Charity shops have lost the plot

Realistically how would a charity ever make money checking out, collecting and storing a sofa only to sell it for £20? Collecting it alone would be more than that.

I din’t have much money and am looking for sofas and a wardrobe for my son. The charity shops are charging approx £200 for a used bog standard sofa. For a wardrobe possibly £80. I simply do not have that much. So this weekend we are buying a wardrobe from Facebook marketplace for £20 and hopefully I will find sofas for £100 each. I would obviously have rather bought from a charity shop but they’ve priced me out

I've noticed this and I shop in charity shops a lot. I do find it depends where though - some in small towns/villages are more expensive than the city.

Great. Not sure why you need to comment on my actual opinion on this though. You make your comment and I make mine. It’s hardly world peace stuff that needs debating is it? I could tell you I think Harold Shipman was misunderstood and it still wouldn’t be your place to tell me differently. You can’t do that in the charity shops where I live btw, it’s almost like we don’t all live in the same area - crazy.

Great. Not sure why you need to comment on my actual opinion on this though. You make your comment and I make mine. It’s hardly world peace stuff that needs debating is it? I could tell you I think Harold Shipman was misunderstood and it still wouldn’t be your place to tell me differently. You can’t do that in the charity shops where I live btw.

It can often be tried on, returned and every item I buy from charity shops gets washed before I wear it.

Yes! I love day in Kirkie charity shops…then Alessio for lunch!

Yep we donate to charity so families that can’t afford the £20 dinosaur can have one for £2, not so the ceo of bhf or wherever can have a bigger bonus. I very much doubt the profit from the shops is worth the effort and I assume the point of the shops is free advertising and fuzzy feelings rather than making as much money as possible from the general public. There is a lot of competition if you’re charging £5+ for a t shirt and most people would rather have new than mid to poor quality second hand, even if it’s raising money for charity.

And I bought a max studio dress from tk maxx, it was about £15 and the quality wasn’t great, it wasn’t green but it did end up in a charity shop 😁

The time a business stops listening to it's customers is when it starts to fail.

I guess that is why the charity shops are starting to close. They have lost sight of what their customers expect of them in the drive to continue funding the bloated corporations they have become.

Without customers they have no income from these shops and what is very clear from the apologists on this thread is that what customers want is not what the charity wants. Thus the model will fail.

something that can’t be tried on, can’t be returned and smells a bit weird.

Most charity shops have fitting rooms. Most will also happily refund something which doesn't fit. And washing machines are a thing....

Not in any of the ones I’ve volunteered in. Certainly not in the main shop I’m in every week. It’s generally the paid staff who price items, although some volunteers who work with specialist items, like books, or jewellery may price too.

I have to echo some previous posters about the amount of time spent sorting bags and bags of rubbish and/or unsuitable items. I think the uninitiated would get a big surprise at what the public think is ok to donate.

So what happens if the purpose of the charity is to help low income families, are the shops still obliged to sell to the well off for pennies?

My Mum is obsessed with charity shops and I agree that they are so overpriced. I don’t know what they have to pay for rent so I feel a bit guilty saying it but there’s no way I’m paying the prices they charge for something that can’t be tried on, can’t be returned and smells a bit weird. I feel sick when I go into them with the foisty smell they often have. I would be willing to overlook that for a well priced item but not for overpriced stuff.

That's possible. Doesn't change the facts of mission and method, though. And they aren't for people on low incomes, they're for anyone who wants to buy, like Poundshop. If they came up with a way of getting people to pay the higher prices customers are noticing, they'd stick with that.

@ThatCyanCat - I believe that charity shops can strike a balance between raising money for the charity and being a source of affordable goods for people on low/lower incomes.

And I can’t imagine it is good business strategy to sell second hand items for the same price as buying them new. A charity shop that gets a reputation for selling lots of Shein/Temu/Primark stuff for the same price as it costs new, could lose footfall.

Of course it matters, because when they reassess their business strategy, they're going to be looking at what most benefits the charity, not what gives local people cheap stuff. It's possible that they'll choose a different direction and people looking for dirt cheap stuff will no longer be their customer; they could rebrand and target people who prioritise other stuff. Or maybe they'll just go bust because that benefits the charity more than running at a loss just to provide cheap goods.

It's funny that people have such difficulty understanding this and absolutely insist that one way or another, charity shops are for them. But like I've said, something about charity shops - donated stock and a charitable aim, I guess - mean people feel an obligation/entitlement/whatever over them that they just don't do with other sellers of cheap goods.

Anyway I'm not going to spend all day arguing about it. It's a fact; not much more to say on that.

It doesn't matter that is what the shops think they are. As we all keep saying over and over again the CUSTOMERS expect it to be cheap. It is donated goods. Historically charity shops are where you bought significantly cheaper second hand items than what you would pay to buy it new. If it isn't cheap, peoe won't buy it. If home bargains just started to charge significantly more people wouldn't go there. It is a transaction at the end of the day.

Yes they don't have a moral obligation to price things cheaply, but the outcome of that is people won't go in them. I guess if that is what the charity wants then it is fine.

Yes, but that is not the same as what you said before when you claimed that the "purpose is both". It isn't. And that's going to matter if they start changing their direction because it will be based on the purpose of raising money, which may or may not mean selling cheaper.

I mentioned it before... something about charity shops changes people's perceptions both of what the purpose is or what it should be.

They have definitely mixed up Max Studio (TK Max) with Studio Max Mara (a diffusion line of Max Mara). Im guessing they did a search on Ebay or Vinted which probably showed the Max Mara stuff in the results as they share key words.

Yes - their purpose is to raise money....and at the same time people can get second hand stuff (cheaper than new). That's a fact.

No. The purpose is to raise money. They're not community services to provide cheap stuff to residents. Their purpose is to raise money, like every other shop on the street.

If they find themselves failing to do that, they'd be wise to reassess their business model and strategy. And they might decide that reducing prices is the answer. But that's based around their purpose of raising money, not of reducing prices.

Sorry but this simply isn't a matter of opinion. That's what they're there for. Don't confuse mission with method.

Our books are 4 for £1 including hardbacks. We get lots of hardback books donated, some brand new, probably unwanted Xmas or birthday pressies. Despite quite often the same books are on the shelf at Tesco for £12.99 we cant give them away.

CD's 3 for £1
DVDs 5 for £1
apart from the odd keen collector of cd's we sell very few.

But the irony is they’re actually pricing themselves out of a sale so how does that help charities

It's purpose is both - to get things cheaper and also to raise money

Yes - I've seen something similar locally.

A man came in, clearly didn't have much money and wanted a pair of heavy duty leather workman style boots (used) . They wanted £25 for them and he had only £20.

They would not budge. He left so quickly out of embarrassment that I couldn't pay the difference. I put my own purchases down and left and I will not go in there now.