Crazy Customer Stories - Page 4

reenie is so right ..... I've done this with friends and once they've made a cake, they are MORE than happy to pay someone to do it.

I'm new to having any customers. So far It has been pretty smooth sailing. (knock on wood) I did have the bride that wanted 200+ cupcakes each individually scrolled with a chocolate heart (had to be just the heart outline) And they spoke to me as if it was going to be so easy to. Lets just say I don't want to see another Cupcake for a while.

Then I just delivered a 1st birthday cake on Sat. I have done a quite a few cakes for this family(including one other 1st birthday). Mother of the bitrhday girl wasn't there, and Grandma wasn't in the best of mood. I walked in with my smash cake and she started to get mad at me saying THAT SMALL. I couldn't help but laugh. Said Yep that small, do you want to see the birthday cake now. Walked out of the room and brought in the full size cake. NOTE: The other cake had a smash cake too. And all of the parties are at grandmas house so there is no way that she didn't know what it was.

I did about 8 hours on this cake I felt like it was time wasted. Mother of the birthday made it up to me the next day with many complements.

I remember this, and still believe that she wanted to serve her guest 6"x6" slices.

I love it!!!! Not only valued as a baker/decorator, but as a child care provider/mother as well!!!

I've just started selling, so I haven't had too many customer's yet, but I have had a last minute order on a Tuesday night, due Thursday morning, and must have received 10 calls on what they wanted the "theme" of the cake to be. The last one came while I was putting the finishing touches on the cake Wednesday night .... uh, I hope you haven't changed your mind again!!!!!

I had a bride and her mother come into my shop the other day asking for wedding cake prices. While we were talking (unscheduled meeting, but had time), I offered the mother and B2B a cupcake which was white cake and BC icing. The mother absolutely refused to even take a bite! She said she hated cake!!(She was an alien obviously) And every time we talked about cake flavor, she would stick her tongue out and go "Bleh, Bleh, Bleh! I hate cake. She did it so many times that I started to get ticked off. So as nice as I possibly could (I figured, MY shop, I can say what I want!) I told her "Please stop doing that. Cake is my livelihood. Cake pays my bills and you are offending me. I Love Cake." Needless to say, I didn't get that cake order. One of the few times I have been happy not to get it.

Wow! BBB1215! You handled that GREAT! I love how you said "Cake pays my bills and you are offending me." That is the greatest line I've ever heard! Wish I had crazy customer story to give!

This was mine, that happened today:
http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopicp-4765173-.html#4765173
Basically, a woman wanted a 2 tiered fondant baby shower cake with a RI tiara, gumpaste roses and hyrdrangeas like on my Avatar, and then proceeded to tell me that I needed to work within her budget because she was on foodstamps.
I felt for her, but come on, you are on food stamps. Don't call a custom cake maker!

THANK YOU SOOOOO MUCH!!! Your comments are highly appreciated!!!

Maybe it's my sick twisted nursing humor, but I loved this thread! Deb, I bet you have a million of 'em!
My only professional story was recieving a call on Saturday from the catering staff inquiring as to why the wedding cake hadn't been delivered to X event. We, the catering bakery, check our orders....um...we have no order for a wedding cake for X event. The guests are due to arrive in less than 2 hours. And that is the bakery's problem how? Turns out the catering planner had "forgotten" to place the bakery order for the cake. So, our entire bakery staff dropped what they were doing, got on the ball and using frozen sheet cakes, produced a spectacular wedding cake, including fresh flowers, for 100, in 30 minutes! Luckily, we even had the right flavors of cake and filling available! The delivery driver was off and running and the cake arrived with 5 minutes to spare! The bride thought it was the best cake ever! (If we had a dollar for every time we had to save the event planners' behinds....)
On a personal note, the pastor and his wife from our church back when we were newlyweds were having a 25th anniversary vow renewal. Our pastor was very sick and they had planned to have one on their 50th, but it didn't look good. So I had done a few wedding cakes by that time, and gave the pastor and his wife, whom we adored, their "wedding" cake for free. He had married us, after all!
The cake was gorgeous and delicious, and well beyond their expectations. It was three tiers with two heart-shaped satellite cakes with their names on them, with silk flowers in their colors. DH and I were on a very tight budget at the time, and we had made a bit of a sacrifice to give them this cake. Fast forward a few months, and I get a request for a wedding cake for a daughter of a lady from our church. I should have known there would be trouble when they looked surprised that I was charging them $1 a serving! I am told that they are trying to keep costs down, since it is a cake and punch reception only. Softie that I am, I am determined to make the best cake I can, since they can't afford a full reception, which is the norm here. I am told they are on a strict budget, yadda, yadda, yadda.
The cake ends up being a monstrosity! I'm doing you a favor, so go ahead, pick out a really difficult cake! It was the Wilton chapel cake with six tiers of cake, plus the cost of the chapel kit, the light and the extension cord, plus, of course, you want a different decor for the cakes than the picture. I'm still okay with it at this point, because I'm helping them on their big day. I kinda felt bad that they were having a cake and punch reception.
Fast forward to the day of the wedding. I arrive for delivery, and I'm setting up the cake, and I'm fuming, because the caterers are also setting up.
And I never recieved a thank you, or any of my chapel kit or equipment back, even though I reminded the MOB several times at church. No good deed...

[quote="Hollyanna70"

I'm sorry your family doesn't understand ...

As for my family, itself, well I never charge them. If it's elaborate and expensive, I tell them to consider it a gift. If it's just a favor, eh.. on the house, unless someone other than them is paying for it.

Holly[/quote]

Well, my sister called yesterday to say she sold the house 2 days after it was listed (a $435K home! ... umm, commission on that please?). The open house still isn't until Aug 24. So she asked to reduce her order from 48 cookies to 24. Great ... a custom cookie shape and design all for a mere 48 bucks. I know I should treat family well - and I do!!!! I have five siblings ALL of which I have done at least $200 of freebies for to help them promote their businesses. When she first went into the business, I made up 36 boxes for her of 3 cookies each (a dollar sign, her photo business card and a house). She got incredible compliments - no one had ever seen anything like it. Didn't charge her a penny for anything (not even the packaging or ingredients)! Call me terrible, but I'm looking less and less forward to doing her order when I know these will be at least $4 cookies ... and I'm only charging her what she was "willing to pay" while she waits for her fat commision check to come in. I promise you guys, I will not this let happen again ... when I deliver these cookies, I will let her know what reorders will cost her.

[quote="Tscookies] I promise you guys, I will not this let happen again ... when I deliver these cookies, I will let her know what reorders will cost her.[/quote]

And be sure to include YOUR business card in with each cookie so her customers know who provided her unique cookies ... No reason you can't both promote your business!

Anytime I'm looking for funny customer stories, I visit www.customerssuck.com I LOVE This site. Just go to the forums and choose from the top "Today's Posts" for the most updated. It is the most unbelievable site - you just can't begin to imagine the idiots out there - and the completely unreasonable people - and the "entitlement whores". I'm always cracking up and thanking God that I don't work in retail.

there is some pretty funny stuff on planetfeedback.com too. it's all letters people write to complain about companies. most of them are these kind of bad customers and it's funny to read what they think is poor customer service.

I recently participated in a home business expo. I took my business cards, my portfolio and two dummy cakes to display. I also took some cupcakes to sell. I packaged them in little clear plastic containers that neatly held four cupcakes. They were all filled, four different flavors, with my homemade buttercream of course. I billed them as gourmet cupcakes, and put a cute little sticker on the box; chocolate boston cream pie, white chocolate raspberry, lemon chiffon, and triple chocolate. I charged $5 per box which I figured was more than fair. Where I live, cupcake bakeries are all the rage and they charge 2.25-2.50 per cupcake! Well, people were buying them just fine till this one lady. I guess she had already been past my table and then came back to get some cupcakes. She says, "my daughter wants some, I guess I'll go ahead and get two boxes", and kind of throws two dollar bills on my table. So I'm wondering, where are the rest of your dollar bills, you have a long way to go to get to 10! Well, it didn't take long to realize that she thought they were $1 per box! I told her, um they are $5 a box. So very loudly she proceeds to say, "I thought you said they were $1, $5 is waaay too much, I'm only getting one". Remember her voice is very loud and rude. So I said, at the cupcake bakery, they charge 2.50 per cupcake. She says, "I don't care, that's too much", still referring to my cupcakes. Well, she took the one box and didn't come back to say they weren't worth it, so I bet she enjoyed them in spite of herself. I was just dumbfounded at the whole thing. She thought I was selling them for $1 a box, 25c a piece! You can't even get them for that at the grocery store, they charge 50c! Plus, I wouldn't go to her table and yell that she was charging too much for her stuff. And would she have gone to the Mary Kay lady and told her she was asking too much for her eyeshadow, or tell the Pampered Chef lady that her stoneware was ridiculously overpriced? (no offense to either of these, I love their stuff!) I think not. Why is it ok to scoff at the cake lady? People just don't get it.