Woman Says Her Uncle Replaced Her Tires After Taking Car Without Asking. Now He’s Mad She Didn’t Pay Him Back

After her uncle replaced her car’s tires without informing her — and asked her to pay for them — one woman is unsure how to move forward.

The 24-year-old woman, who shared her story on Reddit’s “Am I the A——” forum, was headed to an appointment when she noticed her car missing from its spot in the driveway. She began asking her family members where it went, and they informed her that her uncle had “borrowed it,” but would be back before she had to leave for work.

Initially, she didn’t think much of it. She hadn’t told her family that she “had an appointment that early,” she wrote in her post, “so I didn’t worry about it and decided to cancel the appointment and reschedule.”

“I was a bit irritated that he’d take my car without asking first, especially since we aren’t close at all, but I let it go,” she said, noting that when he’s staying with the family he typically uses her cousin’s car, but couldn’t that day.

Then, 10 minutes before she had to go in to work, her uncle had still not returned with the vehicle, so she took a ride-share instead. It was “not a problem,” she wrote, “until I realized later that my work keys were in my car and I wouldn’t be able to close up or leave without them. 

“I called to see if he was back yet so I could have someone bring them to me, but he wasn’t,” the woman recalled. “They told me he was at the mechanic changing my tires, so I had to wait 40 minutes for him to bring my car to me so I could lock up and go home.”

This was confusing to hear, the woman wrote, because her tires were not in bad shape. “They weren’t great,” she admitted, “but they were in good enough quality to last me a good while until I could afford to get them replaced.”

Begging to differ, her uncle who borrowed the car “complained” and decided to get two of them changed — but did not ask her before doing so. The decision, she wrote, “caused me a bit of an inconvenience, but I was grateful nonetheless that he went out of his way to replace my tires despite me never mentioning wanting them changed.” That is, until he asked her to pay for the new tires.

Days later, the woman’s aunt called her “rude” for not offering to repay her uncle for the mechanic cost. “Honestly I was flabbergasted here,” the woman wrote, “because it genuinely never even crossed my mind that he would ask me to pay for new tires that I never even asked him for.”

“Also, part of me thought it was maybe a gesture of goodwill for borrowing my car without asking,” she added.

The woman said she expressed her gratitude to her aunt, but said that she could not reimburse her uncle for a service that she did not “personally want” or ask for — and that she would not be able to afford the surprise expense for at least two months. In response, the aunt “suddenly blew up at me,” and the “atmosphere in the house has soured.”

“My aunt and uncle [flat-out] ignore and avoid me now, and my cousins all say it is a bit messed up that I never even considered paying him back for the tires,” the woman wrote, “and that he spent a good while waiting at the mechanic to get them done so the least I could do was offer to pay for it.”

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She concluded the post by asking the forum’s titular question — if she is the “a——” in the situation — and in response, many theorized that the uncle’s decision to hit up the auto shop was not a gesture after all, but rather an attempt to cover his tracks.

“Call the shop and ask if the tires he got rid of were damaged,” one user advised, as the woman replied, “That’s smart, but I have no idea where he got them changed, and he hasn’t given me a receipt.”

Outside of theorizing that the uncle had “smashed a curb” or something along those lines, most top responses agreed that the woman who made the post is not in the wrong.

“So he borrowed your car [without] asking, caused you to miss a doctor’s appointment and incur [Uber] costs, and then had the audacity to have mechanical work done on your car without permission?” one person wrote, echoing several other users. “That guy is out of his mind. Hide your keys.”