Cheeky Fucker - Group Gift

[TulaOfDarkWater]

Friendship group of six. One member has a birthday coming up & the other five people decided to get together & buy her a big ticket item.

Site A sells the item for £500 so £100 per person, everyone agreed & was happy with this.

Site B has a deluxe version for £700 so £140 per person, everyone agreed this was out of budget & unanimously decided to go with the £500 option from site A.

Just before the item could be purchased, a member of the group, let’s call her Anne, said she had a 20% off voucher for site B which was due to expire soon & it would be silly to waste it so how about we use it to buy the deluxe version & pay a little extra as birthday girl has had a shitty time of it lately etc.

In the group chat, we discussed:

£700 - 20% = £560

£560 / 5 = £112 per person

Anne thumbs up emoji liked this message!

Everyone agreed they could stretch to the £12 extra & it was decided that we would buy the deluxe item from Site B. The ONLY reason we agreed to this was due to the discount voucher, everyone was happy to purchase from site A otherwise.

Anne purchased the item using the voucher & sent everyone her bank details asking for £140. When this was queried, Anne said the 20% voucher represented her 1/5 contribution & so everyone else owes £140.

1. Anne knows the reason the £700 option was vetoed in the first place was because everyone - including Anne - agreed £140 was out of budget

1. At no time did Anne say the 20% voucher was her contribution & the rest of us had to pay full price. Another member of the group had the exact same voucher & we could have used hers if we had known

1. There are text messages where the group discussed the maths & agreed to £12 extra each & Anne did not dispute this & in fact thumbs up emoji’d it. Her excuse for this is she didn’t read the messages properly, the thumbs up was a mistake / she didn’t do it deliberately / know it was there & she is bad at maths anyway so tuned out!

So am I being unreasonable to think Anne is a cheeky fucker & deliberately mislead us? If we had stuck to the original plan then Anne would have had to pay £100 but this way she pays nothing & the rest of us an extra £40!!

Just to be clear, this voucher was one of those promotional email ones that are sent to those on the company’s mailing list, it wasn’t a voucher that had any monetary value or was a gift to her which would be different & like I said, another member had the exact same voucher which she was happy for us to use instead if we had known this is what Anne was doing.

Not a cats chance in hell I’d be paying the higher amount. Cheeky bloody cow!

A really good friend of many years

i would not jump to her “trying to trick us”

I would presume she was just not thinking and would drop her a line to explain we only went with with the more expensive one because of the offer.

it would be issue over before it had even begun and certainly no “we are all massively pissed off”, as the OP’s “close” group of friends reacted

This is one of those times for the mn classic....

'Anne, are you on glue?'

I am gobsmacked at the cheekiness of that, has she no shame at all? Please don't let your friend cover all your costs or agree to the £140, it would be outrageous to let her get away with that.

I am gobsmacked at the cheekiness of that, has she no shame at all? Please don't let your friend cover all your costs or agree to the £140, it would be outrageous to let her get away with that.

if something like this happened, there would be no bitching and sure as heck none of us would start a mumsnet thread talking about how they’ll likely end the friendship of it

We would discuss and would be resolved in a message or two

That's great for you, but different people cope with scenarios in different ways. CFs are very good at making you doubt yourself and thinking "Am I the baddie?" and some of their victims find it helpful to ask strangers for wider thoughts and opinions to help reassure themselves that they aren't going crazy.

To be honest, I'm not saying that you are at all, but it's a common strategy of CFs to reverse the victim and offender and, when pulled up on their terrible behaviour, claim that everybody else is being nasty and bitchy towards them - and that they are the ones who have stepped out of line. If you've ever heard/seen Count Arthur Strong on radio or TV, the main character does this repeatedly, often telling people that "You should be ashamed of yourself" in response to their unwillingness to simply accept and let him get away with his terrible selfish behaviour.

I’m gobsmaked 1% have voted YABU! Maybe someone pressed the button by mistake or that’s Anne herself voting! Her actions are taking cheeky fuckery to a new level and I’d be letting her know that.

I am just surprised no one has gone straight back to her (if good friends as stated) and said hang on Anne, that's a bit unfair if you are not contributing. Surely that would be the 1st thing before all this behind the scenes chat?

You’d think, wouldn’t you.
Especially close friends, who have been a group for decades

but nope. They get “massively pissed off” and the Op starts a CF mumsnet thread.

very different “friendship” group to my friendship group

It has to be a clear simple message of “the cost is £112 each otherwise CF you haven’t actually contributed anything to the gift. If we don’t all agree to that then just return it and I’ll order the £500 one and you can all transfer me £100. Birthday girl would love that just as much.
can you all let me know whether you agree to the £112 by 12:00 please?”

A really good friend of many years

i would not jump to her “trying to trick us”

I would presume she was just not thinking and would drop her a line to explain we only went with with the more expensive one because of the offer.

It's perfectly possible for people to be generally good friends and good company, but have an Achilles heel when it comes to one aspect - frequently financial meanness.

Anybody knows that, if you're sent a discount code or spot a cheaper retailer for a big joint purchase, you take advantage of the new (cheaper) price together. It wasn't just altruistic on her part, as she too stood to save £28, but she took it too far and wanted everybody else's savings as well - savings that would cost them an extra £40 on top of what they'd already agreed!

At most, you might hint at somebody buying you a coffee in appreciation of your seeing/mentioning the offer, but even that is more in line with what coach drivers do when bringing 50-odd strangers and their custom to a particular cafe en-route, as a perk of their job (bearing in mind that they wouldn't have had a need to stop at a cafe at all themselves had they not been out there doing their job - and the passengers don't end up spending any extra overall, in any case - just in Cafe A rather than in Cafe B); and not what a small group of friends would do.

I can't square the idea that one person would simultaneously be so ditzy as to thumbs-up a brief confirmation of how much everybody is paying without even glancing at it properly (which is quite a dishonest, dismissive, unhelpful thing to do anyway) whilst also being smart enough to steer everybody else towards paying 40% extra (which is not 'a bit' as she suggested), meaning that it just so happens that she won't have to pay anything at all.

Well that's presumably because you don't have a CF in your friendship group, who is constantly trying to fleece everyone else, with just enough plausible deniability that it makes you doubt yourself and feel like you must be the one in the wrong somehow.

Perhaps if you did have such a friend, you might react differently.

(A friend who has genuinely had a bit of a brain fart requires a very different reaction from one who is deliberately trying to manipulate people, and from what OP has said about the friend's previous behaviour it sounds like she's the latter).

Wow, that's like a textbook CF behaviour! I also think everyone should refuse to pay, make her return it and order from with another voucher. She also gets a smartshow 3d video card for her next birthday and a code from whatever marketing email any of you will receive around her Bday. Enough is enough.

Shameful behaviour to do towards friends
Sooooooo Out of order

Well that's presumably because you don't have a CF in your friendship group, who is constantly trying to fleece everyone else, with just enough plausible deniability that it makes you doubt yourself and feel like you must be the one in the wrong somehow.

so…. A friendship group with someone who is a con artist who tries to “fleece” then but what… no backbone in any of the other group to confront her?

they socialise, come together and rally when one is really sick, essentially grown up together and yet the entire time…. One of the group is trying to fleece the others, the others all know this and are pissed off about it?

bet it’s a barrel of laughs when this group of friends get together!

Perhaps if you did have such a friend, you might react differently.

I wouldn’t have a “friend” that I regarded as “trying to fleece me” 😐

Well done on this. MN posters can be very inclined to vigilante justice that they conveniently forget has real life effects.

You are absolutely right to focus on the wellbeing of your friend over misplaced "justice" for Anne. The justice is a slow burn withdrawal of trust and friendship, which is priceless.

Bloody hell that is cheeky , more of a cheeky c..t than a fucker

I would send £112 as agreed

She also gets a smartshow 3d video card for her next birthday and a code from whatever marketing email any of you will receive around her Bday.

Her present should be a link to the DFS website, as you've discovered that they happen to have a big sale on now - and the hundreds of pounds that she will 'save' when compared to the 'original price' will be her very valuable gift with lots of love from all of you.

Yes definitely a message from each individual on chat to remind her of what you were expecting to pay i.e, £112

I would hesitate to trust her and not send any money till it got sorted out

Avoid this whole issue by not spending £500+ on a bloody coffee machine.

Lucky you 🙄

Is it really so hard to understand that other people may have different life experiences to yours? And what you actually mean is, you've never had such a friend yet.

Don't let one person pay the difference for the sake of peace. This is how cheeky fuckers get away with it.
Once this is done I'd stop any one to one contact with Anne. I'd explain to the other 4 that I would be civil in a group situation but that personally I was done with her since I wouldn't want to socialise with a person who tries to scam her friends

Bloody hell..No wonder Anne’s getting richer if this is how she carries on! Hope your friends get better soon.