Charity shops have lost the plot

Given they receive an 80% reduction on business rates and high streets are struggling, I'd argue they DO need to provide value for the communities they are sited in.

They lost the plot when they got Head Offices and thousands of pounds on marketing.

I avoid the big chains as just yet another scam. I won't even donate to them any more.

I prefer to help by buying from mums and skint people like me, at car boot sales.

However the Salvation Army and some (but not all) small and scruffy charity shops are still in the original and true spirit of charity and you can find bargains.

However the Salvation Army and some (but not all) small and scruffy charity shops are still in the original and true spirit of charity and you can find bargains.

The Salvation Army have been giving away free school uniform throughout the holidays in their charity shops, and I think that's fantastic. Especially when you hear that other shops are charging £3 for a single polo shirt, like another poster mentioned.

Bit of a stupid question, but is this second hand donations, or new stuff for families in need. I have a ton of stuff I put on Gumtree for free, but nobody uses it anymore and I've moved from the local area the school was which is probably why. I don't want to just bin it.

Both.

They have some new and loads of second hand items, and anyone is able to take them. (Although some stores have limits on how many things you can take)

I agree. I was looking for a smallish bag and the charity shop was asking £45. I bought one for £20 in the Fat Face sale. Yes, people go to charity shops then re-sell but that's because they have customers who are prepared to pay that much for a second hand bag. A little charity shop doesn't have that kind of outlet. The charity shop needs to give people the feeling they're getting a bargain otherwise they'll just buy new in the sales.

@Whingethanks didn't know that but that's another tick in their favour. Let's hope the marketing people leave tbe SA well alone.

Can you put the stuff you don't have space for in a bargain box outside for £1 each or something? Just to shift it. There must be a way to return to the charity shop as a source of clothes for people who are genuinely in need while it also being a place for people who will pay £10 for a nice dress. I agree with the pp who said charity shops should be contributing value to their local community as well as to the charity they support.

I don’t know, maybe I’m a mug, but £6 for a dinosaur toy that I’m assuming goes for £20 or so new does seem like a good bargain to me!

You can’t compare prices now to what they were when you were a kid. If you got those kind of toys for a couple of quid 20 years ago then £6 today is probably about right, no?

And £30 for a TK Maxx dress is ridiculous but £8 for the other dresses does sound good to me, yet you still seem to think that’s too much?

Fair enough! I’ve bought my nephew a few of those Schliech dinosaurs when out and about and they were £20 but maybe he always picks the biggest expensive ones because he sees me coming!

Can you put the stuff you don't have space for in a bargain box outside for £1 each or something? Just to shift it

No criticism, but this sentence makes it very clear that you have never spent any time in a sorting room. Anything worth selling goes on sale. The stuff which is not worth selling and only worth ragging is just that - rag-worthy. School polo shirts which were once white now grey and covered with pen marks. Skirts or trouser with dubious marks or bust zips. Well worn knickers. Hoodies so bobbly that you wouldn't even wear them when gardening. Odd shoes. Chipped crockery or mugs with handles missing. Ripped books, or "how to" manuals for Windows 95. Endless battered ring binders and box files. Dried up felt-tip pens.

Honestly, charity shops are generally pretty good and having methods of disposing of waste and getting money for it. Most have a rag merchant who pays pennies - like 50p or 60p per black bag. Metal goes to vintage cash cow or similar scrap merchants. Foreign coins ands postage stamps are sent away to specialist companies. Paper/card (so your ripped books and jigsaws where half the bits have gone) can go in the regular recyling. But you are left with a lot of stuff which is just rubbish and should have been put in the donor's own bin.

Nobody is going to buy an odd shoe for £1.

There's no need to be quite so patronising. I was responding to someone who said: 'we just physically don’t have space as we have mountains of bags already in our stock room which is up a flight of stairs.' Lack of space seemed to be an issue and I was suggesting a solution. A lot of charities seem to have lost sight of the community they exist in which is what many, many contributers on here have also said. Maybe if charities actually listened they would be doing a bit better. ( See also the thread on organisations you would never use/support) Lots of negativity about large charities on there too.

There's two Charity Superstores near me (Glasgow area), and you can pick up great stuff, particularly football shirts, trainers, shoes, and decent labelled jeans. You probably wouldn't want the furniture, though.

No intention to be patronising. Just explaining the reality of what volunteers are dealing with in the sorting room and why "just sell it for £1" won't fly.

As someone else said upthread, if everyone just looked at what they were donating and asked themselves whether they'd buy it, or be happy to pass it on to their sister/mum/friend, a lot of the problems would be solved.

No, that is not the purpose of a charity shop. You may not shop there if you can't get cheap stuff or you might not give a shit about the cause, and that's your prerogative. But its purpose for existing isn't to provide you with cheap stuff, it's to raise money for its charity. Donated stuff sold cheap is the means, not the mission.

There are two charity shop franchises I refuse to buy from- 1 because I disagree profoundly with the path they have chosen globally and the other because I worked for them way back in the day and it had a terribly toxic and exploitative culture. Both are global named charities and only one was once ever called to account for their actions.

So I tend to disagree with the idea that people only buy to get bargains and don't give a shit about which charity it is.

But I do find I buy less and less for me from charity shops. For one of my DCs who has sensory issues and used and re-worn clothes tend to have a softer texture for him. Plus after spending £££ on things like fatface only to have him freak out at the textures I don't mind 'wasting' a fiver as opposed to ten times that if I get it wrong.

The charity shops do not have the overheads that other shops do, reduced business rates, lower wages as they have a large volunteer staff and no stock costs. They then pay those at the top huge salaries, in addition charge high prices which means there is a lower turnover.

You certainly sound offended when you call them "grabby" and complain about the charity failing in its moral duty because it isn't providing stuff cheaply enough for you ("They've been donated for free for fuck sake. If you're so hellbent on doing good, let low income families be able to afford toys and books for their kids. Says it all about the charity really."). Even free stock needs to be sorted, displayed and sold, and have you any idea how much utter shite they receive that they need to go through and pay to dispose of because it's unsellable? It's not a case of "you got it for free so give it to me for pennies, grifters!"

Their purpose is not to provide cheap stuff for low income families. The shops aren't for low income families; anyone can shop there. They do not exist to provide cheap stuff. They exist to raise money for their charities. Selling donated stuff cheaply is how they achieve that. It's not their reason for existing.

I realise customers don't really care about the charity and that's fine, you don't have to. But it is their purpose. They don't care at all about who's buying (resellers, low income families, someone seeking fancy dress) as long as they're selling. They're not failing their MO or moral duty if you don't like their prices. At worst they're failing at business because they're not raising the required money but that's all.

There's often a feeling that because they get stock "free", they should have no complaints about hours spent going through dirty underwear and broken crockery and paying to dispose of it, and they should have no purpose but to sell stuff for pennies because that's what people want. It's simply not true.

Although I have no issue with charity shops selling goods for a decent price, I think that Oxfam over prices a lot of their items and since the bad press they had a few years ago I don't donate to them anymore.
I do find that in some shops, when donating goods, some of the women receiving them can be quite snooty. We moved house recently and I needed space so I donated a lot of items that I would otherwise have kept eg, Wrendale bread bin, three brand new Wrendale sets of three cake tins and several bags of good quality items. The Wrendale items were not in bags so it was clear what I was donating. Despite this, one of the women, who has an unfortunate manner, starting looking through the bags I was donating in my presence which I thought was really rude. When she had finished, she made reference to the fact that Wrendale products are very popular and then did say thank you. She made me feel really bad when she was checking what I had brought in the bags before I had left. I knew she wouldn't refuse it as it was all good stuff but because of her behaviour I won't donate to this charity again. I have also seen people bringing donations into charity shops to be told bluntly "We're not taking donations or Leave it at the door!" without a word of thanks. Maybe it's because they are used to receiving lots of bags of crap and it has coloured their view of donations.

I absolutely agree that if the business model isn't working, they need to adapt it, and this probably does involve looking at prices. It's true that people don't tend to buy at charity shops because they want to support the charity and that's fine, they're not obliged to and that's not the business model either. The shop is selling stuff, not asking for donations out of the kindness of your heart.

What I'm saying is that the shops don't exist to provide cheap stuff to deserving people; they exist to support the charity. And they aren't morally obliged to sell in a certain way just because the stock was donated. People choose to donate, sorting through it and disposing of the crap uses a lot of resources. If you want to control what happens to your cast offs, sell or pass it on yourself. Once you give it away it's no longer yours and the charity will do whatever it thinks will gain the most money from it. If that's not what you want, don't donate stuff.

I think charity shops have had their day. Too many people now sell their good stuff on vinted and send the shit to a charity shop to feel better about themselves than it going direct to landfill.

There were 2 near to us, right next door to my gym. I used to pop in there often with my daughter and they always had people in but sooooo expensive!! Bought a Zara dress for £10 which ended up being too small but given I had a receipt I took it back - too expensive to not get a refund back on it

Both closed down recently within a few weeks of each other

Laughably one of them had a £1 sale going on in their final week - this is how the prices should be all the time.