You broke it!

[Spectral]

I'd ask him how much he cares. If it's a significant amount of care, I buy him a new one and take the semi-broken one. I'd do my best to not be judgmental in terms of thinking about whether they should care, since the situation is ultimately my fault, so it's my job to fix it.

[Deleted]

Hide it, Deny All knowledge!

Seriously though ? Buy a new one and take the old one for repair to help cover the costs.

[Ripox]

I would apologize, pay for a completely new one, let them keep the old broken one, and take them out for lunch/dinner to apologize.

[Deleted]

a £500 item i'd just buy a new one for them, i broke it after all.

[Deleted]

Pay nothing of course unless my friend knows for a fact I broke it.. in that case I'd try to lay the blame on him/her instead. Besides if it works then no harm done.

[Hyve]

It really depends on the object, and the condition it was in.

If it worked fine, and operated nicely and I was merely tampering, and I broke it, sure I'd pay them back. Seems only fair.

If it was already busted, 10 years old and I was asked to try and fix it, and I broke it, I'd probably not.

- - - Updated - - -

Pay nothing of course unless my friend knows for a fact I broke it.. in that case I'd try to lay the blame on him/her instead. Besides if it works then no harm done.

You must be a swell friend to have around!

"You didn't actually see me break this priceless vase! In fact, could you even prove it wasn't broken before I arrived and this was nothing more then an attempt to frame me, steal all my money, then my wife, sell her on the Black Market for organs and then use my children as butlers for the rest of their miserable lives?! ..."

"No? Well, I'm off then!"

[Azutael]

Is it broken or is it not broken, you can't have it be both.. :P

If it's broken, my fault. Pay for it.
If it's broken, and easily fixable. Then apologize, pay for repairs if needed.

[Forgettable]

It would depend on how this friend reacted. Personally, if this happened to me and my thing was broken, but I fixed it, I would not ask for anything from my friend. If my friend was upset about it, I would pay for the whole thing and let them keep the new and the old and be done with it. If they weren't upset, let them keep the old fixed one.

[Voolawl]

None of the choices in the poll suit my answer.

I'd just ask my friend what he wants. "Hey man I'm sorry I broke your thing, how do you wanna go about handling fixing this?"

[Deleted]

So if a friend came over and accidentally broke your, lets say, $1,000+ TV you'd say "shit happens" and not want them to buy you a new one?

If it accidentally happened then yes. It's a principle and has very little to do with the price of the item that was broken.

[Darnash]

Offer to pay for it, because that's what I'd want him to do if the reverse happened. I'd do what he wants to do.

[Pancha]

The normal thing is to buy a new one and keep the old one. I would consider that the most fair deal for both parts.

[OzoAndIndi]

Your friend is able to fix it so that it works perfectly, except it's now broken, and you can clearly see it's broken, and because it's broken, it might break completely much easier later on.

Well, if it can be seen that it's broken, yet works perfectly again, I'm going to assume it's something physical that's visually damaged rather than something within the software or other intangible way that it runs. I would offer to give them maybe up to 50% to have the physical damage repaired.

If it were reversed and it worked fine I would not expect someone to buy me an entirely whole new one, but if a new case, or glass, or screen or whatever it needs... that would be proper. Although the age of the item should be taken into consideration. If it was old and they were planning on a new one in the near future anyhow then I'd probably pitch in maybe 25% just to make up for the old one and making them have to buy a new one a little sooner.

[Deleted]

The Golden Rule should be applied in a situation like this. If it were me, I'd want him or her to pay me for a new one.

[chrisberb]

Something similar happened to my brother over the summer, only he was very lucky. We were having a bar-b-q and one of his friends hooked up his iphone to a radio outside and was listening to music. My brother went over to the iphone to change the music, and it fell on the ground (brick patio area), and the entire screen got smashed up. My brother got real nervous, called his friend over and was like "omg dude i'm so sorry, i went to pick it up and it slipped right off the table", his friend gave him an angry look, then laughed and said "it's all good, I got the new iphone 5, I just use this as an ipod now" lol. My brother got so lucky!
But on topic...I'd suck it up and tell him that if it breaks again and can't be fixed by him, then i'd buy him a new one.

[PBitt]

This brings back memories of my sophomore year in high school. A friend of mine had a Bop-It pen and we were fucking around with it in just before Spanish class, I don't recall exactly how it happened but I tried to rip it out of his hands or something and it broke. Needless to say he paid like 6 dollars for it so he said fix it or buy a new one. Six bucks was a lot of money for me then so instead I spent like 3 hours of my night fixing it, and it actually worked better than it did before when I was done. So then I gave it back to him, he was surprised that I actually fixed it, and the first thing he did with it was throw it at one of our friends and it broke, I was actually in shock because I spent so much time fixing it, and then he broke it, permanently.

As for this supposed scenario, it's hard to say without more information. Breaking a wine glass at a friend's house by accident for example is one thing and a rather silly thing to have someone pay for, however something that costs 500 dollars....eh. It really does depend what it is, how old it is, how well it works, etc. Accident or not, though, I would still want to do the right thing in the situation, I would most likely offer to buy a new one, and if he/she truly is your friend they might even give you some leniency, maybe paying part of it because it was six years old anyways, for example. Of course, I don't have any friends anymore, so I don't have to worry about breaking their shit.

[taheen74]

Ever hear the phrase, "You break it, you buy it"? It's like that.

If I break something that isn't mine, I'm going to either a) give that person the money so they can get a new one or b)go out and buy that person a new one.

[FeliciaMarie]

I chose Pay for a brand new one. Let your friend keep the old, broken one as well.

If you broke it, you pay for a new one. That doesn't mean you can keep the one you broke, because well...you broke it(even though it's fixed, it wasn't yours in the first place).

[wfredlund]

Am I the only one that is curious as to what the OP broke? Seriously though, man up and replace it. You would want your friend to do the same

[LilSaihah]

I get them a box of beer. Beer fixes everything!

Ever hear the phrase, "You break it, you buy it"? It's like that.

Except most stores don't even do that. If you break something and it's a genuine accident, they'll write it off unless it's incredibly valuable, partly because they could get into huge shit because it's your shop that they fell over or w/e in.