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

Fujiko

You say you didn't have room for all your furniture, so were there more items and if so what did you do with them? Do you have other friends with room in their garages?
Is the house downsize permanent, because if so it seems you would never have had room for the sofa? My experience from several house-moves is that there is always some furniture bought for one house which does not fit in the next house so better to give it away, sell it, or put it on Freecycle and then start again. Personally, I wouldn't fancy a sofa that had been stored, presumably unprotected, in a garage for a year. Was it next to a car? If this was a very valuable sofa it deserved better treatment, if not go to your local charity shop furniture department and get another one!

DigForVictory

If this chap is a friend you want to keep, go on a matey bender, apologise for abandoning it with him, ask if he needs a hand getting rid & and pick up the tab (both for evening, cab home & any heavy lifting gear to remove sofa). Good friends are harder to come by than storage space.

If not, apologise anyway, ask if he needs a hand getting rid & offer to fund the removal.

There are too few friends & too many unloved sofas in this world - and both can be treated decently. Try harder.

Ames

fierystormcloud wrote: »

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?!

When the garage is full of someone else's crap so you can't use it and so don't notice when it starts leaking?

user139

All these posters saying you have a cheek and its your own fault, dumping rubbish on him...to pay him for it. Blah blah. Shutup.

You asked your friend to store it for you, which he agreed and should've taken reasonable care of it. I know if a friend asked me I would have done this. A couple of blankets, made sure it was dry etc etc. If it was in his way for all that time, he would've said and asked you to move it, so there's no issue on the timescale argument. What we do know is, if it was an issue for your mate, or anything had happened to it HE should've informed you and let YOU make the decision.

This is the crux of it. He should've let you know soon after it's happened. No argument. "Hi mate, sorry, but roof fell in and your sofa's ruined, come round and have a look"

Now, because of this is where the doubt lays. Do we know his roof did fall in? or could he be lying and sold it. As it's gone we don't know. how much do you trust him? A friend of mine sold me a nice jacket once, then one of his friends spotted me wearing it and told me it was his. My mate ended up paying his mate for it!

So now you don't exactly know what happened to the sofa, so I guess you never will. I'd maybe ask him if he claimed on his insurance and see if it covered the loss of the sofa. If he dismisses it, then chalk it down to lesson learnt.

joehoover

Hard luck, I have a friends TV in my old garage for the last 2 years, they never picked it up and I couldn't include the garage as part of the rental to my tenants as it's still there. I wrapped it in bubble wrap a lot and boxed it and then wrapped it in bubble wrap somemore. But no amount of protection can possibly make it damp free for that long,

They still ask me about it but never actually make plans to pick it up, these things move on so fast it will not only not work well now but is so outdated that technology has overtaken it anyway.

Even if his garage hadn't leaked garages are not moisture free places, it would likely have had mould forming on the sofa and smelt awful.

You saved on storing it in a proper storage unit so you have to suffer the consequnces, nothing he did was negligent, you tried to save your self money and it cost you money in the end, those are the breaks.

PS: Anyone want a manky old Tv! :-D

Augustus_the_Strong

I think it's your loss and there's not much you can do about it. If you want certainty with these things, pay to keep your stuff in store, and then you can sue them if their building collapses.

It is a bit annoying that he threw the sofa away without asking, though, but there's not much you can do about it now, as I say.

pigpen

learn from your mistakes and dont dump your crap on your friends because they dont want it either.

funandfrugal

I cant believe I've just wasted 5 mins of my life reading all this.... It's was a sofa. A whole year. Yeah he should have rung you but hey ho. Move on, lifes too short to stress about these kind of 'dilemmas' 😱😱😱

thorsoak

You discarded the sofa - your words - so what's the problem? Arrange getting it to the tip.

gaving7095

You should have just sold it on eBay. Lesson learned, eh? ;-)