Mother told her friend she doesnt have to pay me?

[Imacelebritygotit]

I do translating/admin e.g appointments, filling out forms. Work stuff on the side

My mums friend heard i do this and hired me. We agreed on sum etc

I did 3.5 hours work

She then tells me she will give the money when she sees my mum the next day, i agree

My mother then goes "omg guess how much she paid you!!!" "I said no, no, no, no! You are a friend!!!! Absolutely no need to pay that much!!! Wtf!!! 10 pound is fine!!! But she insisted she pays you the agreed amount!!!!! Said treat it as a gift then. But then i insisted and said 10 pound is fine!!!! Trust me!

Explaining to her is useless she just keeps going She is a friend!!! You cant charge her like other people!!!/anyone else!! How can you be so money hungry and greedy!!!

Am i right to be angry about this! I mean this woman is not my friend, i barely know her. And it was like 4 hours work!!!

Edit: oh and now im getting texts from this woman saying she was very happy with such a good price, what a nice person i am and how others she hired "take advantage and over charge". And she wants to hire me again for same price!

This is where it gets difficult. Lots of talk about taking her to court, but in reality who really wants to have to do that? The fact that she has blocked you means she doesn’t want to have to read your messages. And your mum has already shown she can’t be trusted… so you either put a letter through the door requesting final payment before court action or you accept you’ve lost the money and let it go. Obviously never do anything for her again, or any of your mums friends, and make it very clear to your mum that you have ended up out of pocket due to her nonsense , and as a result you won’t be helping any of her friends again. And if she starts about being money grabbing….well mum it’s very easy to be generous with other peoples money isn’t it….i’m out of pocket and haven’t even covered my overheads thanks to your interference. And let her know that you consider her lovely friend has robbed you….

Your mum is crazy but this woman is just as bad. If she was going to pay you cash why didn’t she just do it when you were doing the work for her?

I would have left this go tbh to avoid embarrassing my mum, but would have had a stern word with her explaining I couldn’t work for a pittance. I’d also have explained to the other woman involved that any future work would have to be at the standard rate.
I wouldn’t have demanded the rest of the payment in this instance though. More trouble than it’s worth. Too late now. Sometimes MN gives bad advice imho.

Small claims is ridiculous for 3 hours of side hustle. The time and bandwidth it will take up will cost far more than whatever OP had lost. She should consider whatever she's lost as a cheap lesson in business management. Always have a proper contracting and invoicing system in place.

I know that this is generalising, but the older generations tend to take pride in paying their bills promptly and not owing people anything. Even those who don't do online banking will normally be quick to hand over a cheque or cash straightaway.

It's interesting how this woman seems to play on her age when it comes to not being able to transfer the money to OP immediately, but not only knows her way around blocking people promptly, but is also not typical of her demographic when it comes to honour in paying what you owe.

I'm middle aged, but I don't think I've ever blocked anybody I know - only when it's obvious spam or scams. Then again, if this kind of behaviour is typical for this woman, she probably is used to blocking others as a matter of routine!

I don't hold her blameless at all; she knew full well what the agreed payment was, and even if mum had point-blank refused to take it from her but for a tenner, an honourable person would have messaged OP immediately and laughed about the absurd situation before asking how she could best get the rest of the money to her.

The friend is a manipulative user. Learn from this and move on.

The fact that she has blocked you tells you all that you need to know about her character.

Sorry this has happened.

And also the faux-innocent insistence that peanuts was a fair price (after already agreeing to the proper price), with the added barb suggesting that the actual fair price was in fact a massive exploitative rip-off.

Point this out to your mum

Your mum sounds like a right drama queen

That's not how translation works, if what OP did was related to the translation component of her work. It can be very brain-intensive.

And tell her mother to FO too...

It’s so weird that she was happy to pay and did via cash given to mum

now seems she isn’t

😮

Maybe she wasn't. Maybe she insisted to mum that the price was far too much and/or that she should do it for a token amount 'because friends' and SHE said that she would chuck her a tenner, but that was plenty... and it could be that mum was so embarrassed about this that she then made up the fake exchange whereby SHE turned down the bulk of the money, because she thought it might carry more sway in mitigating the refusal if she said it was driven by mum rather than by 'a friend of mum's'?

Assuming OP has reported it as mum said it, mum did sound very gaslighty/protesting too much in her blustering.

I don't know if we (or more importantly OP) will ever know the whole truth. All I know is that I wouldn't trust either of the other two at all, and would certainly not do any work for the woman or on mum's recommendations.

dont know how old your mum is but that sounds so typical of a person of a certain generation!
Soooo out of order and how dare she give away your services for peanuts!
Decline any further “work” as it’s clear she doesn’t want to pay the going rate and don’t let your Mum be involved with any further “jobs”!

I missed this but I’m speechless! That’s outrageous of her!

You’ve hit the nail on the head there, I know of a few people like OPs Mum, happy to give away what’s not theirs and take the credit!
if I was OP I’d chalk it up to experience tho and make sure I never let dear old Mum get me any “jobs” again!

Tho surely is op said it was £15/20ph or whatever she should have said no

£10 is a pisstake. That’s £2.50ph

Oh yes, she should definitely have not accepted the rate, which she would have been fully aware of... but some inherently dishonest people will quite happily 'accept' a price before the work is done, knowing full well that they will do whatever it takes to pay far less afterwards.

You get the same with houses, where some people will come in with what they know/have established is the highest offer, in order to see off the competition - and they have not the slightest intention of ever paying anything like that price, being willing to use whatever lie, excuse or mechanism they can to 'win'. One of them would be one that this woman has already used: negging you as to your own true worth or that of your work/property.

She will also have borne in mind that the work OP had already done for her was bespoke and thus worthless and unsellable to anybody else.

An honest person will openly say that they can't/won't pay the price needed to secure whatever goods or services are being sold and walk away; but a CF will see it as their absolute right to get it, but only for whatever price they're willing to actually pay.