My friends owe me $90, and now they're avoiding me

A. L. Katz  |  05:48 PM, Tuesday, July 6, 2010

These wine-future-buying friends of yours may be good at detecting hints of grass and roasted hazelnut, but they don't seem to be very good at communicating. This isn't really a money problem so much as a responsiveness problem. All you need to hear is "Great, we'll come by tomorrow with a check" or "Hey, we thought about it and we'd like to bow out, if that doesn't inconvenience you too much." If it's the latter, that might be a slight pain, but you can either keep the wine, give it as a present, or put it on Craigslist.

So why aren't they getting back to you? Are they flakes, too out of it to get back to you, or cowards, too conflict-shy to confess they don't want the wine anymore? (I mean this affectionately. Some of my best friends are flaky cowards.) Either way, you can be friendly and direct yourself. Write them a separate email (or hey, call them on ye olde telephone!) and politely say, "Hey, would you still like these lovely bottles of wine? Or would you like to pass? If I don't hear from you by Friday, I'll assume you don't want them." Then get on with your life. And next year, give them a chance to participate in the wine futures, or to invest in whiskey instead.