Charity shop prices

I'm finding very little to buy in charity shops at the moment either. My local town is full of them but I had a mooch around this week and after visiting 6 had bought absolutely nothing.

BHF etc was full of brand new tat and stock that has been there ages. In others there was little I wanted and nothing at the price I was prepared to pay. I've now arranged a shopping trip next week with a friend (who is also a CS buyer usually) to the local outlet centre.

We have 8 charity shops on my local high street and they’re really varied. Some do seem to set their prices quite high but others have good bargains.

I find the charity shop bashing on here really irritating to be honest, if people care so much then I’m sure the charity shops would welcome extra volunteers who would go in and do things “right”.

Also I feel that they can’t win, some people seem to think they should be pricing everything dirt cheap and others think they should be getting the highest price they can for their donations to raise more for the charity.

She told them off? Seriously? I’m embarrassed for her.

If she thinks she could do so much better maybe she should have sold them herself on Vinted/eBay/FB and donated the money to the charity?

she went back in a week later and told them off

How rude.

A friend of mine donated a lot of baby stuff to a charity shop, she went back in a week later and told them off for how ridiculous the prices were. The manager said they use eBay to price things.

I agree OP. Vinted is your friend.

Was it BHF? They are actually taking the mick with their prices,

🤮

I don't even wanna know what it was..... !!!!!!!! 🤮

Saw a jumper for 18 pounds with obvious stains on in shelter today

Our local Oxfam sells reasonably priced goods. The one I find is sometimes very overpriced is the local hospice one. I get the impression that the recent trend for buying used clothing, rather than buying new, has been taken by the manager to mean that people will pay £25 for something well worn and of poor quality.

I've been into the shop a couple of times recently and note that the same items are still on the rails. It all starts to look pretty tatty which is a shame.

I don't know why I keep engaging with this threads .. same old arguments with no facts .
I don't deny that some charity shops are badly run, and mistakes are made ... just like in any other retail outlet.
But the clear facts and sales figures show that most charity shops will be producing profit figures otherwise they will be closed down. The charity I work for is actually expanding its shop portfolio so clearly something is working.
I do agree though that the quality of donations is dropping ... no one wants to buy cast off Primark and Shein.

@PurpleButterflyWings
people do it all the time. We could not take any more donations last Thursday as our rubbish had not been picked up and our storage area was full of mouldy books, rusty baking trays, clothes only fit for the bin and bags that had been left overnight outside the shop.

@PurpleButterflyWings lots of people do. Ask any volunteer and they'll have stories about stuff which was only fit for the bin - chipped plates/mugs, empty DVD boxes, coloured in colouring in books, ripped clothing, broken toys etc etc etc.

Use your loaf! 😆 The stuff is OK/in working order/acceptable quality, I just take it to the charity shop to save waste and landfill. Did you really think I was taking broken crap that is useless to anyone to the charity shops? LMFAO! 😂 Get a clue!

A beast quest bookset, maybe 5 books, was in a small charity shop at weekend for £15 that went straight back on the shelf.
Yet got a practically new mountain warehouse fleece for £2.50
No consistency in pricing puts me off
I always give my donations to the blue Cross shop we have in our town they make it really easy to drop off and prices are reasonable

Unfortunately they are given a lot of poor quality donations in this world of mass produced, crap clothing. I still like a rummage and frequently find stuff I like.

I recently found a Massimo Dutti satin shirt which was priced at £20 which seemed steep for a charity shop. However I liked it, it was pristine and if I’d seen it in the original shop at that price I’d have snapped it up. So I took it to the till to pay and was told, no, it’s not that price. It’s been here for over a month so it’s actually £10. Obviously their policy but seemed a bit bonkers when the charity could have gained that extra £10.

Sadly I’m not quite nice enough to insist on paying it anyway 😊

£7 for a soft toy in my local charity shop yesterday.

Don't donate to, or buy, from any of the big boys. I exclusively donate to the local hospice shop. They also run a fantastic furniture showroom, collect free from your home too.

It's local, run by locals, mostly volunteer, and all the cash goes direct to the hospice. All management admin on- site too. One day I might even have need of them, so that's nice too.

Chill out, they get a new manager in every now and then who says they will maximise revenue, sticks prices up, clears the clutter, makes it all boutique.

Then within a month or two they tend to go back to normal. A few chains like Oxfam aren't worth looking in because of the prices.

And as for the "sadly deluded" comments about how all the money is going to salaries - clearly bollocks but you're not going to change the opinions of people who are vehemently anti-charity. Anyone can go to the websites of the big charities and look at their accounts, see what senior staff are being paid, what they're spending their money on. Or get similar information from the charity commission website. The charity sector is far, far more transparent than any other sector of retail. And it all comes back to this weird perception that everyone working in charity should be unpaid, or on minimum wage at hte very most.

Agree OP, went into an Oxfam near work (upmarket area) and it was selling dresses for £30-40. Some were more upmarket brands like Hobbs and Phase Eight, so would likely cost £100-150 new, but these were older, worn, faded. I’d rather buy new in Next or Tesco!

Equally, I once bought a pair of US branded jeans (not common here) on a charity shop sale rail. They were £7 down to £4. RRP was $300 when I looked online. I did actually take them back as it didn’t seem right!

Must be about a month since we last had this and I'll make the points I always make....

1. Charity shops are there to make money, not provide people with cheap stuff.
2. Charity shop managers have oodles of information about what is selling, what is not selling, sales by department, average selling price, sales against last quarter, last year, against other shops etc etc etc.
3. Volunteers are not stupid, but mistakes get made. Because if there is a paid member of staff, they are not there all the time.
4. No charity shop is going to have the active policy of pricing something second hand at more than it cost new.
5. Quantity of donations is higher than it ever was. Quality of donations has decreased overall.
6. People are always hung up on clothing prices - our shop sells more bric a brac and toys/games than we do clothing.

We've already had the "bobbled Primark more than new", all I need is for someone to make the comments about little old ladies not knowing fashion, and how all the grabby volunteers take all the "good stuff" and my bingo card will be complete.

Proces at the national charity shops are ridiculous now. I prefer to buy from the very few shops supporting local charities - I just got a lovely hoodie for my 6 year old grandson for £1.75 and joggers for the 1 year old for £1!