to ask for a refund and donate elsewhere?

[schobe]

Ok, here's the story, am I being petty and a bit mean here?

I asked around the family about what various children wanted for xmas and was told that two of my nieces wanted charity presents this year.

So I found a specific category of gift online and composed a couple of messages for my nieces to go in a card that would be sent out. I did it early in December and had the cards sent here as they were due to visit just before xmas.

However, the cards didn't arrive so I rang the charity just before my nieces' visit to enquire. I was told that the cards would definitely arrive before xmas. The young-sounding chap who answered the call was quite patronising and spoke to me in a 'there, there, calm down' tone. Not sure if this is relevant tbh, it may be influencing me.

However, no cards arrived and neither have they to date. I emailed the charity explaining what had happened about 3 weeks ago. I did say that I didn't want to waste their time but that they ought to know this had gone wrong and that I was a bit unhappy. Someone did reply saying they would look into it, but I've heard nothing since.

AIBU to ask for a refund and donate to a charity that is better organised? Or is that pathetic?

Oh yes - I gave my nieces the money at xmas (even though I'd already donated) and told them the story and said they could do what they liked with it. I don't know if they gave it to charity - they probably did, they're nice girls.

Not sure if YABU. But I wonder what the chances of getting your money back are, if they cannot even send the cards out when they had been asked to, the second time.

Yes, good point. I think I'm stewing because I would rather give it to a charity related to my DS' disability. Perhaps I need to unclench.

Actually I don't think YABU. If they offered the cards as a service in return for your donation, that's pretty crap.

You could explain that you wouldn't normally donate to them, you only did so for a Christmas present, you had to give your DNs money to make their own donations as there were no cards so . . . refund please!

YANBU. Charity or not, you paid for something, even if you were massively overcharged for that something so that they could spend the profit doing a good thing.

Charities are run like businesses in many cases, and if they are going to have fundraising schemes like this then they need to be capable of sticking to the contract you made with them when they took your money.

I have no sympathy with the fact that they are a charity, I run one and you can't use the fact that you are a charity as an excuse for bad service. That would be relying on the fact that people won't complain because of the charity status, which is not what the charities commission gave them a registration number for.

It's worse than a company doing it in my opinion, because you are feeling guilt over pushing the issue that you would not feel if a company was making a private profit. Goodwill and the prospect of future fundraising should mean that charities make more effort with the people that hand over money than businesses do.

I'm liking those responses, thank you. That's how I feel but I honestly could not be objective about whether I was being petty or not.