Have You Ever Been Asked For a Refund After a Date?

I have this memory, and it’s a decade old so I’m not sure how much of it is accurate, but here’s the part I remember clearly: I was in grad school, and I had gone on a couple of dates with this other grad student. I had decided there would be no fourth date, except I made the mistake of telling him this over the third date. (Today I would text. Maybe call, if we had actually spoken on the phone at that point, which seems unlikely.)

Anyway, so we’re at some pile-of-pasta restaurant and I explain that he’s a great guy and blah blah but I’m not interested in a relationship, and he accuses me of wasting his money. In fact, I am wasting his money at that very minute, on these two plates of pasta, and since he’s a grad student living on a $625/month stipend that is a big deal.

My memory tells me that I wrote him a check for $20 and walked out. My memory also tells me that this is something a person in a story would do, and that I can’t trust it.

But I thought of this dinner after reading a BuzzFeed post about blogger Lauren Crouch (of No Bad Dates, Just Good Stories) and her Tinder date gone wrong:

It started to go downhill when the man told Crouch he wanted to get coffee at a chain shop on his side of the street. “Saves crossing,” he said.

I mean, sure, lifehacking is in right now. (On the other hand, if he had crossed the street, think of the extra steps he could have gotten on his Fitbit!) The two shared a 30-minute coffee date, after which the man asked her to come back to his home “for dinner.”

“I couldn’t possibly go back to the home of someone I’ve literally just met, sorry,” she said she told him.

Smart move, of course. The man texted her later that night, and Crouch responded with the standard “Lovely to meet you but not sure we had that chemistry” line. Here’s what the man texted back:

Ok, fair enough. Can you pay me back for your coffee? I don’t like wasting money. Prefer to use it on a date with someone else.

Crouch offers to make a £5 donation to a charity, which, um… I would have just blocked him at that point… and he responds “I’d like to decide myself what to do with my money” and sends her his bank account information.

After Crouch shared her story, other people began responding that they had gone out with what seemed to be the same guy: the coffee date, the invitation to dinner, the request for a £5 refund.

So. Have any of you ever been asked for a refund after a date? Did you pay it? Or do you insist on separate checks from the beginning?

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