Sister charging me?

[Arewerrallydoingthisnow]

I genuinely can’t work out if I’m being unreasonable. We have v little cash at the moment - nursery fees, mortgage increases, I’m working 2 jobs, kids at state schools etc - much like a lot of the population. Sister does not work. Her husbands family are RICH. So in fact not only does she not work, but he doesn’t either. They live off family money, have 2 kids in private school (paid for), a big house mortgage free, and expenses / cars etc paid for by family money.
i have been trying to sort some stuff in my house on a shoestring recently and after having redecorated our living room myself in evenings between kids and jobs etc I asked if she would have any time to bring over her carpet cleaner and help me move everything back as husband at work during days. She said yes great - came and helped and cleaned the carpets for us with her machine and spent some hours helping me sort everything out again. Note again neither she nor her husband work and both kids in school during the day. I was very grateful and asked her husband what she liked at the moment to buy her a gift to say thank you. To cut a long story short she then called and said she would invoice me for hours she’d spent helping and that when she got help in it was around £15/hr so she thought that was reasonable.
i was shocked as I cannot afford that for a start and would never ever have asked if I knew it came with a cost attached, but moreover I’m devastated about the reflection on our relationship that help is boiled down to a transactional cost. And with no prior warning at all. Aibu? Should I expect to pay?

Shes a cunt.....no way would I have paid....that would be me and her done for good.....fucks sake...I can't get over what scum some siblings are on MN

If this is unlike her then I strongly suspect it's pressure from her husband.
He suggested it and she was afraid to disagree with him.

If it was me I'd text her and say 'if I'd thought you were charging per hour I'd probably have asked you to leave sooner to be honest. I didn't realise there was a per hour charge. But I'll know the next time I ask for help. And if you ever need help with anything the same hourly rate applies'.

Then it's up to the sister to say no.

I helped a friend decorate when she asked, lent her our carpet cleaner and (brand new, we'd not even used it yet) dehumidifier, helped her when she was moving, kept an eye on her house, picked up post, before it sold. Didn't charge her for it, she's a friend.

If she was going to charge she should have agreed the price beforehand so you knew what you were agreeing to. Very unreasonable of her to say after that fact she needs paying!

Sounds like her husband might have been annoyed and been the driver of this, since it happened only after you spoke to him? Either way, that's awful. Totally delusional to think you could charge ANYONE retrospectively, let alone your own sister who you definitely should not charge at all!

bye-bye £105.
And bye-bye sister.

Yeh that's absurd. No decent sister would do this.

But. Could she just genuinely have no idea how privileged she is? Or how much you're struggling? If she doesn't work could she be seeing it like 'playing at having a business' and doesn't realise how much of an impact it would have on you?

No excuse, it's crackers. Just trying to think of possible reasons.

Maybe things aren’t as peachy between her and her husband as you think they are. Does he let her have any money if her own?

Either that or she’s just a super bitch. I’d just laugh and text back ‘haha, good one. You got me. I’ve got you some Quality Streets as a thank you. You can collect next time you’re here’

The main argument of your post is that she should have given her time for nothing not because she's a caring sister, but because you are so poor and she is so rich.

If you think about it, do you often bring up topics with her about how everything is so expensive and how much you've had to pay this month on stuff?

Did she know in advance that a full day's work would be involved with the carpet cleaner? Maybe she thought it'd be an hour then got a shock when she was asked to stay the full day. But she can't say no to people to their faces but gets angry later on.

Could you even imagine sending her an invoice!😯

I would literally never talk to her again
Nor would she get a penny out of me
Jesus what is she on?

I would just text here and ask if she's being serious with an emoji with surprised face. It's pretty innofensive but you will know for sure if she is by her response. If she says she is serious, then I'm afraid your relationship with her will never be the same.

After this she would be someone that didn’t exist to me.

Has she been in touch today?

I think this is a very good letter.

Maybe add about it being "illegal" (?) to employ family members without throwing the job offer open to a tender, especially as you could have got government help for employing an unemployed person, blah blah blah...

I genuinely can’t work out if I’m being unreasonable.

Course you can, Malcolm.

There's absolutely no way I'd want to spend time cleaning someone else house, not even a DP who doesn't live with me, let alone another close relative. It would also never occur to me to ask any such to do the same for me.

I think there's an argument that asking for her help was unreasonable, and her asking for payment was a passive-aggressive way to point this out, when she should have just refused to do the work in the first place. (Borrowing the machine would have been OK, as long as OP fetched and returned it, and topped up the consumables.)

Why it is cheekier to ask for £15 an hour to do 7 hours work, than to ask for 7 hours work that would normally cost £15 an hour? (I agree it's wrong to ask because it wasn't agreed in advance, I'm just thinking about the wider issues now.)

I actually think that her being wealthy means it's a bigger imposition to ask her for help, not a smaller one. If her carpets need cleaning, she probably pays someone to do that. Her being wealthy possibly means she would really need a lot more than £15 an hour for it to be worthwhile, for her.

"Illegal" to employ family members without tendering it to others - 😂I have heard it all now!

Anyway, it is a moot point as she has already paid her

Oh my! I would feel VERY hurt indeed if my sister did that. VERY hurt. And I would let her know exactly how hurt I felt. Ouch ouch ouch. Of course I dont know your relationship with her which might be relevant and explain why she has charged you. To me it's not relevant that she is rich as you say. She is your sister and I imagine you thought her help was given from the heart.
I did once however charge my younger sister for 2 birthday cards. I make birthday cards and have sold a few here and there. When my younger sister wanted to look through them on one occasion while visiting me, she helped herself to a few and just took them without saying anything. I then piped up with ....they are £2 each btw. She paid, energy changed slightly for a few mins, and since then she hasn't asked for another card. So be it. My objection was that she took for granted that she could just help herself to my cards (they take about an hour each and quite intricate cards too) and I didn't like that so I put a 'boundary' in place. Others may disagree with this. When she got divorced in 2013 I gave up many hours to help her pack up her belongings from the house...didnt dream of charging for my time.

Op, you shouldn't have paid this. Anyone who wants payment for a job should make it clear up front what the charge is, so that you can accept it or refuse it.

This is absolutely disgusting behaviour on their part. If you had to pay you could have probably got a friend or somebody else to help you for less than that.

If you have already paid it's too late now, but I would certainly not be helping her with anything in the future, and I would be spending the bare minimum on presents etc in the future.

I’d do a public post on Facebook that you’d recommend your sisters carpet cleaning services, and she only charged you £15/hour to come and help you. Be a total bitch back.

“ but moreover I’m devastated about the reflection on our relationship that help is boiled down to a transactional cost”

But the state of your relationship anyway was that you had to ask her husband what she might like as a thank you gift. That doesn’t sound like you’re close at all.

If she had told you upfront you could have decided to spend that getting your own equipment or as a pp said getting a professional in!

This sounds unbelievable!! Wow!! Almost like something you'd read in the Mail Online!!

Actually her husband being a millionaire makes it easier for me to comprehend, I have almost always found that it's those with the least who are the most generous!