What a laugh Bluebird. She will have seen a ton of wedding cakes, as a planner, and the fact that she asked you to do cakes for people shows that she thought you were good. Does she think that happens overnight? I suspect she was looking for a cheap source of cakes.
A
Original message sent by Annabakescakes
Oh, please, please do it! And then take a quick picture of his face when he puts 2 and 2 together, and realizes how silly he was being!
Haha. Yeah I'll have to ask the next time I see him.
AI actually did the same kind of thing to my friend's daughter, who is an excellent knitter. She was saying that a cake mix is pretty much the same as scratch, so I told her it was like saying a hand-knit sweater was the same as a sweater from the Gap. She got a look on her face and said "oooooh, I get it." You have to put things in language that the person you're talking to will understand.
AI don't think people realize that when we first start out doing cakes because its cheaper than buying them, we mean the high end custom $5 a serving prices not the grocery store prices.
LOL...I did. I really did try to be kind and professional, but I wanted to be clear with her that I'm not trying to get more business than I already have. I bake at home, I get most of my business from referralls and people who have seen or tasted my cakes at other events. She kept using the term "constructive feedback"... hmmm... sounds a bit more like "constructive criticism" to me. :)
I haven't had any more referralls from her since then... oh well.. I'm still doin' fine. :)
I love it when a bride and groom sit down for a taste test, wave their hands over the many cake combinations and say "How do you DO this". How the heck do you think I did it. I get up early on the day of your taste test and get busy baking. Sigh...................................
Or the bride who shows up for a taste test and announces that her guest count has been cut in half, she doesn't know where she's having her reception and that they're being married an hour and a half away on a hot August day instead of locally and that the groom insists on ganache on the cake - oh and the restaurant they have in mind isn't air-conditioned. .My response............................. Cancelled!!!!!!!
LOLOL...oh this made me laugh... yup. :) Love your response. :)
My worst one is "I can't justify paying that for a cake" I had a friend of mine ask if I could do a me to you bear 3D cake with only 5 days notice. Then he asked for a price. Now I wouldn't say our cakes are expensive as we work from home and don't have the overheads a shop with staff would have so that cake carved from a 12" square would normally cost £70 but I told him £50 as he's a friend. Then the response came, "I know you're cakes are good but I can't justify paying that for a cake. Not when you can get cakes like that in a supermarket for £20" my reply was "You better get yourself down to the supermarket then."
Really????? Hmmm... never seen much more than a sloppy half done bakery cake at our supermarkets. Good luck buddy! oy.
Weird...Did you write back to her and say that you'd been doing cakes for 25 years, which doesn't exactly qualify you as "new?" I bet she thought you were just starting a business and was telling her clients that you were cheap, so they thought you were more expensive than she'd been talking you up to be. Maybe you could educate her about custom cakes, since she obviously doesn't know what that is!
I did reply to her .... I had to explain at the beginning of my e-mail that it is hard to tell "tone of voice" in writing, so to please understand that I am saying all of this in love. Then I went on to write a lengthy 2 page e-mail detailing what goes into cakes in regards of time, which begins the moment I speak to a bride and start to draw up designs, investigate styles, colors, packaging, transportation needs, etc... the hours and hours and HOURS it takes to put build a cake for a wedding and make it just "perfect" for that particular bride. It's amazing to me what people will spend on all the other aspects of a wedding, but the cake is so very central to the very feel and theme of this great event. But they want cheap...hmmmm....
How much did you pay for your gown? Cuz you're only gonna wear it once and you are actually going to get to eat this cake in a year, lol. :)
What a laugh Bluebird. She will have seen a ton of wedding cakes, as a planner, and the fact that she asked you to do cakes for people shows that she thought you were good. Does she think that happens overnight? I suspect she was looking for a cheap source of cakes.
Yes. I have to say, she really is a sweet gal. But youngish. :) She tries to help brides save on their weddings and I certainly appreciated that when it came to my son's wedding, lol. However, I'm just not in that market. Our talent and our time is so much more valuable than people realize.
I have a new one to add, and I knew just where it needed added...So this girl sends me a message, says she wants a full size, standing guitar cake. Says she's seen them by other cakers but they're "too far away" to have any of them make one. I tell her I've never done one before, that I'd seen a tutorial for the base, but it would be quite a feat and I wouldn't even know where to begin. I quote her some terribly low price, because I have a serious fear of cakes I'm not sure I can make, and I always tend to quote them really low (I guess in case it's terrible?) So she assures me and REASSURES me, that she wants ME to do it, and that she knows it won't be "too hard, right". I even tell her at one point (since she told me he didn't have an electric guitar yet, just wants one really badly) that I saw a few at the pawn shop for what she's paying for the cake, if she wanted to back out and get him a real guitar...she AGAIN tells me she wants me to make the cake, and that "whatever I can do will be great". So the pic of a real guitar (not even a cake) that she sent me had a crazy bottom, so I sent her a message even then, telling her that I needed to change the shape of the guitar so that I could make the stand easier, she says "No problem!" So I make the cake, in a flavor that my repeat customers LOVE, take it to her house and deliver it, where her, her husband, 3 year old and another couple all gasp and ahh at the thing as I sit it down. The husband says 5 different times, "That's the coolest thing I've ever seen!" "It looks so real!" "I can't believe that's cake!" "Seriously, that's the coolest cake I've ever seen!" So later on that evening, totally unexpectedly I start getting a barrage of messages telling me that it "Looked so terrible they wouldn't eat it" and "It didn't look ANYTHING like the picture I sent, it wasn't even the same shape guitar", so I write back, saying that's strange because everyone, including her hubby said it looked amazing. I told her I posted a pic on my personal page and everyone went nuts for it...that maybe she had her sights set on some awesome baker who did a much better guitar cake, but this was exactly what I'm capable of and that I'd post the pic so she could see on my business page the reaction it got...so I did. I got 75 likes in less than an hour and 20 some comments saying it was amazing and that I'd "done it again!" So she sends me another message, saying that it really wasn't about the look, it was the taste (wait, didn't you say it looked so bad you wouldn't eat it???) It now tasted so bad that her 3 year old (who just loves any sweets) wouldn't even swallow it!?! WHAAAAAAAAAAAT? So it looked so bad you wouldn't eat it, so you tested it out on your 3 year old? Way to go Super Mom! Said she wanted a FULL refund. No, and a hell no! Just in wood and supplies alone I had $50+ dollars in it, not to mention time. After too many messages back and forth I agree to a 50% refund, just to end it all, she writes back something really snarky about how she was "So impressed that I would give back 50% out of the kindness of my heart, but that won't buy the real guitar that my husband wants now!?!" HUH!?! So you basically just told on yourself that what happened is your husband who has always wanted a guitar found out that he could have gotten a REAL one for the price you paid for the cake, you both decided you'd screw me out of my hard earned money? I swear I can't stand some people! Sometimes you can tell from the word go that they're going to be difficult and some just sneak up on you! Man I feel better already getting that out!!!
AThe nice thing about charging what you are worth is that it tends to filter out people who react like the customer in the above post.
I hope you haven't sent the refund yet, it sounds like it might be time to rescind the 50% offer.
The "charging what I'm worth" thing is the hardest part!?! The better I get, the more comfortable I get with valuing my time and work, but there are still days where I wonder how I get paid to do what I love, and the "dear old friend" discount being shoved down your throat daily...seems I have WAY more friends than I knew about! ;) PS No, I haven't sent it yet, I told her it would be a good while for me to get it up, being that I put all my money and time into her cake, and the money she gave me went right back into supplies for the next orders. I finally blocked her on FB and told her not to contact me any more, that I'd send her a check when I could. This was after ANOTHER message, telling me that she took a piece of it in to work and had a co worker try it and she wouldn't eat a second bite. I mean, if we were JUST talking about the look of the thing, I know I could do better, and WILL do better. I've seen some amazing ones, and mine didn't hold a candle to them, but it definitely was up to my "speed" for sure, and not an atrocity by any scope of the imagination, full size and standing at a 75 degree angle. But when you started by saying things like "the guests left because it looked terrible and ruined the night" (before delivery telling me you wanted it there at 5pm because you had to be at work at 7pm AND your guest was another couple) and saying you didn't even cut it, so I said I'd come get it and you say you "threw it out" already...Oh you threw out a 4 1/2-5 feet tall wooden stand covered with cake, and you can't get to it now, 3 hours later??? It's funny too she never said anything about how it tasted until FB folks all raved about it, then it's like she needed a back up plan and at 10 o' clock at night then cut into the cake she'd already thrown out and tried to shove a piece down her kids throat??? She was full of it, you could tell...and I've NEVER had someone tell me they couldn't eat my cake, NEVER!
at this point you need to say she has no proof she didnt eat the cake so no refund when someine is please with the work when its dropped off then you have to stand your ground and behind your work or else youll burn out qnd nwver want to make cakes for peoplw
If she took a piece in to work then she was obviously lying about throwing it out when you said you would pick it up. Seems she didn't want you to see that there was no problem with the cake. I wouldn't be giving her a refund. You may want to consider some sort of contract for your clients in the future so if they are not happy and want a refund they have to return the cake and prove that there is a problem with it.
Ahell no!call her out on that crap. send her a message saying no refund, then tell her her statements don't add up. if she threw the cake out how did she take it into work for her co-worker to try? I would tell her that alone is enough to show me she is lying and trying to get out of trouble for not getting the real guitar. bet she wouldn't contact you again once you called her bluff
AThis s what I call the "wandering complaint." It starts at one place, then when that is shown to be untrue wanders to another place, and on and on. It usually does start at the appearance, then goes to the taste or texture of the cake, and if that doesn't work then it starts up that therre wasn't enough cake for everyone (even though by that time they've already said it was inedible.)
I've seen this myself and I've seen a lot of my friends also go through the same thing, especially in the last couple of years. People are just trying to recoup some of their party costs, so it's one way to get discounts aft the fact. Don't give her anything.
Don't send her refund and as you've blocked her, she isn't going to be able to hassle you. If she tries to take you to court (highly unlikely), you have all the evidence to prove she lied, take screenshots of the conversations where she contradicted herself in case she tries to delete them.
In future don't let your clients see that you're unsure of yourself and your work, it just sets you up for situations like this.
(63 pages later...and having the word "moist" ruined in my vocabulary...:D)
While working on a beautiful 10-inch round graduation cake one evening last summer, my mother-in-law stopped by to see my husband. She stood and watched me cutting out the graduation shapes from black sugar paper and said the cake looked nice. I somewhat absently replied that for the price they were paying, I wanted it to be nice.
MIL: Oh? How much are you charging for a cake like that?
Me: $75, which is a discount since the dad works with [my husband]
MIL: $75?! I'd never pay that for a cake! I'd just get one at the grocery store!
I'm 30-years-old and have still not learned that my mouth works faster than my mind. I put my knife down and looked up at her and said: "Well, some people appreciate quality."
Sigh.
Not my brightest moment with MIL. She's never mentioned cake to me again! LOL!!
Don't send her refund and as you've blocked her, she isn't going to be able to hassle you. If she tries to take you to court (highly unlikely), you have all the evidence to prove she lied, take screenshots of the conversations where she contradicted herself in case she tries to delete them.
In future don't let your clients see that you're unsure of yourself and your work, it just sets you up for situations like this.
I wish I could quote them all, Costumeczar, yours was GREAT too. You all made me feel SO MUCH BETTER! I tried really hard to handle myself professionally. This ^ is absolutely right though, she saw how scared I was about trying it, and thought she could convince me it was terrible. I had 2 more orders placed for the cake when I posted pix, so it couldn't have been terrible. I DID actually call her on her inconsistencies. I swear I think she's like 18 or something...she looked really young when I delivered and in her messages, she was VERY immature. At one point when I pointed out her story changing she told me that I "wasn't good at reading, and need to get some glasses!" Which I thought was pretty telling of her maturity level. She came back and threatened me with the BBB, but shoot, again, I'll stand behind my cake and did save all the messages if it ever gets to that point. Oh, and she tells me I need to right this, that she's a "self employed business woman herself" (she sells Origami Owl jewelry, same thing, right?) and that if someone was unhappy, she would just refund them. Huh? So if someone hated their custom made necklace, you'd send them back all their money without getting the necklace back? Well maybe I'll just send the refund and recoup my money by ordering a necklace! ;) Thanks for all your feedback guys. I needed that!
AI wouldn't worry about the BBB, for most transactions they are irrelevant. In any case, the BBB will give you an opportunity to respond with your side of the story if there is a complaint.
I wouldn't worry about the BBB, for most transactions they are irrelevant. In any case, the BBB will give you an opportunity to respond with your side of the story if there is a complaint.
This is what I thought, not to mention I'd have about 1500 people ready to back me up! I have all the emails, pictures of the cake and all the correspondence we ever had on the topic. Did I forget to mention that she moved the cake up a whole day and a half only 3 days before the due date? I've got that too. She really was a nightmare. When I posted it on FB, I said, "Tell the truth folks, is this a Hit or a Miss?" 2 different people actually said, "It's a miss, lol, now let me take that "terrible" cake off your hands...I know a few people who would LOOOOVE it!" So if she would've legit given it right back, or told me ANYTHING about not liking it when I dropped it off, then I probably really could have sold it to someone who would have appreciated. The whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth (pun intended!)
This is what I thought, not to mention I'd have about 1500 people ready to back me up! I have all the emails, pictures of the cake and all the correspondence we ever had on the topic. Did I forget to mention that she moved the cake up a whole day and a half only 3 days before the due date? I've got that too. She really was a nightmare. When I posted it on FB, I said, "Tell the truth folks, is this a Hit or a Miss?" 2 different people actually said, "It's a miss, lol, now let me take that "terrible" cake off your hands...I know a few people who would LOOOOVE it!" So if she would've legit given it right back, or told me ANYTHING about not liking it when I dropped it off, then I probably really could have sold it to someone who would have appreciated. The whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth (pun intended!)
Just curious....are u a home bakerk? then her point is invaled and u have nothing to worry about
A
Original message sent by LMC44
I'm 30-years-old and have still not learned that my mouth works faster than my mind. I put my knife down and looked up at her and said: "Well, some people appreciate quality."
Sigh.
Not my brightest moment with MIL. She's never mentioned cake to me again! LOL!!
Oh contrare!!! I think that was the perfect response!
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