Am I wrong for refusing to lend my sister my car after she returned it almost empty three times?
My sister lives about 20 minutes away and doesn't have a car right now, so over the last couple months I've let her borrow mine when she had appointments or needed to run errands. I genuinely didn't mind at first. The only thing I asked was that she bring it back roughly how she found it.
Three times now she's returned it with the fuel light on. The first time she apologized and said she forgot. The second time she said she was running late. Last weekend she borrowed it again, had it most of Saturday, and when I got in Sunday morning I had 11 miles of range left.
I texted her and said I'm not lending it out anymore.
She thinks I'm being ridiculous because she says she's always offered to send me money for gas afterward. To me that isn't really the point. I don't want to discover I need fuel when I'm already leaving for work or an appointment because someone used almost an entire tank and couldn't be bothered to stop for five minutes.
She also has this habit of saying "I'll fill it next time" instead of just doing it before returning the car. After the third time I figured the simplest solution was just not letting her use it.
Now she needs the car next weekend for something important and my mom has gotten involved, saying I'm making my sister's life harder over something easily fixable.
My sister offered to fill the whole tank this time and says I'm basically punishing her for mistakes she's already apologized for. I told her apologies don't mean much when the exact same thing keeps happening.
She called me petty and said family is supposed to help each other.
I do feel a little bad because I know not having a car is difficult, but I'm also tired of having the same conversation every time.
Am I wrong for just making this a hard no now?