Charity shops have lost the plot

Fair enough! I know it's not the fault of the staff, that's why I'm not salty with them, I just politely say no, (occasionally I say yes!)

Like in Savers, I ALWAYS get asked 'do you want any perfume or batteries today? Ariana Grande, Rihanna, Britney, Beyonce perfume, no? Are you sure??? Maybe for a gift for someone, or a little treat for yourself? No batteries? No? Maybe for the kids toys and Christmas?' Yada yada.... Like a real load of word salad every time I go in....... I do a massive inward sigh every time , but still smile and just say 'no thank you....'It's every time, and it honestly puts me off going in a bit. THEN you have the 'do you want to donate 25p to charity' when you go to pay for your stuff... Every time.

It's not just them either, loads of other shops do it too! (Trying to sell you extra goods at the checkout, and the begging for extra money!) Very annoying, but I do know it's not the fault of the staff. They are told to do it. I never go into WH Smiths these days, but when I used to go in more, I ALWAYS got asked (at the checkout,) if I wanted to buy a Terry's Chocolate Orange! Always nearly out of date, but I don't think it was ever reduced!

Wait you can try on the clothes? Near me we haven’t had that ability since 2020, so it makes it much less easier to determine if something is suitable.

How bizarre. Of course "I don't want to" is a valid reason!

Anyway if it ever happens to me I'll tell them to type in "because I am a tight-fisted wotsit". Maybe that will be allowed.

40%. Of all charities income on average comes from inheritances. It's a national statistic from the registrar of wills office. Was at a fascinating talk by someone who worked there. They handle all wills and inform the charities that a gift is due to them.
Now that income requires no shops, no tin rattling. Just a deposit to be processed and a thank you message to be sent to the executors.

If they asked me for a reason, I say I’m not made of money. If they didn’t accept I would get a refund!

I have no idea how WH Smiths are still just about in business. They’ve always sold a very narrow range of goods at ridiculous prices that most other shops can beat no problem. And that’s back in the high street days before they tried to specialise in last minute rush places like railway stations and airports.

Also agree that they love a high pressure upsell at the till. “Would you for some reason just like to buy a full price family bar of Dairy Milk chocolate, even though we’ve just charged you £5 for a couple of biros?”, Erm, no. No I wouldn’t.

@SomethingFun

Well, what people think is a fair price will vary. The particular shop I volunteer in obviously think it's a fair price.

I don't think it's an unfair price, although if it were me making decisions, I'd perhaps charge £5 for a book that was originally £20. A 75% discount is a good deal, IMO. But I wouldn't say £6 is unreasonable.

There’s a conflict at the core of what charity shops are for:

They know their cause eg heart research is the only thing they’re bothered about.

We know that the environmental work that’s inescapable in their sector, and profitable to them, is more important.

We also know that providing goods for the low income is a deeply worthwhile social cause.

Most of us pick one of these purposes to root for.

I know how only 30 percent of the funds raised gets to the charity’s cause, so you can probably guess I’m keen to support the other functions which are 100 per cent doable.

Exactly.

What a horrible comment.
Everyone knows that charity shops sell supposedly cheaper clothes so if someone needs to do that if they are struggling or simply don't want to waste money or shop sustainably then that is their perogative

I don’t know which charity you are referring to, but in BHF, in 24/25 around 72p in the £1 raised went to fund work around heart disease. Over £180 million raised last year, as a PP said, the bulk is from legacies, only a tiny amount of profit (comparatively) from retail.

https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/where-your-money-goes

I never go into WH Smiths these days, but when I used to go in more, I ALWAYS got asked (at the checkout,) if I wanted to buy a Terry's Chocolate Orange! Always nearly out of date, but I don't think it was ever reduced! @BatchCookBabe

One of the reasons that WH Smiths went downhill and lost customers was them pestering people at the till. Nobody wants or likes to be pestered!

If charity shops are starting to ask for more money at the till (haven't come across this myself yet), it will backfire in the long term. It makes people uncomfortable.

The fact is more charity shops are closing. The ones that will survive will be the ones which price items fairly for the place they are in. At the end of the day, customers are the ones who will decide whether they are prepared to pay the price.

Charity shops are there to raise money. But, losing sight of the customers in their area will mean that their business suffers. Whether you want to admit it or not - customers in charity shops are looking for a BARGAIN.

I have to agree your posts have been unpleasant.

Charity shops were historically there to sell on gifted, second hand clothes at a cheaper price and were used by many people who couldn’t afford or easily afford to buy new clothes. I was totally skint as a student and if it wasn’t for charity shops I’d have been walking around in a bin bag.

To then attack their core customer base and make out they are greedy is absolutely bizarre.

I definitely donate and give away more stuff than I buy, but my local charity shop is piled high with tat. I go there regularly to scour and hardly ever find things I want to buy.

I also donate a lot too, and never see anything I've donated on display. It's like they're siphoning off the good stuff and leaving the dregs for us.

I do mostly get my second hand stuff from Vinted as I can easily search for what I want in the size I want.

I'm happy to pay a fair price in a charity shop but no idea how people find anything decent.

I’m not sure that’s right. It’s £4.4bn total which is nowhere close to 40%. Stats I’m finding say 30% of fundraised income or 14% total income for ( and this is the important bit) the top 1000 legacy receiving charities. Legacy income is v unevenly distributed. Age related health charities and animal charities get a big chunk of it.

I can only quote the official statistics from the office that processes all our wills. Very interesting conference all round actually.

I agree it's lopsided. Husbands aunt left her house, it's contents and all her savings and investments to cancer research. As executors they were a very pushy charity maybe because of the size of her estate.

@OvernightBloats

It's certainly true that more charity shops are closing, and I don't disagree that some price more than is perhaps reasonable. At the same time, I think some people have price expectations that are perhaps nowadays unreasonably low.

It wouldn't surprise me if pricing factored into the reason that charity shops are closing, but it's also not the sole reason. One issue is that there are significantly less volunteers than before. I think volunteering figures declined with Covid and they haven't built back up again.

I price for an independent charity shop . I agree that the big ones have lost the plot .
I price to sell quickly , our shop is always full of customers because they can get a real bargain .

I often go into our competitors and am amazed by the ridiculous prices ! Go to independents if you have them .

My Godmother left chunks of her estate to various charities. The executors (her solicitors) were complaining to me about just how pushy the charities were being, trying to demand their share before anyone else got theirs and calling every single week to demand updates.

It was quite a complex will with various percentages and shares going to family depending on closeness and to charities, and the biggest part of it was the house which of course needed to be sold. The charities were trying to demand their full share before the house was even sold; however they were insisting that this was calculated on the basis of the initial asking price rather than the actual selling price!

I was already annoyed with the charities as despite my Godmother giving generously on Direct Debit, they were constantly calling & writing asking for more at every turn.

Agree. I price the books where I volunteer and will put £5/£6 on a brand new hardback and it will invariably sell the same day.

Selling the house took time for us as you say cancer research hounded us for the money. The estate agent and the solicitors basically told us to tell them to fuck off. We'd already cleared the house of everything, boxed up for auction. We'd also cleaned the house from top to bottom. All I took away from the house was a sweet photograph from a box of pictures she'd never put in albums.

It was ridiculous everything had to be auctioned. Was very distressing for the family. Luckily the charity didn't put a limit on funeral costs so she had a lovely coffin, flowers, full church service followed by crematorium.

Cancer research will never see a penny from the family.

If you want to donate to a charity in your will, always give a specific cash donation like £1000 or whatever you want to give.

Don't give a % of the estate value.

It may well be that there's cash in the bank and they can be paid off early if it's a small cash sum but otherwise you'll be hassled for their %.

That's exactly what we’ve done. No percentages, a flat sum. Not nearly so messy.

@Allergictoironing - stories like this are exactly why dh and I will not be leaving any bequests to charity in our wills - it is by no means the first time we have heard about charities being so pushy and aggressive about bequests.

We give regularly to a variety of charities, and donate to charity shops, so I think we are doing our share.