AIBU to expect the birthday cake booking date changed without extra charge?

[JavSurge]

We had to cancel DD's birthday party the day before due to her having S&D. We'd have gone through with it if it was a runny nose but not S&D, as much for our guests as well as her.

Anyway, most of the vendors (hall, entertainment etc) have honoured bookings in changing the date without charge given the circumstances.

As for the cake, she wants to charge us again. Now, for context, she had not finished the cake, had not started icing or decorating it. What's more, once I informed her the party couldn't go ahead, she said she'd pop the sponge in the freezer to be used for another time.

Now we have a new date arranged I have contacted her (2 days later) and asked if the sponge will last (Google says it will) until the party in a couple of weeks and if she's available to decorate it and deliver it on that date.

She's come back saying she didn't freeze it in the end and instead gave it to her neighbour, and now expects us to pay again for a new cake?!
If she'd iced it and it was ready to go then I would completely understand. However, given that it's just a change of date, am I being unreasonable to have expected her to just to use the sponge for us, or even used the sponge for another customer and then made it fresh. Either way to me seems reasonable as she'd not be using extra resources or time.
I can of course understand she might have got an extra customer (money) on the later date but it wouldn't have caused her extra costs.

Am I being being completely unreasonable?
If the cake was decorated I'd have never asked her to redo the whole thing for free but given that she said she was freezing the sponge surely it would be reasonable for her to do it free of charge (or a nominal fee if anything extra is needed)?

You said a pro wouldn't leave it until the morning of the party, but nowhere does it say that?

There you go, follow through….then the cake maker should also get paid (by you) for her time.

Some suppliers do this. I remember our wedding DJ pulled out a couple of weeks before the wedding. Albeit not the day before but in big events a few weeks is equivalent as everything is booked 12 months before.

I have posted supporting you previously, but sorry you cannot compare the two.

The NHS is publicly funded. Someone is paying for the missed appointments, it just isn't the person who missed it. Its the government budgets that will be covering the costs. Every individual working in the NHS will be fully compensated for their time.

A cake maker is self employed. So her pay is dependent on people paying her for what they have booked her for. Which is why you should expect to pay something to compensate for the time she spent and allocated for your original booking. However, as she didn't complete the cake, she should still have items bought for the original that can be used for the rearranged booking. If she made the cake second time round with no further payment, she is not receiving any pay for the first period. Regardless of whether she actually did all the work or not.

If someone cancelled on you in the NHS with hours notice, you would be upset if the NHS said they weren't going to pay you for that time, as you didn't use it as they had planned for. By paying nothing extra, that is effectively what you are doing. But paying in full twice and only receiving one cake isn't right either. The best place is somewhere in the middle. So you need to see what her expectations are

Not everyone who works in a salon would still be paid depending on how the salon operates. You can hardly compare the NHS to a hair salon or an individual cake maker. The NHS is one of the top five global employers and has a spend of over 10% of GDP. A hair salon and a cake maker cannot operate on losing 1-2 hours of business, or in the case of your cake maker probably a whole days worth of business and still be financially viable.

Also a salon can operate whatever reasonable cancellation policy they choose as long as it sits within a legal framework. I think it’s totally reasonable for a hair salon and other services to have a 24 hour cancellation policy. In fact, my dentist has a 24 hour cancellation policy and if you contravene this too frequently, you’ll be off of their register. The NHS as a whole spends a lot of time and effort trying to reduce the number of no-shows at appointments, recognising that it is both wasteful and costly.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The biggest issue here is that you cancelled the cake order with insufficient notice and there are some costs that you can expect reasonably to have to cover for the cake maker. It was an error not to ascertain what would happen with your money with the cake maker as you were cancelling your order. I think she should offer you a reduced rate for a future cake taking into account any fair costs that she has already had to pay out.

I think because it’s a vegan cake ichanges things, if she comes back to say it’s another £100 that’s a good compromise.

By that metaphor I would then be given a free cake as I'd already paid.

No. In this situation the client didn’t get the haircut. The client still had to pay for the service they didn’t receive. The hairdresser in the salon still got paid. No haircut, no cake.

I hear you, but if she decided she didn't want to freeze the cake, she could have said, hey I've not actually got the room, shall I drop it over to you as you've already paid for the cake and delivery?

You're missing that I have paid, and she's given away my cake.

I'm afraid I couldn't given sufficient notice because my crystal ball was broken.

First the cake needs baking and cooling. Personally I like to get that done on the day of icing, to ensure it’s as fresh as possible. Refrigerating sponge dries it out and pros tend not to do that.

So if you start icing the cake, that would initially be the crumb coating. At this point you would stick the bottom cake to your cake board using some of the icing, and start to layer up the tiers with filing. If you’re having buttercream filling, that needs to set a bit before you put a layer on top.

Once your layers are on and your crumb coat is done, you need to let that set.

You then apply whatever icing you’re having all over it as a base layer, which once that has set you can start decorating.

When everything has set you can start adding your toppers etc. which you’ll have ordered way in advance, or in the case of fondant, modelled equally way in advance.

That's the NHS though where you don't pay. If you had to pay at the end of an appointment and you didn't show up you would need to pay again for a new appointment as well as the one you missed. You would have taken up two appointments but only paid for one.

Yes, I do think you should have the cake you paid for. What you don’t get, is that you don’t get to use her time TWICE for the same price. You need to pay twice for her time since you’re asking for it twice.

In the hair salon analogy, the client cancelled at short notice. The cancellation policy meant that the client still had to pay but they did not get a haircut. The hairdresser still got paid. I’m not missing anything. The difference here is that the hair salon will have an explicit cancellation policy, but what you have with a cake maker is something more informal but if you were to quickly google it you would probably find that the cake maker is entitled to cover money she has already spent and potential profit.

I understand, you paid for a cake, and you also cancelled that order at short notice. What is or isn’t reasonable now is between you and the cake maker and you haven’t established that yet because she has not yet replied. It would be perfectly reasonable for her to retain some of the monies you have already paid because of the late notice cancellation and the fact that she had already started making your cake and almost certainly bought specific supplies for that cake.

It is not reasonable for you to expect a full refund (or a new cake at no additional cost), and it is not reasonable, I don’t think, for the cake maker to retain all the money that you have paid her. I think there is a fair (and probably legal) middle ground.

That’s irrelevant. I was making a statement of fact. No one is expecting you to have been able to predict a late notice cancellation. It doesn’t change what happens now.

You seem to be missing that whilst it’s not your fault your child got sick, it’s also not the cake makers fault.

Yeah if you paid £200 for a cake and she never offered you the cake, then she owes you a cake.

No, not every time. If no one contacted her with a prospective booking for the same date as OP's then there was no other booking to lose.

She didn’t spend the time BUT she possibly turned down other cakes. If she didn’t charge you for the first then she is money down!

Nope, in the OPs' scenario, we're talking about the equivalent of a rota change rather than a zero hours contract.

Did you point out to her that you had paid for that cake so it felt like a bizarre thing to do if she expected you to pay for another one? I would honestly assume she was planning on doing you another one on your chosen date if she had given it away. Because if she expected you to pay for the first one AND another one, the only reasonable thing to do is give you both cakes.

I genuinely am baffled that people think it's OK to keep your £200 AND the cake and you are supposed to just hand over full cost for another one. Im not saying this person should work for free but if you paid for that first cake, you dont just give it away to the random neighbour at your expense!

Has she responded with what she is expecting?

She's made two cakes.
That's TWICE her time, even if you discount the ingredients she still used her oven etc.

She's been totally unreasonable to say she'll freeze your cake for you, not do so, not offer to give you the first cake if she was going to get rid of it, and then try to charge you in full for a new cake. Very unprofessional.

Just be straight with her - lay out what happened (very briefly), say you'd still love a cake from her and are willing to pay half. If she has a grain of integrity she will agree.

Yes, you are unreasonable to think you can change the date at less than 48 hours notice without extra charge. As you don't yet know what the extra charge will be we can't say whether your baker is also unreasonable.