Cake maker refusing to make my cake!

[fartoobiled]

Unless I pay £15 more than o originally agreed

I paid a £15 nonrefundable deposit and now she wants another £15 on top of the £50 I was due to pay for the Cake so a total of £80 instead of the £65 I was going to pay in total

Am I being unreasonable to think this is really unfair? She says this is due to the increase in cost of living for example petrol prices and the price of ingredients

Thing is though I paid the £15 which is nonrefundable. So if I don't pay the extra I lose my money

She'd have to be baking a lot of cakes to be VAT registered: the earnings threshold is £85k. However she may not be declaring all her earnings for tax. Reporting her to Trading Standards is only relevant for the contractual issues and withholding the deposit. If she's running a food business she'll need to be registered with the local council and be certificated for food hygiene though. If she isn't then she's an idiot and likely not insured, etc.

@Comefromaway what a silly response......how would you know what she makes.

It's not about knowing what she makes, it's about the threat. She'd shit herself.

£15 is a 25% increase - excessive IMO. But apart from that there is no facility for ‘reasonable adjustment’ here. A quote is legally binding and if the work can’t be completed for the quoted price, the baker has broken the contract and has to return the deposit.

Thanks - didn’t realise.

Er, the deposit was £15 and the total price £65, meaning OP had an extra £50 to pay...

OP - good result! Shoddy business practice by the cake baker. Agree with another poster who said never to do business with anyone who calls you 'hun', though! Advice to live by!

Good for you OP, glad you got the deposit back as well. I don't think with the rising cost of living it's unreasonable for her to raise her prices for future orders, but for existing orders where a price has been agreed and a deposit paid to secure the booking and in turn the quoted price; no. I suspect she's either very unprofessional or pushing her luck and seeing who accepts and who doesn't.

Good result OP. I actually had someone do something similar to me a few years ago. I'd ordered some furniture and paid a deposit for it. They rang me and said that they'd made a mistake with the price and I had to pay an increased amount. The difference was that they would have refunded the deposit, but I wanted the furniture so paid up the extra, after giving them a lesson about contract law.

If she's running a food business she'll need to be registered with the local council and be certificated for food hygiene though. If she isn't then she's an idiot and likely not insured, etc.

This is helpful op, I hope you get it resolved.

This is so stupid on so many levels.

• you don't need to be VAT registered unless you're generating turnover of more than £85,000.

• Trading Standards have nothing to do with tax and won't care whether she's VAT registered.

• accepting cash is not an indication of a dodgy business. You can accept cash and report your income to HMRC fully just as much as you can accept bank transfers and never report a penny.

move on now and find another cake maker. I would be keen to know how much they quote in comparison for the same cake…

Even if the new cake maker quotes £100 or more, at least they will be upfront about it and it would be up to OP to either accept or decline the offer, in full possession of the relevant facts.

It's the dishonesty and sharp practice that grates, far more than the actual price.

I'm glad that she has returned the money, but I wonder if she did it graciously as she's realised that it's simply the right thing to do or whether she's realised how badly her business could be affected if OP left the negative reviews that she would have fully deserved.

@Lockheart - the poster was wrong, doesn't make her stupid

Glad she refunded the money. Could be a great business that, not actually making any cakes, just taking lots of £15 off people then putting your overall price up "Sorry, hun, it's non-refundable."

@WeAreTheHeroes thank you, I'm a little stupid sometimes though :)

Glad she refunded the money. Could be a great business that, not actually making any cakes, just taking lots of £15 off people then putting your overall price up "Sorry, hun, it's non-refundable."

Kind of similar-ish to a baked-goods equivalent of the scam they ran in 'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels' - where they took payments for goods that they never had available to supply and then sent refund cheques from their made-up company with a rather embarrassing name?

"Who wants their bank manager to know they tickle arse when they're not paying cheques?"

Excellent update!

I wouldn’t use her again!

Uf she’s struggling with the cost of living (like 90% of the country) then she can charge more for cakes in the future but she can’t change a price of something she’s already quoted and got a deposit for.

Tell your family to stop being such mugs too.

Your mum and sister are BU. It’s up to her to quote a price within which she can work.

Since she's refunded I would leave it now. I think someone has probably had a word with her and she's now trying to avoid negative reviews. Having realised she is wrong, she hopefully won't pull that stunt with other customers.

God I've been depressed all morning but this very patronising post from someone who doesn't understand simple maths themselves has really cheered me up

Legally speaking she is in the wrong. She broke the terms of your contract by increasing the price agreed, and therefore any monies already paid are refundable if you don’t want to agree to the new terms. Given that this contract was entered into a mere 2 weeks ago is just laughable.
If she refuses I would take her to the small claims court and in those circumstances I would also post a factual review of exactly what has happened on her business page.

Say no thanks and ask for your deposit back, go to Costco, buy one of those massive gorgeous cakes, (chocolate ganache or victoria sponge), buy some lovely flowers or decorations for the top, bish bash bosh, job done. Don't use her again, she's taking the mick if she's upped her price by that much after only 2 weeks. Maybe she's taken on too much and she's trying to get rid of a few orders.

Glad you got your deposit back.
Not sure I’d want a cake from someone who calls me ‘hun’ and is in ‘absolute tears’.

Good for you OP

Inflation is not 20% over 2 weeks, or whatever maths she used

The "hun" bit and then "crying" message show she's not professional

Hope you get a nice cake elsewhere

Update - I woke up to £15 in my bank account from her!

Thats great OP! What are the chances she’s on MN, seen this post and realised how damaging a negative honest review of her company would be! 🙈

Wow, this is very patronising, as well as totally wrong. The cake was £65 in total, not £50 and she was asked to pay an extra £15, which took the total to £80. Glad you’ve mastered ‘simple maths’ but you might want to do the same with simple English.

I thought this too. I worked it out at just under a 25% increase and wondered how she’d arrived at that in a couple of weeks. I think she was using inflation as an excuse for a bit of a rip off.