Soooo!  I'll try and keep it short..  I had a lady contact me last week about doing a 3 tiered topsy turvy for today.  I made it yesterday evening and have been moving it around (in and out of the refrigerator from one table to another).  Well, today I drove with the cake 20 mintues to meet the customer who was coming from maybe 45-50 minutes away.  Meet her and we setup the cake in her car and off we go!  I get a text 2 hours later saying that the cake was too moist and it completely collapsed.  I'm not sure what to say at this point... I looked at the pictures and to me it appears that the top two layers have slid.  And it is doweled through the center and supports for each tier.  I've used this recipe for many cakes.  I'll post pictures in a bit, the ones she sent me.  What would you advise to do in this situation?  Stupid me, I have a contract but am very lax when it's down to the wire so she didn't sign it.  She is too far away to fix it.

Here we go:

I just wonder if I should refund all her money back.  I made a point to show her the cake after I met her and told her to be extremely careful through turns and watch out for other cars.  I was able to make it 20 minutes with the cake and it had not fallen apart.  I'm thinking I may just refund her %50.....

I'm no expert, but it may have very well slid and there's no way of proving it, unfortunately. Although, are you even responsible for this because, afterall, she was in posession of the cake when this happened (rhetorical question). I think it's a good idea to just refund her 50%, definitely not all of it because it could have very well been her fault and she's just "covering" her own donkey ;) I'm sorry this happened though! Good luck.

AShe has taken possession of the cake and it is now her responsibility, in the interest of customer service I would give her a gift certificate for so much off a future service. Also make sure customers sign a contract release when they pick up a cake. They are more careful when they no they have no recourse to complain when they are not careful.

Well, if she had paid you to deliver the cake to her party, then it would have been there in good condition.

When the customer tries to save money by picking up the cake, any subsequent damage is THEIR responsibility.  The issue is the delivery more than the contract.

It looks like a door slammed into the cake board and the base tier.  I think any innocent "sliding" is very unlikely.

So maybe you need first of all to ask where the damage took place, who helped get the cake out of the car, how many steps did they climb, etc. No need to jump with any refund until you hear what really happened.

Thanks ladies!  I feel terrible it happened...  And waviers at time of pickup are now a must!  But I came to find out, after she posted on facebook, that she was coming from two hours away.  From what she had implied she was only 45-50 minutes away.  And I know because I've delivered to the town she mentioned.  But she said on facebook that she had not even made it there and the bottom layer collapsed causing the top two tiers to fall over.  I have to be honest, I would not have recommended that cake had I known she was driving from 2 hours away.  

50%.  You don't have a contract.  You don't know what happened.

If you had signed contract, I would say to bad you knew the risk.

Also, I refuse pick up for topsy turvy cakes.  NO WAY.  You want it, you pay for delivery.  I feel the same way about any precarious cakes with fragile elements.

I know, I most certainly kicked myself in the butt when I did not get her to sign a contract.  I've used that recipe 

plenty of times and have made at least more that 2 dozen topsy turvy cakes.  Not one have I had a problem with.

I've been going back and forth on that too, to only accept deliveries of topsy turvy cakes.  

If she was coming from that far away, and she didn't say that, then there is real doubt about all the other statements this specific customer has made.

You see, she would normally have to give you her  billing address with a credit card payment, or a mailed-in deposit payment would have her return address.   Contract or no contract. And you would normally ask the name-address-phone number right off the top.  Right?

So did she order through a facebook page?  that would be a place for you to be more careful in future.

But please take a good look at HER picture.  The base tier is still in place on the cake board with the letters.  It does NOT look like a collapse based on your baking or assembly.  It looks like the whole cake box slid and the box bashed into the side of the cake.  The tell-tale grease mark from the top tier is there in the upper right corner of HER picture. Sorry but that makes it HER responsibility.

When you gave her the cake, where in the car did she put it?  You said she posted that it happened on the drive, so did she have the cake in a place where she could see it?  Like on the front seat?  Which could have been a big part of the problem. 

What's the point in using a flimsy box with flaps for 3-tier tt?
 

I agree. if you spend that much time on a cake (not to mention that the client spent a lot of money) it should be properly boxed.

I think BakingIrene might be on to something and the entire thing slid, not a collapse as the customer suggested. In my experience in driving a cake, which admittedly is sparse, I have been really surprised at how slow I have to drive and how the laws of physics affect a cake. I am aware of it now..but I'm pretty certain that a regular customer, while she may have known to be careful with turns and such, had no real understanding of how slow and careful you must be. I'm betting that she was watchful of traffic, but maybe took the turns a little too fast for the cake to survive. Even coming to a stop is difficult and while we might not even notice the forces at work, that cake will.  That being said, it's not your fault that the cake failed after it was in her possession. If I have groceries in my car and had a problem where the milk jug tipped over or the eggs got smushed in the car ride home from the store, I can not hold the store responsible and expect any sort of refund. People have a tendacy to purposedly diminish their own responsibility if they think they can get someone else to take it for them. If she exaggerated about how far she was driving to meet you, she most likely has gone with the narrative that your cake collapased, not that she may have been careless and assume that the cake was not as delicate as they are.

Im sorry about this for you, the cake is beautiful. 

AI can't tell from the photo what angle the box is sitting at, it's all crooked. The cake could be totally upright or it could be tilted to the side, you just can't tell for sure. (By the way, the type of box is really pretty irrelevant here, if it was going to fall over it was going to fall over whether it was in a box or not.)

I'd tend to agree that the grease mark on the box hints at a car slamming on the brakes and tilting the top tier forward to touch the box, but since I can't really tell from the perspective if that's the side of the box or a flap I don't know. I suspect that she has her hand there to hide another big mark of icing that would show that the middle tier also hit the box, but I'm suspicious like that

Is it just me or does it look like its been placed on the front seat (or a car seat) which slopes?

A

I can't tell...i don't think there's enough stuff in the photo to get a good idea of that.