200 charity shops closing (cancer research)

So many people seem to confuse the two 🙁

That's fine.

I hope they're all shut down. The independents will benefit and so will the community.

CS are not extensions for the tip.

@gamerchick

The thing is, though, that whoever said that is essentially correct - these days, many charity shops are not for people in the UK on low incomes (unless their specific cause is the poor in the UK) but are for the specific cause they're raising money for.

I realise that in the past, many charities probably did consider themselves to be at least partially there for helping out those on lower incomes, but that line of thought has changed.

I don't necessarily think that's a good thing, but it's how things now stand.

Leicester City Council residents can have up to 6 FREE bulky waste collections per year. This is up to 5 large items (tall fridges and freezers count as 2 items) and 15 bags of general waste. If they want more, its £21 for the same thing. Excludes house clearances. Yet the areas in Leicester are full of fly tipped items which could have been picked up as part of the bulky waste collections. Obviously poor communication of this and many languages.

My council charges £42 for one item and £5 for each additional item. My parents replaced their washer and dishwasher last year with a gap of 4-5 months between. They paid £15 to the shop (Euronics) to take the old one away and recycle them.

Tbf with Vinted you often take your chances - what condition it's really in, whether it will fit. There is definitely a bonus to being able to see and try on in a shop before you buy (and no postage! )

The best ones are the small independent charities. You can have a decent rummage with decent prices. We have an animal one locally, it's big enough for furniture and it's cheap. There's no going away to think about it because everything is snapped up.

The bigger ones, who (as we were told on here once) charge a fortune because 'charity shops aren't for the poor, they're for generating as much money as possible for the charity' (CEOs) all deserve to be closed down. I hope they do. Cheeky fuckers they've turned into.

@Auburngal many of the large recycling bins based at supermarkets have been removed because of the fly tipping/putting the wrong stuff in the wrong bins etc.
Where my mum lives they have a rare council that doesn't collect glass for recycling as part of the regular bin lorry collections. People are meant to take their glass to the bottle banks - usually in supermarket carparks.
Except even those have been removed because some people seem to think "Bottle Bank" also means you can shove a broken microwave, stained mattress, half a car and a box of random toys in there.
I just don't understand why recycling/waste disposal is so bad in the UK?
Why can't people follow a simple instruction?

What's annoying though is someone thought those out of date books were fine to donate.
That's a big problem charity shops have.
People donating complete crap.

Though I do wish charities would get rid of their donation bins which you see mainly in car parks.

They are just a magnet to encourage fly tipping. As piles of bags by the bins I doubt if anything in the bins is going to be on sale at a charity shop. I believe that people throw rubbish - literally rubbish and clothes beyond wearing. Plus kids might throw in a bottle of Coke with no lid into the bin.

As a member of the litter wombles, one fellow womble has seen a charity bin been removed as the owner of the land was sick and tired of the rubbish. No rubbish has been dumped on the area where bin was since its removal!

Cancer research are too expensive so I avoid it.

Its very easy for ordinary people to sell their own things online for a few quid now, plus less people can afford not to do that. Then loads of what people buy simply doesn't last, the quality is poor.

So you end up where people are usimg the charity shops to palm off their low value rubbish, it costs the charity to process but doesn't raise any money.

@narkyspirit

"A few weeks ago headed to the train station I saw a member of staff come out of the same shop with some items and dump them outside the charity shop next door, it was around 08:00 in the morning."

They shouldn't have left them outside the shop before it opened, that's not on. A lot of charity shops don't want stuff left on the doorstep outside of opening hours, as it can lead to the items getting damaged.

That said, there's nothing wrong in principle with a charity shop giving donated items to another charity shop. Some shops aren't allowed to sell specific items. Or, it could be that they think items might sell better at another shop - or perhaps they've already been out for sale for a number of weeks. If, after a certain amount of time, the stock hasn't sold it gets culled and sent for recycling - but may get taken to another shop to see if it has a chance of selling there.

I volunteer in a bookshop, but we sometimes get given bags of clothes, which we don't sell. So we'll take those to a general-purpose Oxfam shop.

For some unknown reason, I seem to buy more clothes if they are put in sizes, not colours. Even with those CS that display clothes by colour, I avoid colours that I don’t like - white/cream and yellows/orange.

@MaturingCheeseball

"Pulling things out to sell online (recently deleted thread in which employee was bemoaning their redundancy) leaves stores depleted of decent stock so people won’t bother going in there. Putting a Ming vase in for separate sale is one thing, but not every reasonable item."

If it was every reasonable item being sold online, then of course, that would be silly, but in my experience, it's not that. (Perhaps some other shops do indeed take online selling to extremes, but I can just speak for my experience - that certainly shouldn't be the case.)

Generally, we can put stock out on the shop floor for £50 or less and we have a valuables cabinet for books that are more valuable than that. Of course, our valuables cabinet has limited space. But my point is, it's not every reasonable item that WE (meaning my specific shop) restricts to online selling. I put out books on the shop floor that I've priced at £20 or £30.

In Leicester, one of the tips has a charity shop within it. So doing a clear out, you could donate the better stuff to the CS and take the broken, past its best stuff at the tip in one visit

The CS is a bit messy but get some right bargains

CR closed the one near me a month ago.

Charity shops since Covid are charging too much for stuff. I remember seeing a Primark top which still had tag on it £4. CS wanted £5!

A pair of worn out Nike trainers with sole coming away, £12!

Some CS don’t sort of their donations. Saw a guidebook to Yugoslavia earlier this year and Good Pub Guide 1996.

They are too expensive. I donated something and saw it was being sold for more than the price I’d paid for it new. The one near me sells random bits of crockery for £10-£20. I never shop in them now.

I honestly think in the past there have been too many charity shops in the high street and frankly I can't tell one from the other apart from the name on the front. In more recent times they're just full over over-priced tat so I'm really not surprised.

This. If I can’t easily donate it, it’s better for the environment to throw it rather than drive around looking for somewhere.

I think charity shops have had their day - it’s all Vinted etc now.

I think their slogan "cancer, we're coming to get you" didn't help. Think about it: who wants to "get cancer"? Double meaning gag, probably deliberate (the sort of thing they pay their bright sparks vast amounts to think of), but it doesn't make me want to support them.

And yes, charity shops are losing out to Vinted, and probably lockdown as well. My small town went from six charity shops to two in 2020, one of which is now only open a couple of days a week. Charity shops are also not cheap to buy from any more, as others have said.

What percentage of the taking does a charity shop have to give to the charity for it to meet the criteria of a charity? Thinking mostly of local small charities.

I have a friend who work for a charity and they sell stuff on Facebook and other places and gives all the £ to the charity. I can't remember if they flag it's for a charity or not.

Someone once told me you only have to give a percentage to the charity but that was a few years ago.

I have donated to a local hospice shop, some very good quality clothing that was becoming too small.

I walk past the same shop relatively often on the way to the train station, and spotted one jacket I had donated in the window at £125 I had bought it about a year earlier for £175.

A few weeks ago headed to the train station I saw a member of staff come out of the same shop with some items and dump them outside the charity shop next door, it was around 08:00 in the morning.

I'm reluctant to give stuff to charity shops now having seen that.

But looking up eBay prices… On eBay you have potentially a worldwide market. Pricing something aspirationally in your charity shop in, say, Bedford, relies on a person happening to walk in and saying, “Gosh! The very limited edition Toby jug I’ve been searching for!”

Pulling things out to sell online (recently deleted thread in which employee was bemoaning their redundancy) leaves stores depleted of decent stock so people won’t bother going in there. Putting a Ming vase in for separate sale is one thing, but not every reasonable item.

Also dh knows a bloke who travels charity shops and prices up their vinyl in return for first dibs. No wonder all that’s left is Richard Clayderman and Mantovani!

I've mentioned it before in another thread, but a donated book that I wanted to buy had to be looked up on Ebay (a book about Icelandic sorcery) and it was priced at £40.