Charity shops have lost the plot

I once apologised for using my card for a tiny amount in a charity shop. The person working behind the till told me "don't worry, we don't get charged card fees". Apologies if it isn't all but that was my experience.

We accept any amount on card, we don't get charges fees.

Thank you, that was the point I made and someone said it wasn't true!

As a charity shop volunteer I can tell you the reason you that you will often pay more for unused clothes on Vinted. I’ve been on the cashdesk many times when a customer brings a huge basketful of new clothes, all different sizes, all still having their original labels attached. Do they have a family of numerous different sizes? Well, maybe but I would bet my last pound that those clothes would be listed on Vinted, probably before I’d finished my shift.

is your point that if those clothes were priced cheaply then they would be resold?

I agree. My favourite charity shop is a bit of a jumble sale - all tops £2, dresses £3, jigsaws £1. I suppose the more expensive shops will have to change their pricing if they don't get enough customers buying.

I used to like M&S when it sold wearable, not OTT clothes at a reasonable price. Apart from underwear, the only M&S clothing I buy now is from charity shops. I bought a M&S tee shirt recently from a CS, £3.50 I think it was. Probably new a few summers ago, but looked unworn. Fitted nicely, and It doesn’t stop above my waist. I’m not a fan of the boxy tee. I bought a Wallis dress for even less on a sales rail in another CS, understated, knee length (where are all the knee/calf length dresses and skirts? Either floor length, with frills or mini seems to be all that’s on sale ATM) It has washed beautifully. And I don't want a sweater with lace tacked on to the hem!

I was making an observation that donated unworn charity shop goods are often being sold on Vinted. So the many comments that are always raised on MN in discussions about charity shop pricing (that it would be cheaper to shop on Vinted than to buy from a charity shop) are incorrect in many cases.

Yes, but that’s not charity shops being greedy, it’s them being stupid!

I don't bother with them now. I buy the odd few things on vinted. Had their day, over priced cru oled up stuff. The good stuff doesn't make it to the shop floor in most cases I suspect

@EvieBB

It's correct that people can get items cheaper than new...but that isn't the charity shop's aim. It just happens to be a by-product of the charities selling second-hand goods.

Charities' sole aim is to raise money for the cause. They do not factor the needs of their potential customers into their mission.

Perhaps at one point, charities did (at least unofficially) view a part of their aim as helping less well-off people buy affordable goods, but if that was the case, that line of thinking has largely changed.

I volunteer in an Oxfam bookshop, and from where I'm standing, Oxfam's sole purpose is trying to get as much money as possible...to the point where shop managers are feeling pressured to keep shops open at all times (including during staff shortages, meaning that they give up their time off to come in and cover) because they are reprimanded if the shop closes.

The two large chains I volunteered for - Save the Children and Oxfam - were both charged card fees. And fees to deposit cash into the bank.

Terry Pratchett uses boots to demonstrate an economic theory, @SimplyMaidSimplyTasty. Basically when cheap boots, with soles like cardboard cost $10, and well made leather boots cost $50, the man who can only afford the $10 boots will have worn out and replaced them 5 times before the man who can afford the $50 boots is still wearing his initial pair.

Of course buying the expensive boots makes more sense in the long term, but that is useless if you can’t afford to buy them.

@TheSunBeatsDown

I don't disagree that some charity shops can overprice to a degree, but it's worth pointing out that part of the reason for charity shop closures is because of a significantly smaller pool of volunteers. (Most charity shops have paid managers, but that's normally one or two paid staff at most - the shop I volunteer in has a paid manager (FT) and paid deputy manager (PT.) )

That was my point exactly. Well off people would buy new stuff and poorer people would buy secondhand (or third or fourth hand), just like many of us do with cars, for example.
When I was growing up, I rarely, if ever, had new clothes. Everything I wore was secondhand, either from jumble sales or handed down from friends or neighbours.

IMO (and I have volunteered at a junior managerial level in charity shops), the model of the sell a bit of everything charity shop, on a quieter high street, or in a suburb, is largely done for.

A lot of stuff- fast fashion, fast homeware, fast furniture is so cheap new anyway, and often poor quality, that it's impossible for the charity to make any money on it. Then you have the rise of Vinted and Facebook Marketplace meaning people are more likely to sell decent stuff themselves and use the charity shop as a donations bin.

At the same time all of the costs a shop faces- wage costs, on costs, disposing of waste, light, heat, water etc are all increasing.

The future will be fewer, larger shops in our of town locations with more profitable items (furniture)on display and lower costs per square metre- allowing for a bit more 'pile it high, sell it cheap'.

Conversely you will see specialist shops with decent clothes, books, furniture on well used high streets and affluent towns. These will be proved to make money and aimed at an affluent clientele.

The losers from all this will be: people in poorer areas who relied on charity shops but can't easily travel out of town; and some of the smaller charities who won't be able to afford to change as easily- smaller hospices, local homeless shelters and poverty charities etc. Already a charity near me that relied on a single shop for a lot of its funding for work with disadvantaged young people, has closed entirely not long after the shop did.

Yes, I feel fast fashion has hastened the demise of traditional charity shops.
I run a secondhand school uniform shop and it's very slim pickings, even from the nearly new stuff, because parents can buy the actually new stuff at such low prices now. My own kids never had Marks and Spencer clothes, as they were way out of my budget. They had hand knitted jumpers and I got their school trousers from Woolworth's. The prices I paid 35 years ago were much the same as today's.

Along with ridiculous prices, charity shops are also pissing me off asking for extra ‘donations’ at the till. At one of them now when I decline to add on an extra pound they ask for a reason as they ‘have to enter a reason into the system’ and apparently me saying I don’t want to isn’t a valid reason

"It's not true that people on low incomes shop in charity shops"

Yes it is. Take Age Concern, for instance. A charity specifically for supporting the elderly, many of whom are on low incomes. Do you suppose that none of those elderly people on low incomes shop there? The highly popular shelves of jigsaw puzzles and rows of cardigans beg to differ. All those elbows sharpened by decades of rummaging at jumble sales are not going to turn their noses up at articles in a charity shop.

Well, they will turn their noses up if the price is too high, obviously.

I hate to be pedantic but Age Concern is no more. It amalgamated some years ago with Help the Aged, to become Age UK.

@Seymour5 Yes that's it, thanks. They have a shop in the next town over and it was 'Age Concern' when it opened. I guess they changed the sign now, but it isn't the sort of thing you gaze at intently, is it?

The charity shop close to where I work sells second-hand records at unrealistically high prices. They sometimes ask £20+ for something you could get for half that on Ebay or other sites (often in better condition and with free postage thrown in). Or that you could buy new for not much more.

And yes I get that they are trying to maximise the money they raise, but there is such a thing as pricing yourself out of the market.

It isn’t, but as I volunteer for one of the branches (not in a shop) I tend to notice.