How do you say no to presents?
June 24, 2007Thanks for visiting! If you like what you're reading, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed.
Since I’ll be moving house in a few weeks, my parents wanted to buy me a housewarming present that would satisfy my craving for the occasional luxury. After some thought, I asked them to buy me a nice and high-quality cutlery set. Yesterday we set out to find something.
The variety was phenomenal and prices of a few thousand euros for 70 pieces of cutlery were no exception. I chose a fairly simple but incredibly sleek set called “Boston” that had a price tag of 429€ for 70 pieces. My mum loved the idea that I had decided so quickly and moved towards the cashier after having only entered the shop less than 10 minutes ago.
That’s when I stopped her to try to explain I could not accept a gift of this value. Or to rephrase, I couldn’t accept cutlery of this value. She got terribly upset and I only managed to avoid an argument by promising I would come back the next day to order it then.
I was completely shocked that my mum reacted this badly to me turning down a clearly overpriced present. Even after I had explained that I wouldn’t spend this much on cutlery myself and hence didn’t want them to do so, she remained unhappy.
This is clearly a tricky situation. On the one hand I obviously want a nice set of cutlery, but on the other hand I don’t see how I could ever justify the price tag. What would you have done? How do you prevent other people from making mistakes even though doing so would be in your favour? Am I overreacting and should just not care how much money my parents spend on presents for me?
What do you think?
I really should be the last person commenting here, but
Ad | June 24, 2007 | 9:33 pmI really should be the last person commenting here, but in my view if they think you are worth it and have put the offer forward it is almost always less painful for everyone just to accept it graciously…
429 euros? That's like.. $600 USD. (The exchange rate hurts
Wanda | June 26, 2007 | 6:05 am429 euros? That’s like.. $600 USD. (The exchange rate hurts me every time I think about going to Europe).
I’d say thank you for their very generous offer, and take the gift. They obviously want to give you something, and if they are able to afford it, just be thankful and maybe invite them to dinner later on with your new cutlery.
If I had a $600 gift… I think I’d go for bedding though.
I finally managed to convince her to buy the set
Kirsten | June 26, 2007 | 10:53 amI finally managed to convince her to buy the set off Ebay for “only” 229€… That means peace of mind for both of us since she could buy what she wanted and I knew she had gotten a good price for it…
@ Wanda: Bedding would have been a good idea, but the duvet and pillow sizes in Germany are quite different from the UK. Therefore I figured I’ll rather go and buy that myself…
Did you know how much the cutlery might cost before
plonkee | August 7, 2007 | 7:00 pmDid you know how much the cutlery might cost before you asked for some? That tends to make a difference. Glad she got it for a reasonable price though.
Well, not really... All I knew by then was that
Kirsten | August 8, 2007 | 5:15 amWell, not really… All I knew by then was that I had bought a dinner set and now needed cutlery. *shrugs* And I still haven’t seen it because I left for the U.S. before it arrived…