Wedding cupcake mishap AIBU bride wants full refund for me wrecking her big day?

[ilovepombears]

I run a home based cake making business a few months ago I had a request from a bride to make 100 black cupcakes for her wedding. She provided the wrappers and black food colouring paste and also black and white photo toppers of the couple as she asked it this would bring the costs down so I deducted this from the bill.

Today is her wedding day and there seems to be a massive miscommunication somewhere along the lines.
Friday I baked all 100 cupcakes and whilst I was waiting for them to cool I text her and asked if she was sure she wanted them all black buttercream or if she would prefer black and white or black and grey. She texted back and said 50 black 50 grey would be ace. I then had another text asking where the buttercream was going. This should of really set off alarm bells. I told her the buttercream would be going on top of each cupcake. No further response.

As the wedding is out of town she came to collect them yesterday. They looked stunning and really complimented her wedding theme. She seemed a bit off when collecting but said she liked them.

Two hours later I receive a text from her saying how dissapointed she is with the cakes and how they are not as disscused as the cakes are white.

I didn't understand where she was coming from so I tried to call but she didn't answer then text to say I have wrecked her wedding.

After a while of toing and froing it transpires what the bride in her head has ordered is 50 black and 50 grey sponge cupcakes as in no buttercream frosting. Where I was suppose to put the picture toppers is still a mystery.

She has seen hundreds of images of my work and I have never produced a nude cupcake. Always have frosting on them.

She has not given me time to rectify the issue. Not that I would as I am not having my name associated with what she thinks she has ordered. Not would I let black sponges out to be eaten as they will taste horrendous but they have so much colour in them can you imagine the additives.

She is now asking for a full refund as I have "screwed up her order" what do I do? I'm my head she has received what she has ordered.

If you guys ordered a black & grey cupcake how would you interoperate that? What she thinks or what I have made her.

So what's the upshot of this now it's been a week? Did she accept she was wrong given the email you sent or?

You and bride are both U. Her for wanting cupcakes at her wedding, you for making the bloody things.

(Can you tell I'm utterly fed up unto the back teeth with the whole cupcake fad? Bring back nice easy Victoria Sponges now!)

I can't understand why people still think the OP should give a refund when she has correspondence in writing between her and the bride which clearly says she doesn't do coloured sponge. its there in black and white acknowledged by the bride.

I take black cupcakes as being black sponge.

They may not be to everyone's taste (poor choice of word!), however that's not the point. Type in black cupcake on google and there are loads of examples.

I like the black cupcakes (am hoping chocolate with a small bit of dye) but I do not make cupcakes I would expect the baker to tell me if there will be a problem with taste. Then I can make an informed judgement.

I have been to a few goth weddings and black cakes would look fab. White sponge cakes with black icing would have looked naff, as if your grandma was trying to bake a bit goth.

RedGlitter - probably because customer service is about more than just who is in the right.

Redglitter because it sounds like things weren't handled- communication wise- in the best method and as MrsHathaway says Customer service isn't just about who is right. Negative feedback, especially from a pissed off Bride, could really affect her business.

If she partially refunds, it should smooth things over with the bride and remove the complaint risk which will affect her business. OP also needs to get her things in order, people have suggested email archiving, paperwork updating and form updating, Terms of service and databases all of which would help the OP avoid miscommunication in the future.

So basically

bride: I want coloured cup cakes
OP: I don't make coloured cup cakes sorry
bride: oh okay

bride: my days ruined you didn't make the coloured cup cakes I wanted
OP: I told you I didn't make them you knew I didn't but here have your money back

I realise customer service is important but surely if you tell someone you do not do a specific thing and they acknowledge that you dont then they're totally unreasonable to be annoyed when they don't get their way.
Maybe I'm being unreasonable thinking it's just common sense

is this a new thing that you expect cakes to be the colour you ask not the covering? when I was making cakes, when people told me the colour of their cake they meant the icing. That's how I was taught by my family who quite a few of them are bakers and cake decorators,my grandma taught it too.

when I ordered my own cake I asked for a gold cake, in answer to "do you want a white or an ivory cake." It didn't occur to me he might be talking about the cake inside the icing! I certainly didn't end up with a "gold" cake!

Off the top of my head, I made a racing car cake, a Star Trek cake, a tram cake, a can of Carling, a sewing machine cake and all of it on the outside!

She asked for a hundred black cupcakes - I read that as black sponge. I am as many are very literal. The customer hadn't even thought about the colour of the icing - I think that should have been the clue that you and the customer were not on the same wave length. I would offer a 50% refund. Do you get customers to fill a form with there request? I would be thinking to put in a box specifying the colour of the sponge from now on. Thinking devils food cupcakes which are very,very red and very yummy - additives or not ;)
I think yabalittleur...

Do you get customers to fill a form with there request?

Yes. Doesn't anyone RTFT?

I was thinking that, Bearhug! It's 411 posts long - there is now no point in responding just to the OP!

Without the specific form and later email I'd have assumed the sponge would also be black. Presumably all she was expecting for icing was a blob to fix the toppers. Did you offer to show examples or make a sample of options ? Maybe she has got confused along the way and thought she'd specified something.

I think that you have made a lot of assumptions and weren't clear ebough about what you could and couldn't do. The bride originally specified that she wanted black cakes so I would have assumed that she wanted the sponge to be black. If she just wanted black icing she would have said so. At that point you should have specified that you couldn't do black sponge as it wouldn't taste nice. Not everybody would realise that.
I know you said that the sponge would be vanilla but vanilla is a flavour not a colour. You also specified that you couldn't do a rainbow sponge as you don’t do colours but strictly speaking black isn’t a colour so she may not have realised that you misunderstood her original request.

I have never seen a thread bumble along for such a long time over so little!

It's a week now we've all been muttering about this

And yes, i'd have thought she meant black sponge as well.

I'm intrigued to know what the OP actually did.

i would forward her that email where you said you only did chocolate or vanilla and say that you can't refund in this case. you provided what was in the contract.