To be sad our friends gave away our pram?

[GotMooMilk]

We have 2 kids age 7 and nearly 4. When DC2 was around 2.5 our friends were having a baby and asked if they could borrow our pram. I was about to sell it on (it was a nice pram and would have got £3/400 second hand) but we said they could have it for their DC and we could sell it when they were done.

Roll on 2.5 years later they’re having DC2 and have got a new pram. We asked about our one and turns out they gave it away a year ago. For reference they are v wealthy so wouldn’t have needed the money but I’m upset that they wouldn’t offer it back to us first. It’s sentimental value but also we could have sold it! And now they’re having another they’re buying a new pram it just seems a waste.

I think my emotions are just high and I get when you give something away you have no rights to it but my understanding was we were lending rather than giving. What do you think?

This! 👏👏

Doubt you would have got £300 for a used buggy being that many years old

But they were wrong to give it away

You gave the pram to your friends

I don’t think you’re being unreasonable. We gave our pram to a friend (we didn’t want it back) but she still asked if we did when she’d finished with it. Prams are expensive with a good resale value!

I don’t think there’s anything you can do except not lend them things again.

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

I don’t think FSF was writing about prams but, y’know, in terms of a wider principle…

Maybe you should have made it clear you were lending it not giving it.

Secondhand prams don't make much money these days.

There's a lot of excusing people of 'forgetting' things that aren't trivial, on this thread and elsewhere. Often this 'forgetting' in my experience really means 'not giving enough of a toss in the firstplace to remember or write it down'. People who really are this forgetful, on the other hand, have a different problem. But some of those people use diaries or other methods to deal with their forgetfulness - others just make their forgetfulness other people's problem. Anyway OP, once you learn people are unreliable or forgetful or have a rather don't-care attitude, you don't necessarily have to distance yourself but you certainly can conduct your side of the friendship safe in that knowledge. Same goes for family members.

They shouldn't have got rid of it, it was a loan, not a gift. I don't think they're very good friends to have assumed that was OK, it wasn't like it was second hand baby grows or something.

But, you wouldn't have got £300-£400 for it, second hand prams are never worth as much as people think because parents often like to buy new for their first born, and will use again for future babies (except your 'friends' of course).

People 'not getting stuck on principles' is the reason so few people have any.

I personally wouldn't consider someone so disrespectful much of a 'friend'.

I am depressed (but not especially surprised) by further evidence of the very low standards that so many people have for themselves and their friends.

A pram is a ‘big ticket’ baby item, like a cot or a car seat. Parents rarely have more than one or two of them at a time. It’s not as if OP gave a massive bag of baby clothes and expected them to remember to return one specific, sentimentally valuable sleep suit. It would have taken a thirty-second text message to say ‘thanks for the loan of the pram! Oscar has outgrown it now. Would you like us to clean and return it or are you happy for us to pass it on?’

When your expectations are on the floor you are rarely disappointed 🤷🏻‍♀️. I don’t know when it became so deeply uncool to care about things, and expect others to care a tiny bit too.

It's just not something I can get worked up about.

They didn't sell it
They didn't give it away knowing OP is pregnant/has a baby who needs a pram
etc

In those instances, I'd absolutely be saying something.

You’re not the OP and you’re not the friends. It’s not your job to know whether this is something that matters to her, but in my view it’s a fairly basic expectation that a good friend would know and respect the things that are important to you even if they don’t feel the same way.

Total c*nts.
Should have kept in there minds they need to give it back.

That is really bad. I was given heaps by my sister and I have kept the few things she specifically said she was lending me. We asked before passing on a double buggy she hadn’t even said she wanted back. It was different to just passing on a bag of clothes.

You are being too kind and they saw the advantage in that. I think you need to speak up (firmly) and have expectation that you get the value of your (expensive) pram back. You have kids to feed and your kids will follow your habit of not speaking up. And they may argue with you saying otherwise that they did not realize it was a loan or you were not clear but just ignore that. (unless of course they have done something of very high value for you that they see as equal in cost)

Didn’t matter whether it was worth £5 or £5000 it wasn’t their property to sell.
i wouldn’t want to salvage a friendship with people who sell things that don’t belong to them.

I’d absolutely remind them that it was a loan and ask them how they plan to make this right and be damned whether it offends them or not.

YANBU, that's really rude of them if the word "borrow" was ever said. You might have missed your moment to say anything now though, you should have said "oh I was planning on selling it when you were done" at the time.

That said though if it makes you feel any better I doubt it would still be worth £300+, I got a nice second hand one for £150!

Neither are all the people on this thread who are so certain they are bad friends, cunts etc

So they are only good friends if they can read OP's mind and know she still feels sentimental about a pram she was going to sell anyway?

It was clearly a misjudgement on their part but I don't think it makes them even half of the names some people are calling them on this thread.

If you genuinely think that my posts are equal and interchangeable with the pp calling OP’s friends cunts then I really can’t help you.

She loaned her pram to her friends.

It doesn’t matter how much she would have realistically made on the pram. It might have had sentimental value. It might have been the last gift bought by a grandmother before she passed. These people had no idea because they didn’t bother to ask. Rude rude rude.

I own a little rock that has sentimental value 😄 anything can have sentimental value

Oh come on- if it had such serious sentimental value why give it away/ lend it in the first place? And OP has said she was thinking of selling it.

I was about to sell it on (it was a nice pram and would have got £3/400 second hand)

I think YABVU. It sounds like you didn't say you wanted it back and from my maths the pram was about 10 years old? Maybe older. Even if it was a bugaboo or Uppababy or whatever high end pram it was, it's literally worth almost nothing after that amount of time and used by 3 children. Secondhand prams (and any baby gear really) are a dime a dozen.

A friend of mine recently offered me her 7 year old bugaboo. It's going strong and in good condition but she's been trying to sell it for months with no luck. I'm pregnant but tbh just wanted a new pram as I know we will use it daily for the next 4 years and would prefer a new one as I know it'll see a lot of use. This is coming from someone who buys most things secondhand.

If I was in your friends shoes, I literally would not have thought twice about passing it on. Never would have occurred to me that you'd want it back for sentimental reasons...

Never would have occurred to me that you'd want it back for sentimental reasons...

Sentimental reasons which apparently evaporated at the thought of selling it.