So I (m48) spoke to my stylist/friend about doing my friends hair (35f) she has terminal cancer and I wanted to try to lift her spirits. I asked him for estimate on what it would cost to do what she wanted. He said “don’t worry about the cost” so I went ahead and made the appointment and told my friend, who was thrilled. Despite over a year of chemo her hair hadn’t fallen out but a number of other physical side effects made her feel less than pretty. So I thought this would be a great boost. We went and had the appointment today which took several hours, after the appointment was over the stylist presented me with his card reader with a $200 charge. When he said don’t worry about the cost, it implied there would be no charge, we had spoken several times before the service and he never mentioned a cost despite my asking for a quote to start with. My friend saw that he was charging me and she immediately felt guilty that I was paying for a service for her we both thought was free. I didn’t address it in his salon because I thought it wasn’t appropriate, so I paid and left a decent tip. I could tell she wasn’t happy with the colors and I felt/feel terrible because the whole idea was to make her feel better, not worse. When the stylist then asked me later for pics of her hair I asked him why he’d charged me when he told me not to worry about the cost. His response was that he said he wouldn’t charge me what he would other people and that he lost money doing the service. Which to my knowledge we’d never spoken about, hence my asking for a quote up front because even with a discount it was still more than I could afford. I told him that I had planned on giving him a sizable tip since he was doing the service for free. He told me that my tip and his charge didn’t even cover his time and he said he’d refund me his fee minus what I said I was going to tip. I said that was sorry he lost time and money with other clients but that I did appreciate his time. AITAH for thinking that based of his comments about not worrying about the cost, that he was going to do the service for free or AITAH for letting him know what I think about the situation?