Flatmate says I owe her £600

[Digestivesandcheese]

I was meeting my flatmate (who is also a good friend) in London recently and agreed to bring her weekend bag with me on the train (She was meeting her DM earlier in the day for a trip to the Theatre) I had a rucksack containing my things for the weekend.
I got off the train in London and realised I had stupidly left her bag on the train. I got back on the train but the bag was gone! It hasn't turned up in lost property. I have chased up several times.
My friend says I owe her £600 for the bag and contents. I agree it was my fault but can I claim compensation from the rail company as the bag hasn't turned up? If not, I will have to borrow money to pay my friend for her things

I haven’t read everything but no you won’t be able to claim money back for it.
I know someone who works for one of the major train companies who says anything left behind gets put in a staff area as trains are constantly all over the country they’ll never be able to figure out whose it is (or, they don’t bother). Some of it gets binned and some of it will end up miles away from where it started.

Since the OP says the flatmate has fairly high end stuff and they going for at least one night out, £600 probably is 50/50 (or less).

Jesus Christ, old for new is the basic fucking principle - the cost of replacing the items that need replacing because OP lost them.

Lol, said like that would be a problem. No longer living with someone that refuses to take responsibility for their own carelessness doesn’t particularly sound like it would be a hardship for someone. In addition, the trash taking itself out would save said someone a job.

Personally I'd want to be aware if I was taking on a risk I couldn't afford (partic as I'm absent minded and lose my own stuff fairly often).

But @notlucreziaborgia at least your position is clear and consistent. I can see that the better thing for OP to say would have been "I'll take it, but at your own risk!" Or not take it at all.

It's all a shame, isn't it? OP probably wouldn't have agreed to do the favour if she realised she was potentially on the hook for 600.

taking responsibility is different from being a complete doormat. the cost of replacing a bag of used clothes and cosmetics is maybe £50-£100. flatmate is being unfair.
old for new might be a clause in an insurance contract which you pay for. it is NOT a fair responsibility to place on a friend. and why didnt flatmate tell OP her bag was so valuable in her head? OP needed fair warning if she was taking responsibility for that.

Do we actually know that £600 isn’t in fact a knocked down amount that takes into account the things not being in brand new condition?

Taking responsibility for your own fuckup in losing something you were entrusted with, that you agreed to take responsibility for, is not being a doormat. If I had done what OP did I would be covering the cost, however inconvenient it may be. My friends would do the same.

A bag costing £600 is not ‘so valuable’. I imagine she didn’t think to mention anything to OP because she thought she could trust her friend not to lose it in such a manner.

Bloody hell, I’ve only read as far as the first page - can’t believe all the responses saying you’ll have to cough up!

was meeting my flatmate (who is also a good friend) in London recently

That is no friend OP. Even when I was hard up I would never dream of telling a friend she had to pay for stuff of mine she’d accidentally lost whilst doing me a favour. If I was the one who’d lost it I’d offer to reimburse her but I don’t think any of my friends would take me up on the offer.

Cant believe how entitled and selfish some people are - I guess friendship doesn’t mean much these days!

no matter how much you trust your friends, things happen. youve never made a mistake in your life? then you know. OP owes her flatmate, just not £600.

Yes, and taken responsibility for them. Not just shrugged them off with a ‘not my problem’.

I obviously disagree. I believe she does owe her flatmate £600.

you think its reasonable for her to ask OP for £600 for a bag of used clothes and cosmetics when she clearly cant afford it, and they are supposed to be friends?
flatmate needed to warn OP if the bag was full of priceless artifacts.
i dont know how much clearer i can explain it to you

I know what my father would say. He'd say if you're going to lose the friend over it, you may as well not lose the money as well. So if you're going to let the friendship cool, why bother paying her more than what is fair? It is messy though if she is also your housemate.

I see two other issues here meself.

The first is that I would never expect someone who was doing me a favour to be liable to the same extent I would expect from a company. A company has a duty-of-care and would also be specifically insured for carriage of goods whereas you aren't. (And while we're on it, would Royal Mail pay £600 unless you used an expensive insured service?) It would be kind for you to offer, but I would only accept your offer to pay if I were borassic and even then moving swiftly on to point 2 -

The second is that £600 sounds like the insurance value i.e. I've lost a bag of clothes and what would it cost me to replace them if I needed them today, not what would it actually cost me to buy a few secondhand (because that's their value if they've been worn even once) clothes over the course of a few weeks on ebay or charity shops.

Realistically, if it didn't contain items that need urgent replacement e.g. her only smart work-trousers, then a few clothes and a handbag is something most people have spares for, and if you're her friend she should be saying 'oh dear, it's kind of you to offer but don't worry about it'. Obviously if my house burns down tomorrow then I'll be claiming on my insurance for every item I had in it because that's what I pay my premiums for, but if I weren't insured (or if the insurance didn't insist I spend the money to replace everything) there are things I wouldn't bother replacing even if I could afford to. Would she even use all the £600 to replace everything you lost or would she essentially be in-pocket here?

Thought experiment: if you had lent her a bag of clothes etc and she had lost it, would you expect her to replace them all or pay for them at new-for-old values? Because if not, then I can't see that you would be being fair on yourself if you pay the £600 she is asking for.

Yes, I do. AFAIK we have no idea what these things were, so I’m not sure why you’re assuming that they can be replaced for less than £600 even in used condition.

I would absolutely cover the cost if I’d lost a friend’s belongings, because it would be matter of integrity. Why would I want a friend to be out of pocket on account of my fuck up? That isn’t friendship. I wouldn’t consider anyone that responded with a shrug and a ‘oh well, not my problem!’ to be someone worth having as a friend. No longer being friends with them would not be a loss.

£600 does not suggest a bag of ‘priceless artefacts’, fucking hell. That’s actually very reasonable for someone that apparently likes more expensive things.

You don’t need to explain anything to me. I understand perfectly well what your stance is, and I completely disagree with it.

im telling you she should cover some cost, not just shrug and say 'not my problem', but thank you for mischaracterising my "stance" immediately before you claim to understand it completely. find me a bag of secondhand clothes and cosmetics that is worth £600 without containing things like big-ticket designer items that flatmate should either have kept in her own possession, or warned OP about before she asked her to carry her bag, and i'll still disagree that she should pay £600 because she literally cannot afford it, and it was an accident, it's not like she tossed it out the train window. maybe splitting it 50/50 and giving £300 to the flatmate would be reasonable, but i still think you need to inform someone before you give them a bag if you're planning on charging them multiple hundreds of £ if anything happens to it.

Who would expect a friend who was doing you a favour for free to replace used items for new ones? OP isn't an insurance or courier company. If the friend wanted that she should have paid for it.

Not paying the amount required is dodging responsibility. The amount required is £600.

Again, £600 may in fact be only half of what it will actually cost to replace the items. It may even be less than half. For all you know the friend is being considerate about OP’s financial situation and only asking for a contribution.

It’s not the friend’s fault that OP can’t afford it easily, and OP not being able to afford it easily doesn’t mean she shouldn’t pay her friend. OP lost the bag because she was careless, that’s on her.

I honestly would argue that you don’t owe her the full 600, you were doing her a favour, you are not a professional courier / delivery service, if she wanted valuables carted from A-B she should have hired a professional service that would have insurance,
You were doing her a favour and it backfired on you, I would be generous though and pay half!

im still waiting for the secondhand weekend bag that costs £600 to only replace HALF of! and why is she giving that to a friend so casually without proper discussion of the £1200 second hand contents?

let me put it another way one more time in case it works.
imagine a friend gives you their iphone 10 to bring to them on a train. clearly an important item that you should take care with. while on the train, you accidentally lose the iphone 10 - you aren't sure what happened to it.
you tell your friend, very apologetic and offer to replace the item. iphone 10s are available on ebay for something like £200.
your friend says "oh, no problem, things happen, it wasnt your fault. just replace my phone with this and its all fine", and they send you a link to the brand new iphone 15 latest model which costs £2000.
what would you do?

I would expect a friend to take responsibility for their fuck up and pay to replace the items lost, yes.

I just skimmed back through OP’s posts, and she doesn’t actually say the friend is asking her new or nearly new things to be replaced old for new. £600 may very well be what it would actually cost the friend to buy the items second hand.

You might expect the friend to offer to pay for their fuck up but would try to take advantage of their mistake in trying to do you a favour by asking for enough money to replace their second hand items for brand new ones?

https://www.1stdibs.com/fashion/handbags-purses-bags/luggage-travel-bags/louis-vuitton-monogram-keepall-bandouliere-55-boston-duffle-bag-strap/id-v_15588132/?&currency=gbp

£600 would cover less than half for this one. Seems the prices have increased again since I last saw them.

And this one:
https://www.vestiairecollective.com/women-bags/travel-bags/gucci/?product_id=34117913&setLocale=4.en.GBP&authfee=false&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=17785439997&gad_source=4&gbraid=0AAAAADSZTnJUhzyNWKWOLluP5NQwBVEke&gclid=Cj0KCQjwtJKqBhCaARIsAN_yS_ncifUl0zcQdVkxUBAoemr3Q8pL8tWLAPUVR0TWHIUk2s347o9csPQaAkncEALw_wcB

I imagine she ‘so casually’ gave it to OP because she trusted her friend to not be careless with her things. Not exactly a wild expectation to have of a friend.

An IPhone is easily replaced like for like on the same model. The same does not apply to makeup.

What it would cost me to replace my new or nearly new items? Yes. I would do the same had I lost a friend’s belongings.

those bags are ugly high fashion items, of course theyre overpriced. i asked you to give me something that isn't a big-ticket item. if flatmate gave OP one of those, why didnt she EXPLAIN to OP that she'd owe her hundreds if anything happened to it?
her makeup was half used. come on, you are being so dense.

Oh dear. This is one of those really unfortunate situations and I feel for you OP. You were only trying to do a good deed. If I were the friend, I'd accept some help towards replacing the things...perhaps on Vinted? But equally it's not all on you. It was out of your sight for mere minutes and shouldn't really have gone anywhere. Yes it could have been stolen but worth keeping in at the train company/station as well.

And, having read all this again, the bag was obviously stolen. If you had gone to the loo while on the train and it had been pinched then, or it had been pinched while you were travelling and well before your stop (which is possibly was), then I'd struggle to say it was really your responsibility even within the friendly nature of the arrangement. So you left it unattended by accident instead... not sure this changes things massively: it was pinched (or it's in the lost property system).

You got on the train as agreed, with the bag as agreed, you looked after it about as well as you would have looked after your own bag even if you did forget it for a few minutes, but you went back for it. Are you supposed to suddenly develop courier skills and chain it to your wrist, because that wasn't the deal, was it?

If, perhaps, you'd agreed to go to London all expenses paid for the sole purpose of delivering the bag, then I'd view it a bit differently: you only had one job even if it was a favour and perhaps you'd have both really considered what might go wrong. But in the scheme of things it seemed like a very small favour which I think you'd have felt churlish to deny, and which I think you did to the best of your ability.

It feels like someone does need to explain something to you and to quite a few other people on this thread and that's what it's like to not have that money.

Everyone is banging on about 'cost' and new for old but the value of that £600 in terms of what it is costing the OP is far greater than the £600 of material possessions it is buying her privileged friend. It's costing her potential tension in her relationship with her Mum and for all we know with things as they are now it might be costing her money she needs for food or absolute essentials.

She hasn't just said 'your problem' she wants to do the right thing but for her it's not just a case of taking it out of her bank account, she doesn't have it so actually I would argue it is costing her far more and if her friend knows that she's a pretty awful person who is exploiting OPs conscience.

If anything I think she is the one saying 'your problem' when really I think it's partly her problem. If you give your expensive stuff to someone you're taking that risk and you should take some responsibility if it goes wrong.