Friend (26F) bailed on trip to Thailand 1 week before we leave, leaving my friend (25F) and I (27F) out $500. What should I do?

A little background info for context: My 2 girlfriends and I bought round trip flights to Thailand in March. Over the last few months, 2 of us have booked all the hotels and planned our itinerary, splitting the costs evenly on our credit cards, totaling $500 each for the 3 of us. Two of us paid up, but our 3rd friend said she needed some extra time to get the money together, leaving me out $200, and my friend out $300. We told her it was ok, that she could pay us back when she had the money. We attempted to include our 3rd friend in the planning process, sending her ideas of places we could stay, and things we could do, but she said she didn't mind and was ok leaving the planning to us. A month away from the trip, my friend and I were getting suspicious about how absent our 3rd friend was from the entire process and almost seemed to be avoiding us. We called her and asked her what was up, if she was still coming, and if she wanted to be more involved. She assured us she was still coming and that she was just a little stressed for money. We assured her it wasn't a big deal and we weren't pressed for the cash, that she could pay us back at her own pace. Fast forward to a week before we leave, she contacts us saying she can't afford the trip and wants to know whether we can make it less expensive and if that's not possible then she wants to refund her plane ticket and give us the money. The problem is, nothing is refundable or changeable including the flight. After we communicated this to her, she didn't respond at all for 5 days. We are furious because we are leaving on Friday and don't understand why she couldn't have communicated this with us sooner after all the times we checked in with her. We could have worked with her budget if we knew what was going on. Now all of a sudden she wants to sit down to talk with us before we leave but I just don't see the point and feel like our relationship has been really damaged. It's honestly not even the money that I'm upset about, it's the fact that she has historically been a really unreliable friend and doesn't understand how her actions impact other people. Do we owe it to her to hear her out? Should we still ask for the $500 back even though she's not coming on the trip?

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TLDR; my historically unreliable and irresponsible friend assured us she was going to be able to make our September trip to Thailand work, but eventually bailed 1 week before we left.

Submitted September 03, 2019 at 04:17PM by Hellaklout https://ift.tt/2PIUCo6