WWYD?

[cheddarcheeselover]

Say you made two items for a friend, making them involved around 70 hours work, you had agreed a rate of £10ph, and you spent £50 on materials.
Making them took a lot longer than you had originally anticipated and so you had to work on them right up to the deadline, dropping them off at a venue without seeing the friend.
You were meant to see the friend wearing the items that evening but having just spent 3 nights without any sleep in order to get the items finished you went to bed instead.
Weeks go by and you hear nothing, not a thankyou or any contact whatsoever.
You send a friendly text/email asking if everything was ok, no response.
Eventually you ring a friend of the friend to see what happened, she tells you that there were some problems with items that the woman's mum had to rectify at the last minute. Normally you arrange that the person picks up the items from you to allow last minute adjustments, but there wasn't time for that this time.
WWYD re money? Before I knew there was a problem I was only going to ask to be paid for 50hrs instead of 70hrs, as it's a friend and I thought it would only take about 50hrs originally, now I don't know what to do.
What would you consider reasonable?

That's a tricky one.. Are the items going to be used again? - Giving you an opportunity to professionally rectify the problems (i presume it was just 'tweeking', not big problems)..

Yes, just tweaking. The items may be used again, but tbh it's quite unlikely.

Based on what you agreed beforehand, what i would do is.. Write an invoice for her based on 50 hours @ £10 an hour, but attach it to a 'friendly' note saying that although you spent 70 hours working on it, and £50 on materials, you are keeping the cost minimal to allow for last minute tweaks, and basing it on 'mates rates' so to speak...
(I personally don't think the last minute alterations are a big deal especially as you've already knocked off £250 from what it should've been.)

Unfortunately based on her lack of dealing with the situation and actually communicating with you, i don't think you'll get it
In which case it may boil down to either writing it off - but keeping the quite frankly not a very good friend, pushing for payment, or possibly having the items returned and trying to recoup some money by selling elsewhere..

If she's not responding to you I'd have to agree with JellyKat that you are not going to get paid.

Send the invoice you want to send but expect to never hear from this 'friend' again.

This is why I do contracts, even with friends.

If you told your freind 50 hours at £10 per hour them to suddenly charge more than that with no discussion would be pretty harsh: you're the one who should be best palced to guess how long it would take. Unless you told her in advance that it was going to take you 20 hours more than you thought it would, I don't think you'ver any right to charge her more, nor can you expect her to be happy that it was all last minute.

If she's really a freind you want to keep, then call her, explain that it took you far longer than you anticipated, hence the late drop-off time, but you're going to charge her the 50 hours you discussed at the start even though it took you 70 hours. If she says she expected to pay you £500 (50 hrs) but get the item inm good time, then you need to negotiate from there - am not sure she'd really be being unfair if she did.

Sorry! It's the problem with doing work for mates, really.

Was it a wedding dress or something similar? If so, do you think the fact that you went home rather stayed to see her in it has caused the sulking? She should still pay - and I agree with other posters that you can only really ask for the original amount - but if it was some big deal event for her, she might be cross that you didn't stay to see her. If she is a big princess-y, she could even interpret your quick departure as knowing the item would need altering and running off so that you didn't have to do it yourself...