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

This, but add and I will take you to the small claims court.

Actually she is changing the terms of the contract and in doing so voids it so you saying no is not you cancelling its you not agreeing to her new term - therefore she needs to repay you the deposit

Good for you.

I would've gone after her for the £15 but I'm just petty

I'd be tempted to put a review online which simply states the facts, no more, no less.

The cost of baking ingredients, petrol and fuel to make it has. £15 is a reasonable adjustment and the baker would've also increased her own fees as her own wages (for the hours she spends) need to go up to.

But she can’t do that. She isn’t allowed to make any adjustment, reasonable or not. The terms have already been agreed. She can’t unilaterally change them. She can give the deposit back or she makes the cake at the original price, as agreed.

And the award for missing the point by a mile goes too..

@HappypusSadpus how is that my problem, the customer?

I'm a cleaner. My costs have gone up. Even some of the products I use have gone up! But I can't turn around to cleans I've already booked and say I'm charging £5 extra now, thanks

I have to tell clients in advance with notice. And I won't be putting costs up for now as overall it isn't worth losing my clients who might be thinking of what they can get rid of to save a bit of money. I don't want it to be me!

Then the Baker should have said that the price could go up if costs went up when accepting the order.

This is a good one. She is massively taking the PISS!

She's got back that she's in 'absolute tears as I've really messed with her books'

Wrong. SHE'S messed with her books. She's basically admitting she made a mistake quoting the original amount, but that's not down to anything you've done!

you cant just change the price after taking a deposit

i wold have gone for the deposit still and review her on fb but thats me-hope you get a cake somewhere

Costs have gone up very quickly, fuel (where I live) going up on a weekly basis..

I know you said you ordered the cake two weeks ago, but how far in advance is your function? If its another year off or such like, then yes she needs/ed to consider her margins, but should have done this before taking on bookings for that period.... in our business (construction industry) we were doing estimates instead of quotes for a while as we knew price increases were imminent.

I have also just increased how much I'm paying for our cleaner and also ensure if I have excess of anything (we live rurally so grow a lot of food, eggs) I give her what I have spare.

In your case, as I said earlier, if we were talking about the cake being needed for a function next year, I would have paid the extra. If the cake was for next month, then I would think she was taking the piss unless it was a lot more detailed than first discussed.

Small businesses run by one person are usually very good at their actual work, just not on the accounting side of things.

@expat101 My cake was for late July time this year so not too far away

She’s recognised herself in this thread and panicked.
leave a review factually everywhere.
you were right to cancel the order, I wouldn’t trust she hadn’t spat in the mix sadly after arguing with you. You won’t be the first one she’s put the prices up to. It’s far enough ingredients have gone up but state that at the beginning,

Good for you OP! She was being cheeky and trying her luck, she can’t just put the price up after giving you a final price/deposit paid! Then the emotional blackmail comments, awful! I would be tempted to leave her a negative review after that.

I have a coffee and cake business. The cost of making cakes hasn’t increased significantly in the last fortnight. They have over the last few months, but no more than when she gave you the price when you booked.

Could you get a bank chargeback for the deposit if you paid by bank transfer to a business account?

Pay, get your cake & then leave an honest review to warn others
she’s taking the piss

Not just any old tears but “absolute” tears. Goodness me, how sad for you hun.

Do you realise she’s played you by agreeing the original price? That meant that she could keep the deposit if you cancelled, whereas if she’d continued to insist on the higher price then you could have got your deposit back (despite what she thought).

She knew before she replied that you weren’t going to want the cake any more. Now she’s got £15 to put towards the ingredients for the next order.

So an increase of 24% in 2 weeks is a reasonable adjustment? You must be joking, which planet are you living on? Yes the cost of things have went up over the last few months, but this cake was only ordered 2 weeks ago and inflation has definitely not gone up 24% in 2 weeks!

I’d be writing a review on her for this. Her FB agreement with you was a £15 deposit for a £65 cake was a contract. Her attitude sucks.

She's really shot herself in the foot then as she's now lost a client.

She should have sucked up the loss on this one and been more careful with her pricing going forward.

Of course you can't change the price after it's been agreed and you've paid a deposit.

I usually find that it never needs to get that far. A properly worded Letter Before Claim usually does the trick.

If she needs to charge more then she does that with new orders, not ones that she booked in 2 weeks ago