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.

That would have been magical . . . 😂

Jesus... No wonder they try it on, the stakes are quite high, aren't they?!
If you have no sense of embarrassment or shame, of course.

I'd completely forgotten, but something a bit like this happened to us many years back. A bunch of us were having a get-together and one of the couples included a supermarket employee, who could get a perpetual staff discount on almost all purchases from any branch of that supermarket.

They insisted on us getting all of our food there, even though other supermarkets were cheaper, and then claimed that the staff discount was their 'contribution' to the costs - so, like Anne, the total cost of the shopping was reduced with the discount and then the rest of us were to spend our actual money in splitting the discounted cost between us.

They claimed that the discount was 'limited' and monitored - i.e. they would start asking questions if you regularly bought 30 trolleys-worth of food every week - so it was sort of eating into their 'allowance' - an 'allowance' that nobody would ever scratch the surface of unless they were running a full-time orchestrated side-hustle by sub-supplying everybody they knew every single week.

To make things worse, iirc it was only something like 10% off and there were only about four or five couples there, so even taking the staff discount into account, their share as a couple should still have been 20 or 25% of the total cost and not just 10%.

Did they get away with it?!

Some people are just outrageous cheeky fuckers, mind boggling

Did they get away with it?!

Some people are just outrageous cheeky fuckers, mind boggling

No, we objected and they very grudgingly stumped up a few more coppers. I think we ended up buying less (quantity) and less nice food, though, as they claimed they couldn't afford to actually pay their share of the food we all wanted to enjoy.

As you say, the problem is that so many people become experts and become dedicated to their craft - it's their way of life. They don't just half-heartedly try it on and capitulate when pulled up on it - however flimsy and ridiculous their long list of 'justifications' becomes, they still won't give any/much ground. The DARVO also kicks in as a matter of course.

Like with the serial wallet 'forgetters', they don't just pretend to have forgotten it on the off-chance that they might get lucky and then 'suddenly find it' when they realise they haven't succeeded this time; they deliberately and confidently leave it at home so that (in their eyes) other people have no choice but to roll over, adopt their 'problem' and give them what they expect and believe they should be entitled to.

This ^^

Of course I wasn’t going to use money when I had a voucher

Anne is fundamentally misunderstanding the difference between a gift voucher and a voucher code. The first is the equivalent of cash to be used in a specific shop/place. The second is a discount code. They are totally different.

I agreed to go to see something at the Royal Albert Hall with a friend. I had a £10 off per ticket code; so I used that and the tickets were cheaper for both of us. So they were £100 instead of £120. And I asked her for £50; asking for £60 while I only paid £40 would be wrong.

If, however, someone had bought me a £100 gift voucher for the Royal Albert Hall as a present? Totally fair enough to buy the tickets with that and still ask for £50. Because that doesn’t cost her any more money and I still have the remaining portion of my present. Nobody is any worse off.

Anne has done the worst of the worst, though. If she’d found a discount code for the first coffee machine, billed you all £100 and not told you? Pretty sly and not the way to treat your friends. But she’s actually persuaded you all to spend more to
do it! She deserves the consequences of her actions…..

@BarbaraWoodlouse, thank you for explaining!

No they didn’t offer to pay Anne’s share. They sent another discount code to theoretically pay their £140, in a two fingers up approach to emulate what Anne had done. Which is why they all thumbs upped it!

Anne is an arsehole. She doesn’t misunderstand at all. If she was purchasing something with a voucher or code for herself, she know exactly how it works.

Glad this has ended well OP, you sound like lovely friends and I’m sorry to hear of your friend’s health problems. Hope she has a lovely birthday and loves the gift.

Wonder what will happen between Anne and the birthday girl?

Sorry @Johnnysgirl you are wrong, read the OP’s posts!
One person said they would pay double (£280) to avoid any unpleasantness, which meant Anne would get away with her CFuckery.
another sent her her discount code, so she then had a 20% off code, which was what she originally had.

Go and read the full thread so you know what has actually happened.

Do let us know how you get on.

Sorry meant to say person said they would pay £224, double the reduced amount.

Sorry @Johnnysgirl you are wrong, read the OP’s posts!
I just asked the question... I didn't actually answer it myself 🤷🏻‍♀️

It's these nested quote things. They're ridiculously confusing.

I can't believe anyone would risk a good friendship group for the sake of 100 quid. Very sad and no doubt she will regret it.

The other member of the group then sent Anne her discount code for 20% off so she would be whole.
I don't understand this bit what did OP mean by 'she would be whole' and why send her the other friend's voucher?

... sorry posted too soon. Surely the other friend's voucher could be used now by remainder of group if they are now buying item without CF making a contribution?

I once went out with a friend on the train and l had a railcard that gave me a discount on my train ticket. She overheard me paying for my return ticket which was about £15 less than her full price one and suggested we split the train tickets cost 50/50 so we both benefitted from my railcard (that l had bought and paid for). I declined and she was most put out and when we arrived and went for our first coffee break she was still making comments about me paying as l paid less for my ticket. She then seemed spend the whole day determined to make a situation that l carried the cost of something that she didn't reciprocate to 'compensate' her for paying full fare. I didn't go out with her again.
Thing is with me if she'd not said anything l would've offered to get the first coffees and a cake or whatever as lm like that.. but once she had that attitude immediately that l should do that then she had no chance sorry.

the discount voucher ONLY works at store 2, which ONLY has the more expensive item (it appears)

Store 1, with cheaper item doesn't have discount codes.

yeah that person was nuts. A railcard is a personal thing!

The only time i would share the cost like that is where its me and my boyfriend and either we did a joint trip somewhere and only one of us had a railcard,

or, when we both decide one weekend to go and visit say both our sets of parents - mine is closer, so we add that up and split the cost (as we don't have shared finances, just share the cost of "shared" activities.

But a group of mates going away? you buy your own rail fare (or we'd look into seeing if a group ticket was cheaper i suppose or a 2together JUST for that trip - maybe worth it for say London to Scotland as a one off.

Eh, in that scenario I would absolutely have split the discount by totalling the tickets and going 50/50 – yes, I’d pay a little more, but my friend would pay a little less, and we’d be going on a trip together on the same fare. Wouldn’t matter that I’d bought the rail card because I’d bought it anyway, I’m not worse off for it.

Bahhhhhumbug

The big difference - apart from the fact that you apply and pay for your railcard, and don't just clip it out of a free supermarket magazine or click on a mass marketing email - is that the saving with your own railcard was not dependent on your friend spending anything.

People like Anne - and those who want to 'share' a BOGOF with somebody else (by taking the free one instead of both saving 50%), in order to benefit personally, conveniently ignore the fact that they have absolutely nothing and no saving UNTIL somebody else hands over their own actual cash.

The offer is supposed to be an incentive/reward to those spending, to enable them to pay a bit less or get more for their money, rather than for one person to pay full whack and another randomer to cash in by claiming the conditional value that didn't exist until somebody else 'created' it by actually opening up their purse.

In your case, you did nothing wrong in the slightest. Your friend was the CF. There was nothing stopping her from making the commitment in buying her own railcard and enjoying an identical offer (assuming she qualified - and if she didn't for any reason - not a student, over the age cut-off or whatever - the discount was obviously never intended for or offered to her).