My mom [40s] offered to buy a painting from her close-ish friend [F40s] who just quoted a very high price that my mom’s not willing to pay. What now?

Tl;dr: Mom asked for painting from friend - friend quoted ridiculously high price. How does she get out of it?

A bit more context: my mom requested a painting from her friend and offered to purchase it. Now, before this friend started to paint it, my mom asked her about the price, and she was told not to worry about that.

Now a month later, this friend has completed the painting and is asking for about double the maximum amount my mom was willing to pay for it. My mom feels embarrassed and can’t think of a polite way to say no.

My mom still wants the painting because she feels she owes it to her friend, but to me it feels like her friend is dealing in bad faith and my mom shouldn’t buy the painting at all. My mom also maintains that the main point of going to her friend was more of a gesture of support than really needing a painting made (my mom is an artist herself), so she doesn’t really want to back out entirely.

How can she get out of this awkward situation?

Submitted July 04, 2019 at 04:35AM by sudo127 https://ift.tt/2xvKtiG