeze the cake so you can make multiple elements and then ice it whilst its still very firm and cold, its also standard to ice it the morning of the event for certain sorts of icing/decoration too...

And then handed the cake you'd paid for to a neighbour... that doesn't sound v professional, she should have asked what your plans were or done as she'd said she would do.

If she had frozen the cake - i would expect to pay again for the time it takes to decorate, as she'd booked that time out and couldn't use it for another cake potentially - but would not expect to pay again for cake or icing ingredients.

As she has given the cake away... and now needs to make another cake... and that is partly your fault for not being clear that you intended to postpone rather than fully cancel... but also her choice to give it away after telling you she'd freeze it... you should be covering half the cake ingredients costs and the decorating time.

Whether she sees it that way though... another matter entirely!

But it's not the cake makers fault your child was ill, you didn't make it clear you still wanted the cake and it's only right you pay again.

Genuinely, I know I should read further on and someone will have patiently explained, but how can you have to ask people to understand that she blocked out a time to make it, and that time is now lost? It’s obvious.