Money Moral Dilemma: What should I do about my discarded sofa?

JAP160

I would like to ask- since when did money become so much more important than our relationships with other people? There seems to be a predominant attitude in our culture that says that we should use people to take what we get. What happened to kindness? What happened to doing to others as we would want them do to us? We should be using money to help others rather than using people to help us to get more money. It is actually in having a generous attitude to other people that we receive far more back than if we were stingy. I like the idea of saving money/making money, but not at the expense of our relationships with others. I think that taking a generous attitude towards other people is always the best way.

JayD

Write it off and keep the friendship.

You didn't have room for it anyway - and I am guessing you still don't.
Anyway, after a year in anyone's garage, I don't think it would be that desirable to have back - even without a ceiling collapsing on it!

Ladybell

Why didn't you just sell it before you moved? Your fault.

Acremead

Presumably when you moved the sofa into his garage you noticed the state of the roof? Did you take any precautions such as covering the sofa with waterproof sheeting?

I don't think your friend should have disposed of the sofa without telling you (And perhaps asking you to help him get it to the tip?). However you do seem to have been very lax, in not ensuring the sofa was properly stored and not giving your friend any idea of how long you'd want to store it.

It's a second-hand sofa (ie virtually worthless) that you had no use for. Don't sweat the small stuff. Get over it and move on.

EllieG63

You didn't pay for the storage and left it there seemingly indefinitely. An unfortunate incident occurred that was outside of your friend's control. Move on, nothing to see here - your friend did you a favour by disposing of it for you. Perhaps you should have collected it sooner. or made other arrangements for its storage.

BNT

Part of the fee you pay a storage firm is for security and to cover risk. You opted not to pay, so your risk is not covered. It seems straightforward to me. Of course, your friend should not try to profit from the situation, so if he put in a claim that included your sofa, he should offer to pay that over to you.

Mr_Costcutter

I'm afraid if the sofa was of real value to me ( in either a financial or sentimental way), I would have taken greater care of it. Certainly wouldn't have wanted it stored in a garage.

Former_MSE_Andrea

Pollycat wrote: »

OP - what do you think you should do about the sofa?

There's a reason someone's sent us this via email - they want to keep it anonymous

tenuissent

I have suffered from friends dumping stuff and apparently forgetting about it. Masses of books for several years, for which I eventually built bookshelves, put among my own books, read them.....suddenly he wanted them all back, was annoyed they had not stayed in their boxes (does anyone else find cardboard boxes full of things lying around for ever rather depressing?), could not remember which were his, and neither could I by then, so we had some disagreements about some of them.

Another friend left crates of wines in our cellar for several years and eventually turned up to find them covered in some sort of creeping mould with their labels fallen off, and was very annoyed.....they were supposed to be increasing in value, not ending up damp, corked and anonymous.

And my sister and husband lived in a tiny London flat where a friend left crates of whisky in one of their few cupboards while he went to Australia for several years. On coming back, he was shocked to find they had been recovering a bit of space by drinking it.

It never seems that good an idea to fill other people's living space with your spare goods for years, and expect to find them as you left them.

fierystormcloud

If this dilemma is true, then the OP has a bloomin' cheek IMO. Leaving his crap in his mate's garage, and then whingeing because it got damaged and thrown away!

How and why does a garage roof just collapse by the way?!