Eight people, one cask, and one person doing all the chasing.
Group buying, built around the actual failure mode: not the money, which people are fine about, but the organiser, who ends up sending fourteen messages and paying the shortfall themselves.
How it works.
Somebody starts it
Picks the gift, sets the number of shares, and gets a link. That is the whole of the organiser’s job.
Everybody else pays their share
Through the link. Nobody sees what anybody else paid unless the organiser turns that on.
The system does the chasing
Three reminders over fourteen days, from us, to them. The organiser never has to send a message about money.
It fills, or it does not
If it fills, it ships. If it does not, everybody is refunded in full and nobody is asked to make up the difference.
The card lists everybody
In the order they paid, or alphabetically, or not at all. The organiser chooses and it is the only decision left.
And the organiser is not out of pocket
Which is the single most important line on this page.
What is worth splitting, and what is not.
| Gift | Sensible split | Per head | Worth it? |
|---|---|---|---|
| A cask, £1,900 | Eight to twelve ways | £160–£240 | Yes. This is the reason the feature exists |
| A patch, £90 to £150 | Two or three ways | £30–£75 | Marginally. Often simpler for one person to buy it |
| A year of Landlording, £480 | Four to six ways | £80–£120 | Yes, for a significant birthday |
| A £240 hamper | Four ways | £60 | Yes, and it is the commonest split here |
| A £50 box | Do not | £12.50 each | No. Four people organising a £50 present is a committee |
| A scholarship, £2,400 | A whole workplace | £40–£80 | Yes, and it is the best thing on this list |
Why the organiser never chases anybody.
Every group present has the same shape. One person decides, one person pays first, one person pays on the last day, and one person has to be asked three times by somebody who has to keep working with them.
The money is not the problem. The asking is the problem, and it is entirely solvable by having a system send the reminders instead of a colleague. Three messages over a fortnight, from us, with the organiser’s name nowhere in them.
The other half of it is the shortfall. Traditionally the organiser quietly covers the two people who never paid, which is a small tax on being the sort of person who organises things. Here, if it does not fill, it does not happen and everybody gets their money back — and the organiser is told, once, without a list of who did not pay.
What you get
- Two to twenty people on one gift
- Equal shares, or amounts each person chooses
- Reminders sent by us, not by the organiser
- A full refund to everybody if it does not fill
- Every name on the card, or none of them
- Fourteen days, extendable once by seven
What you very much do not
- The organiser being told who did not pay
- Anybody seeing what anybody else contributed, unless it is turned on
- Any charge for running the split
- Partial fulfilment of an unfilled gift
- A shortfall landing on the organiser
Nothing on this build takes payment, including a split one.
Every control here is a placeholder. In a live build the shares would be authorised rather than charged until the gift fills, which is the mechanism that makes a full refund straightforward rather than a fortnight of bank transfers.
Chipping in, questioned.
Set it to chosen amounts rather than equal shares. About a third do, usually because one person is closer to the recipient.
Until it fills or the fortnight ends. After that the gift has shipped and there is nothing to join.
Never. The card carries names in the order the organiser chose, and no figures appear anywhere.
Before it fills, they refund themselves in one tap and the target goes back up. After it fills, they are asking the group rather than us.
Or fund somebody’s year instead.
Twenty-four hundred pounds, split forty ways, and a real apprentice at the end of it.
