Word.
But he never gave the gift to her. Be bought something with the intent to give it to her. They broke up before that happened.
But he told her about it. Presumably there was some discussion on said birthday, and an implied promise to take her to the show.
Indeed. “Money is tight” and “$200 for a ticket to a show” aren’t ideas that inhabit the same world for me. Last concert I went to was $70, and I only went to that because my brother had an extra ticket that he gave to me; no way I could have spent that on my own.
The worst part of this whole thing is where you agreed to try to sell the ticket for him, and then gave it to somebody else. That’s pretty low. You paid $200 for your ticket, so you recognized that as the value of the ticket. If you wanted to take someone to the concert with you, you knew the value of the second ticket, and you should have paid that to him. If you didn’t like the deal he was suggesting, you should have told him before he gave you the tickets.
It have been totally legit to say, “Look, dude, I spent $300 on your hockey tickets, can I just pay you $100 and we’ll call it even?” before he gave you the tickets. He could have agreed or disagreed to this suspect logic. But you didn’t. You said, “I’ll pay you the fair value–$200–for one ticket, and I’ll try to sell the other for you.”
The very strong implication is that you’ll try to sell the second for the same price.
Ethically you owe him the value of the second ticket, since that’s the deal you agreed to. If he’s acting like a jerk about it, he has every right to do so, since you’re trying to renege on that deal.
I agree that that’s likely. Legally, that does not obligate him, but I don’t presume we’re discussing this from a legal standpoint.
So, morally, should he be held to that promise? Is he obligated to still take her to the show as a couple? Because that’s part of the implication, as well.
Hey YogSosoth, I bought you Super Bowl tickets for your birthday. I hope you have a great time.
I don’t know. That’s what we’re trying to figure it out. I don’t think it’s as black and white as people are making it out to be. I submit that since he gave the tickets as a gift, one should have been hers to do as she wanted with, and one should have been his. I think $200 should have been sufficient for her to pay him; she could have just paid one ticket, but now that she agreed to pay for both (buy one and sell one) she should just go ahead and pay him.
He was just going to sell both of the tickets ahead of time. I think politeness would at least require him to offer to sell a ticket to her, at $200, before he decided to sell them elsewhere. But really I think he could have given her one ticket and tried to sell the other.
But in the end, I’m not sure what is the right answer. Except: This is exactly why you don’t exchange high-value gifts so early in a relationship.
Yeah–whether he owed her a ticket after breakup, pre-buyout is questionable, I agree. But once she agreed to buy a ticket and try to sell the other for him, I don’t see much wiggle room: she’s obligated to the deal she made, at that point.
Heh
This. Not worth it to carry it on.
Although I see where you’re coming from, my quibble with this is that he spent $400 with the expectation of getting to enjoy an activity with her. Not $200 for his enjoyment and $200 for her enjoyment. $400 for the entire experience. And that opportunity was taken away from him by the breakup. So while I agree that he could have chosen to be nice and let her have the gift anyway, I don’t see any reason that he should have done so.
I think we’re pretty much in agreement here. “Early” being defined by time or by depth of the relationship.
Absolutely agreed. I was a little taken aback (not in a good way honestly) when he got me tickets for an event 7 months in the future.
I agree. The gift was a gift. I would never have asked for a gift back, but he did. And even though I already paid for my ticket plus half of the other one, he is still aggressively hounding me. I can’t quite figure out what his motivation is… whether he really is desperate for money or whether he is still mad over the breakup.
Or maybe you agreed to sell the ticket for him and haven’t paid him the full amount. Personally i’d be peeved about that. What happened previously doesn’t matter, he could have sold the tickets to someone else and gotten his money. He might be being a dick but you went along with it and now you need to pay him.
Yes it was foolish. I was a little concerned that he bought tickets for an event so far in the future. If I had really been into him, that would have made me happy, but I wasn’t that into him so it just made me feel weird. No, I don’t think there will continue to be a friendship. I wanted to be friends but after this whole episode, he seems like such a vengeful cheapskate that I really don’t feel like associating with him anymore.
A gift isn’t really given until you give it.
What if he had said he woud take you, but hadn’t bought the tickets, would he somehow be morally obligated to purchase them for you after the breakup? No.
I definitely should have said that. My thinking at the time was, I felt really bad for him and was trying to do him a favor. I totally could have gotten the tickets cheaper if I had bought them on my own. I made a huge mistake making that agreement.
However, I do recognize that I made the agreement and I think I will go ahead and give him the money. I think he’s a tacky cheap vengeful person, but I am trying to take the high road. I am a bit on then fence because I think I got a really raw deal, but I should have said something at the beginning. My bad.
But you told him you would pay him for the tickets, didn’t you?
Honestly, from my perspective, you’re the one coming across as a cheapskate. You said you’d pay and now you are making excuses for not paying when he can no longer rescind the tickets.
You were taken aback by this extravagant gift, but you sure seem eager to make him pay up.
Agree you shouldn’t ask for a gift back. But again, I think its pretty tenuous to say that getting tickets with the intent to bring someone to a future event is the same as giving them the ticket. The tickets were never in your physical possession, and if someone your dating offers to take you to a concert, I think there’s a pretty clear implication that they mean that they’ll take you as part of a date with them, not that they intend to make a gift of the ticket regardless of whether your still with them or not.
My birthday is tomorrow and my gf has reserved us a table at a restaurant, her treat. In the unlikely event that we break up in the next 24 hours, I doubt I’ll start pestering her about how she owes me dinner.
Honestly, thinking about it some more, I’d be kind of pissed if a girl broke up with me and then started bothering me about how I still owe her 400$ worth of tickets. I suspect your ex is being a dick about the money because he’s angry you tried to
But he told me he was giving me concert tickets, didn’t he?
So it’s OK for him to change his mind about something (giving me the tickets as a gift then later making me pay him for them) but it is NOT OK for me to change my mind about the agreement? How is that fair?
You all say I have backed out of a deal and I am in the wrong; however, didn’t he back out of a deal?