Exactly. I’m puzzled that people seem to think the fact that he got another entry for free means that he’s somehow cheating his way out of having to pay his debt. If he’d paid her back the 20 euros, but it turned out that the day before he’d won 50 euros in a raffle - should he still owe her money?
What if the situation was exactly the same, but Stacy had showed up to the concert, ticket in hand, 15 minutes earlier than Jack. She gets in with her ticket, but then Jack gets to the door and turns out he had an extra free place available. Does he go “oh well, she could have gotten in for free, looks like I still owe her money..”
Jack offered Stacy the ticket, in lieu of offering it to another friend. Stacy isn’t somehow automatically owed the extra place, she accepted it in payment of the debt. The way I see it, there were 3 entries to the concert, and Jack just let one go to waste instead of phoning up another friend to see if they could get down there
Not cheating as such, but being a bit unfriendly, because he paid her back with something that turned out to be worthless. He’s within his rights to argue that Stacy bore the risk of that happening, but if I were Stacy I wouldn’t lend anymore to someone who took such a legalistic stance on a debt to a friend.
This doesn’t follow to me–among my friends, it’d be considered perfectly acceptable to say “Hey, I have an extra ticket for X and I’m short on cash–you want it and we’ll be square, or do you want to wait for the cash?” I mean, it’s a financial transaction here first and foremost, and Jack’s got an item of negotiable value, worth on its face more than the debt, with a potentially very high upper bound on negotiable value (what if it’s Stacy’s favorite band, and sold out?), so what’s the problem?
Stacy has the opportunity to say “Naw, I’d rather have the $20.” Jack’s only sleazy if he doesn’t accept that answer with a smile.
Everything about the scenario is irrelevant except for the following: Jack has an item of negotiable value but with face value more than adequate to discharge the debt. Stacy accepts his offer of said item in repayment for debt. Transaction is legit, end of story. Equally legit: “Naw, Jack, I don’t even like the band.”
nothing wrong with your example as it is laid out clearly and in the open, but then it is also different from the setup in the original OP.
that makes sense and i now understand your position, though i do not share it. i do not know how to further explain it without rehashing, so i’ll just quote a Chinese proverb - 有福同享，有难同当. you do not sell your windfalls with those you call your friends - you share them.
i think the poll might be misleading because while i agree technically that Jack’s debt might be paid, in real life between friends it wouldn’t be the case at all (but only from the debtor’s pov).
This is probably a cultural difference then. Among my group of friends, “hey, I got this thing X for free and I don’t want it, wanna take it in exchange for the money I owe you?” is absolutely acceptable and in fact considered much more polite than a straight cash deal if X is something that the lender would have wanted anyway, doubly so if it’s something the lender wants but can’t quite justify spending money on (it’s different if it’s a windfall or a debt payment, in a lot of eyes around here). On the other hand, making the offer would be considered somewhat uncouth if it were known that the original lender actually was more short on cash than anything else. And it’s never cool to press the issue or insist on payback in something other than money.
Regarding your proverb, I think a lot of my circle would feel like “hey, you want this free thing I got that’s worth (even marginally) more than the debt I owe you?” IS sharing the windfall with friends, and in fact you’d considered something of a douche toboggan if you scored free tickets to a band I liked and sold them to pay me back in cash rather than offering the ticket in payment.
were I Jack, I would sell the spare ticket to the line of folks and take Stacy in on the free one:
I’d give Stacy whatever I got for the sold ticket… and if it was not enough to cancel the debt, I’d insist on paying her the rest later.
were I Stacy, having received the cash, I’d buy us both drinks and insist that I was well repaid, debt cancelled!
yes i agree, but you should note that in the original OP Jack had specifically set Stacy up to buy the ticket, instead of offering her the choice by being upfront like your example.
in the end, it doesn’t matter who is right or wrong. you want to borrow money from your friends (arguably a bad idea to begin with), you make sure you do so graciously. lawyering up on them, especially over such a small sum of money, is a big nono.