Charity shop donations

[whitebunnies]

I went to donate some really good quality stuff earlier at Cancer Research. It was stuff I could have sold online but don’t have the time to. The manager of the shop was very rude and said we don’t accept bric a brac and was looking down on me.

It wasn’t bric a brac and she didn’t even see inside the bag. I said thanks and started to leave and then she was being really passive aggressive giving me nasty stares and saying some nonsense about they have enough donations so she held me up and then the bags split outside. I wish I just ignored her and left as the bags would not have split.

I had this hassle 10 years ago at the same branch with someone else there. Do Cancer Research not want to raise money for their charity? I won’t go in their again due to the rudeness of the manager.

I took my bags to Acorns in the end who were really nice and thankful.

I don't bother with charity shops anymore; too risky turning up and being told "No more donations, please". I now sell on ebay/Vinted or give the stuff to friends and family. Even if I only make a couple of pounds on Vinted, it's worth it because it costs me nothing to sell and ship (I reuse old carrier bags, Amazon boxes and envelopes mostly).

The trick is to avoid the big ones like cancer research who are now basically businesses. We take all ours to a local christian charity who support those who need it. They only have 3 or 4 shops and are proper old school charity shops, sell all sorts for low prices. Got a practically new Per Una winter coat for £4 and other bargains!

I think if you have a lot of items to donate it’s worth giving the shop a ring to see if they are taking donations/checking what they do/do not take.
i volunteer in a charity shop and we don’t take electrical items or household goods, although will happily tell you which local shops do take those items.
January is a tricky month for donations as we can run out of space as rag etc has not been up due to Xmas and new year bank holidays.
not that any of this means it’s okay to be rude to people making donations and I’m sorry you had an unpleasant experience.

I take things into the local Cancer Research but I am careful to ensure they are immediately saleable.

For example, every autumn I take ds's previous year's winter coat, freshly washed, and with any lose threads sewn in, and his latest outgrown pair of trainers which I will have scrubbed (tops and soles), washed the laces, sprayed the interiors with anti-bac and stuffed them to hold their shape. I know at the start of the autumn term, people will be looking for warm winter coats and decent trainers for school.

I don't take in homewares, or any adult clothes. The local manager says he sells clean, good condition children's clothes within an hour or two.

Why would the bag not have split of you'd walked off? It would've just split further up the street.
But I'm glad you've found somewhere else that's happy to take it.

It works both ways though - I'd hate to donate a really good quality item only to see it being sold for next to nothing

Charity shops are deluged with stuff every January, just after Christmas and school summer holidays are the two peak times for a massive clear out and in small shops yes we often get to the stage where we simply can't accept any more.

As for the rest of it - I often say to customers "we can't take electricals" without knowing what's in their bags, it's not an accusation or being particularly nasty/rude, it's a statement of fact which I say to everyone. Obviously no excuse for rudeness but the "looking down on me" and "being passive aggressive" is very subjective and other people may not have perceived things the same way.

Top tip if you're worried about bags splitting - take your donation in a sturdy supermarket bag for life and either ask for your bag back, or for the shop to swap it for another one. We always have loads under the counter and will happily replace the one you're handing in.

Seriously?????

I would complain to head office if they’ve been so rude it’s made you feel uncomfortable. I complained not long ago about how I was treated in a charity shop - the managers of charity shops are paid not volunteers.

Why the surprise? People donate to raise money for a cause they are passionate about. Of course you don’t want your donated seasalt dress sold for a pound.

She couldn't see in your bag so she said they don't accept bric-a-brac in case it was. The she followed up with explaining that they aren't taking donations at the moment because she didn't want you to think it was just your stuff they couldn't take. Perhaps they had a sign in the window that you missed, ours often just has a small handwritten note that's easy to miss.

Or maybe she really was very rude, in which case complain.

The big Ikea blue bags are great for not splitting and they will let you swap for one of theirs or empty yours iut and give them back.

I'd expect the shop to strike a balance between raising money and ensuring the product is accessible to the main customer base to optimise sales. If that means that, in the target market of my local area, the value of a second hand out of season Seasalt dress is £1, then that's what it should sell for. Especially if it has signs of wear/age/odd style etc.

I picked up a Boden top for £3.50 in my local charity shop recently and that was fair and reasonable considering the condition it was in (faded). Like many customers, I don't shop at overpriced charity shops when I could get it less elsewhere, so it's lose-lose for them really.

I'm very against free charity shop donations being overcharged and I'm surprised anyone is for it.

If a charity shop is offhand or ungrateful then I don't take them anything again. But nearly all are nice. I've found. You just had a bad experience.

I shop a lot in charity shops and find that often paid staff are not happy there. They feel that they are overworked and don’t see new donations coming in as bonus, they see it as an extra work they have to
do. I also noticed if you often shop there , they start resenting to sell to you. My take on it - wrong people are hired for the job often , hence , awful customer service.

The big charity shops are now all businesses with employed staff so no, they aren't going to be getting down on their hands and knees to thank people for donations, it means nothing to them.

January is a really busy time for charity shops - most of the ones near me were not accepting donations the other day. I have took most of the stuff I had to the clothing bank at the tip, and have stashed a bag of the best stuff away to donate in a few weeks time.

@whitebunnies did you say "it's not bric-a-brac it's books/clothes/toys (or whatever)"?
What was it you were donating?

Isn't life too short to be this sensitive?

My boot is filling up with donations that can't go anywhere at the moment. I will take the winter coats up to village, walking so this will be a ruck sack job, if I can donate great, will probably have a browse and refill bag (I have previous for this) if not I will carry them back, put it all back in the boot and try again.

I will not be offended during any part of this process.

Why? No it doesn't work both ways. If they sold everything more cheaply they could accept more stuff and raise the same money for charity whilst providing things cheap. If you feel that way then sell it on Vinted.

@Mareleine the purpose of the charity shop is to raise money for the cause. It’s not about overcharging but setting a fair price for the item.

The thing is, most donated stuff is terrible. If what is on display is the best, what the hell is the rest of it like!

However, there are ways of managing donations. A hospice shop near me has a board outside very politely listing things they are accepting. However another shop has just a picture of a giant hand outside saying “Stop! No donations.” I went in anyway and said I had some very good quality branded clothes. The woman was very brusque and said they had to sell everything out in the shop before accepting anything else. They had stuff that had been in there years!

Our local recycling centre has big metal bins for charity shops that you can pop your donations into. Far easier than bringing it into the shop itself. It all goes to a main distribution centre and is sorted and sent out

This idea that we'd make so much more money selling everything super cheap might work for some places but it's all about maximising income. A customer who comes in looking for a dress and picks one up for £1 isn't going to spend the other £9 she had mentally put aside for a dress on 9 other items. She's going to think "yay! bargain" and leave the shop. So you need another 9 people through the door each finding something they want to buy to get the same money in the till that you would have got from selling the dress at £10. That might work in a busy city centre shop but if you're in a quieter area then it's just not the right approach.

We have no manager or paid member of staff in our store which is part of a charity chain everyone will have heard of. We have total flexibility over pricing, and every week we get an email breaking down sales by category so if suddenly we're seeing a slump in women's trousers or men's jumpers we can reduce the space given to them in the shop, or run a promo, or decrease prices or whatever. These decisions are being made constantly and tweaked. We also have a system that when an item goes out on the shop floor we write a date three weeks hence on the label and we will regularly go round checking all labels (not just clothes, other stuff too) and remove stuff which has been out three weeks or more. Items are not hanging around for years.

The other issue to the pile it high, sell it cheap, high volume model is that you need loads of people to make that happen - people to sort donations, price them, steam the clothes, keep the shelves filled, operate the till. So you need multiple people in the shop at all times to manage that and most shops are struggling to hit the bare minimum of 2 appropriate adults in hte shop at any one time for safe working - our shop cannot open on a monday morning as there aren't volunteers.

Sorry you had that experience. It’s frustrating when you’re trying to help and get treated badly. It’s good you found a better place for your donations at Acorns, though. Maybe giving Cancer Research feedback could help improve things in the future.

@ShanghaiDiva and @CharityShopChic But that's your points of view as a charity shop worker.

I'm surprised as a donator/shopper that anyone donating something would actually care if something was priced keenly. When I donate something, I just want it to go to a new home and maybe help someone who wouldn't have afforded it otherwise. Charities are so bloated with what they pay their CEOs and they generally do so little good in the world due to ineffectiveness and wasted money that part of their remit should be to benefit the local area with affordable goods. But from supply and demand, something is only worth what someone is willing to pay, no matter what you price it at, and in areas with high footfall and lots of donations available, shifting stock faster can raise more money than selling a handful of things at a higher price.

And while you personally might work hard to set fair prices (I'm not sure from your posts whether you're defensive of overcharging because you do it or whether you just can't conceive of anyone overcharging), you must have heard of charity shops putting things out at silly prices, there have been plenty of threads on here about the problem. You must know that what goes on in one isn't reflective of what goes on in all of them.

Anyway I'm not engaging on this any further because we're getting into derail territory.

Funnily enough, OP, it was Cancer Research who I had an issue with a few years back with a rude manager.