to feel tricked and taken advantage of?

[OohMavis]

I'm a cakemaker. Valentines is a busy time of the year, but last week DH's brother asked me to make a cake for his girlfriend, so him being family, I fit him in last minute with a discount, price was agreed last week.

He came to pick it up today but instead of paying me, he's told me to ask DH for the money, because DH borrowed it from him and off he went with his cake.

I had no idea DH owed him money. It was for some tickets to a show they went to together which his brother bought on his card for convenience. DH just forgot about it.

AIBU to feel as though he's basically got a free cake out of me, and feel really bloody annoyed and tricked? I'm not going to be paid for the cake (our finances are completely joint, BIL knows this, it would be utterly pointless for DH to pay me). My time has been wasted. I turned down a paying order for him.

Just so angry!

But she isn't out of pocket...or at least no more than she would have been when she thought BIL was paying cash. She chose to charge him 30. She normally charges 60. Whichever one of these she charges, the ingredients are being paid for by that sum. BIL, rather than picking up 30 from DH on the way to pay OP, paid OP by writing off a debt. No additional money hit the account but a debt that would have had to come out no longer has to. So OP is 30 up.

As I've said previously, if this wasn't a last minute revelation by BIL then it was poor form for him not to discuss this properly with OP. But there's no indication that he'd plotted it this way and the OP ends up in the same financial position she thought she would be, bar the fact that her DH failed to pay a debt off that has now been paid.

Of course, if he'd been honest from the beginning and said to the OP, "Your dh owes me money, so I want you to make me a cheap cake on short notice to pay me back," I strongly suspect the response would have been, "Sorry, bil, I would rather we just gave you the cash we owe you than go to the effort of making you a half-price cake."

Which is why you should not connect debts with favours. Bil threw a favour back in the OP's face by turning it into a debt repayment.

I think the only person at fault her is your DP who should have repaid the debt or at least made you aware that you were in debt to BIL. He had up until today had a free concert off his brother.

Could you really have taken money from someone who you were in debt to? I couldn't unless I was flat broke.

I also don't get all this lost prophet angst. You made the decision to not take on a full price customer no one else, if you are going to do that I don't think you can wings about the lack of profit.

If BIL had brought up the debt last week and you had said you would only do it for cash then BIL would have surely got the cash off DP.

YABU. If you feel really hard done by then take the money out of the current account and spend it on yourself, I am sure your DP won't mind.

It wasn't even the OP's debt. She never benefited from the tickets the bil bought. So, her dh benefited by going to a concert, the bil benefited by getting a cheap cake and the OP benefited not at all and wasn't even appreciated for doing her bil a favour.

Some people really do seem to be confusing married couples for Siamese twins.

Honestly round you're looking far too much into this. There's no reason to believe that the BIL didn't actually want a cake. He hasn't set OP to work paying off her DH's debt. He's asked OP for a cake because she's in the cake making business. They agreed a discounted price. Rather than messing about he thought it'd be easier to write off a 30 pound debt from the OP's and her DP's 'pot'. He likely assumed that OP wasn't petty enough to remove the family discount because her DH had failed to pay him back. And why 'trick' OP if all her husband needed was a reminder?

Sounds like to me he wanted a cake so got you to make one for him at his discounted family rate. When he went to pay he remembered your DH owed him money so said take it off that bill.

I think the issue is whether he tricked you into making the cake to get his money back or wanted a cake anyway and chose to pay using that debt.

It was rude and devious and I would be annoyed too. It's not even about the maths of it, it's the sneakiness.

Don't make him a cake ever again. His loss.

Siamese twins are 2 separate people too round

The issue is, he was thoughtless.

This is going to backfire on him though. He may think he is clever and got a bargin now, but he has lost your goodwill for making discount cakes for future events.

Yes, but Siamese Twins know what the other one is up to and get to go to concerts together.

Wow. Reading all this, I suspect BiL will be less inclined to buy his brother concert tickets again in future either.

They'd owe twice as much then and be able to afford a full-price cake

I doubt that, Tabsicle - I expect he'll just have the courtesy to ask his db to pay him back, not the db's wife.

They would also be in the cake making business together, Elderly, so no problem with debt repayments!

Yanbu. Of course you were tricked and taken advantage of. Anyone who says otherwise is silly.

Elderly I was looking at it like this.

Scenario 1- DH owes BIL £30
Pay him cash- cost £30

Scenario 2- Repay in cake
DH has debt written off of £30
OP used ingredients of £5

Cost - £35.

In scenario 1 Op & DH were able to clear the debt for £30. Scenario 2 they've "paid" £30 and OP hasn't been repaid the ingredients money (by "selling" the cake)

Or, to put it another way she couldve repaid the debt without spending £5 on ingredients, but was given no choice

Plus my time, which I happen to value quite highly!

Bil could have repaid the favour of a cheap cake by writing off his db's £30 debt, of course. Apparently, however, goodwill only goes one way.

Your logic is flawed Adel. Because you're ignoring the cake in the 1st scenario. BIL takes the £30 DH gave him and buys a cake that costs X in ingredients. The ingredients get used either to make a cake at BIL's request either way. The only difference is in what format OP receives the agreed price of £30 for the cake.

On that we're agreed round. It would have been far more gracious of the BIL to say that the discount made up for the debt and to call it quits.

If you'd charged the going rate, this would be fine IMO. Straightforward business transaction.

You charged him half the going rate as a family discount, and he then told you to chase your DH up for the balance of that massively reduced cost. That's ungracious and ungrateful, really. You were doing him a favour, one generous with your own time and which had a price tag in terms of lost opportunity cost, and instead of being appreciative and well-mannered about it, he told you to chase your money via a debt you'd not known about instead.

I get why you're angry. It's not the money; it's the terrible manners.

If bil thought it was a pure business transaction, he should have paid the OP - he had no legal right to expect the OP to get the money off her dh. If he thought it wasn't really a proper business transaction but a bit of a favour for family, he should have acknowledged the favour a bit better than telling the OP to collect the cash off her dh!!! He could even, shock horror, have written off his db's debt, given the fact he was getting a cake whose commercial value was £60 out of it. Instead, he chose the option where he gets given a favour by the OP and gives her nothing in return.