How to ask without offending

[bepositive247]

There is a group of friends and one of them is celebrating a special birthday.

The rest of our group have planned to take her to a theatre show in London and for a meal. She doesn’t know about a night out we have planned. We have decided that we will all pay for her, so we are paying for our own tickets and meal and have agreed to split her share of the theatre ticket and meal bill between us. That will be her birthday gift from us.

I have known her the longest and have ended up organising and booking. I was asked to provide my account details for everyone to transfer, but one of the girls hasn’t paid me or even mentioned anything about it and I don’t know how to bring this up.

I don’t want to bring this up with the other girls in the group as I don’t want to her to think I’m talking about her and if it was £50 I would let it go (even though that’s still a lot of money) but it’s over a £100 and I’ve already paid that as part of my share

I was hoping to get some advice on this and how to ask without coming across as rude

I would go back to her and just say you have had so many expenses this month and just can't afford to help her out. Ask her to ask on your joint friends WhatsApp chat whether you could all help her out with the payments. She might feel so embarrassed to ask the whole group that she suddenly finds the money.

‘Sorry to chase, can you ping me the money for friends birthday celebrations today please’

nice, but straight to the point!

What is the latest ?

Final update - I went back to her to say we all agreed to this night out and sharing money for the gift for our birthday friend, I have been patient with her, given her loads of time to pay me back, she is the only member of the group not to pay me back and I can’t wait for the money until after the event. I said if you can’t afford to pay me back that’s no problem and I have someone else who is willing to pay me for the theatre ticket so if I don’t get the money by end of day Tuesday, I’ll sell your ticket. If you wish to come to the meal then you can meet us there.

She transferred the money for the theatre ticket and the money owed for friends birthday gift. She didn’t message me to say she’s done it and I don’t know how she could suddenly afford it. Drama over, but I won’t be doing anything like this ever again.

although I’m not looking forward to seeing her. I am happy I have got my money back and am looking forward to celebrating my friends birthday

Thank you to everyone for encouraging me to push through this as I think she only paid me back because I was quite direct with her after getting advice from here.

Good @bepositive247 she clearly was just piss taking and thought she could be a CF!!

Well done @bepositive247! Have a great time.

Well done you did the right thing. She had the money all along then what a cheek!

Well done! See, it pays (literally!) to be firm but polite.

Tell her you can't confirm numbers at the restaurant until everyone has paid. Then give her a deadline to confirm.

Well done! 👏 See she actually had the money but didn't want to pay you! You would have never been paid if you'd left it. I've only ever done one group event and collecting the money from 3 particular people was like pulling teeth out. I've learned my lesson and wouldn't organise anything again!

If the issue is bought up on the day just remember you’ve done nothing wrong. You were doing everybody a favour by being the one to take on the admin of organising and booking and being the one to pay for everything up front.

If she was having issues with paying in one payment she should have messaged you separately and communicated not just ignored you.

You’re not a bank and you have your own bills etc to pay. You can’t be expected just to wait until people want to pay you back.

Well done! Hopefully this will give you confidence to tackle the next CF, it may not always be about money. Being assertive gets easier with practice.

So she’s a cheeky cow just chancing it. Be prepared for her to be ‘off’ with you on the night out because she sounds like that kind of person who will now be pissed off you called her out.

Good for you @bepositive247, well done 👏
Just goes to show you, these CFs do have the money - they just don't want to give it to you.

Well done. By being direct with a deadline and a consequence (being outed publicly) she took action.

Totally shocking how she treated you, the avoidance, ignoring, bleating about her finances and expecting you to sub her. Grim character.

I hope you have a great night out and feel confident to face her without any worry.

I always look at these as opportunities for personal growth and in this case you did well.

Well done op! When’s the evening out? I hope you manage not to sit next to her!

Totally agree
well done op
You do realise she has borrowed the money of some other sucker (possibly one of the other group members)
And the fact she didn’t let you know she’d sent the money is just plain rude
She sounds like extremely hard work.

Yeah, she clearly had no intention of paying.

I'm guessing she knows you're not always the most assertive?

But you've played a blinder here, well done, OP! I just read the thread now and was dreading it thinking you might agree to being paid next month!

She may have borrowed it. I suspect however that she wanted to use it for something like a holiday or expensive clothes, and probably tried to guilt-trip OP about how her meanness meant that friend had to forgo whatever it was.

How did the night out go Op? Was it awkward or was it ok?

@bepositive247how was the event ? I bet she didn’t drink tap water.