A teenage girl is stressed about how to handle her friend after he gave her a gift instead of paying her back in cash for concert tickets.
On Sunday, Aug. 10, the teen shared a post on Reddit’s AITAH forum, explaining that she had bought tickets for herself and a “good” friend, expecting he would pay her back on the day of the show. But instead of money, her friend gave her a vinyl record of the band they were seeing and said, “Now we’re even.”
The girl wrote that the vinyl was non-refundable. If she asked her friend to keep it and just give her the money instead, it wouldn’t work—because if he had wanted the album, he would have just bought it for himself.
“The album is about the same price as the ticket, and I do have a small record collection, so I get why he thought it was a good idea,” she said. “But I need money way more right now than I need a new album.”
She also worried that if she tried to sell the record herself, she probably wouldn’t get the same amount of money back.
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“The concert was for my birthday, so he might have thought of it as a gift and payment at the same time,” she explained. “But he didn’t even ask me if it’s something I wanted.”
With that, she asked the forum: “Would I be the a—— if I asked my friend to take the album back and just give me the money?”
Many responses agreed that her friend should have talked to her first before buying the vinyl.
Some said she should ask directly for the money. One person wrote, “Since he gave you the album instead of cash, it’s not really a gift. Tell him you can’t pay your credit card bill with a record and need the money. If he can’t return it, that’s his problem.”
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Another said, “NTA [not the a—–]. That’s not paying you back. Now you know not to lend him money again. If he gets rude about it, he’s not really a friend. Lesson learned.”
But others suggested it might be better to just let it go. “If he’s truly a good friend, don’t push it. Keep the album and move on. Losing a friend over the price of a concert ticket isn’t worth it.”
