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.

@muddyford so what do you do if the people at the tip are also rude and obnoxious? Refuse to leave them there?
Some people just don't have good people skills. You wanted to get rid of your planters - who cares if the bloke was rude? Just laugh it off in cases like that.

@Needmorelego , I'd have said 'I'll know next time' and not taken offence, but that's me.

I avoid some charity shops because their attitude is so vile, but the Sue Rider in our area is great, they are always happy to take stuff and their shop is always so full of people shopping it's hard to get past them to the back to drop the donations off. Unsurprisingly, the charity shops who are so very particular about what they take and have so little stock turnover are largely empty of shoppers.

This.

Turnover means people believe they'll find new stuff and they return frequently to shop. Merch sitting on the rails for months isn't making money for the charity and it is actively putting off foot traffic.

But you aren't going to get anything for it at all if you don't try to sell it yourself, so it will go to landfill or remain as clutter in your house.

'used not to.'

Weekly stock cull is usual practice.

It's nothing to do with it, likely they were overwhelmed with donations/short on space and staff/ volunteer shortages/ sickness/ holiday etc

I pack everything up and get Anglo Doorstep Collections to pick it up. You book your slot, they tell you when they’re arriving and it all goes. No faffing with what the charity shop will or won’t take.

'didn't use to' is correct English. Also the Pedants' Corner is this way ➡.

Raise the bar

I’m with a pp in that charity shops have probably had their day. If people have anything halfway decent they’re selling it online; anything halfway bad there are those sacks that come and you just leave them filled outside - job done.

Bric-a-brac is unfashionable (unless it’s a rare sought-after item or antique) and no one wants books or cds (vinyl in charity shops is mostly not what collectors hope to find).

Furthermore there’s been the rise of cheap clothes in the last 20-30 years, and now there’s Shien et al (shien is now the sixth biggest retailer in Britain ☹️ ) so the quality of second-hand clothes has plummeted. Plus if you can get a top for £2 new why pay £5 for the same in a charity shop?

I do wonder, however, what rich people (eg celebrities or Oligarchs) do with their surplus stuff. It must be somewhere!

Agree - it's the only way to deal with the quantity of new stuff coming through the door. We have a three-week policy on items (everything, not just clothes). If it's not sold after three weeks then it either goes in the bin, gets shipped off to another branch of the same chain in another part of the city, ragged, or sold to somewhere like world of books or music magpie. Sometimes we'll 50% it and give it another few days to try to shift it. Most of the big chains will have some sort of system for rotating stock whether it be coloured stickers or week numbers or what we do - just write the date on the tag when the item needs to be culled by .

Unless you memorise all of the stock in a shop you can't possibly know how long stuff stays around for. The main problem is that cost of getting rid off stock which hasn't sold - we pay for commercial waste disposal, it costs to hire a van/taxi to take stock to another store, it takes time to package stuff up for sending off to World of Books.

I also disagree that bric a brac is "unfashionable". Depends what you define as bric a brac - we mean anything decorative / craft related. So all knitting wool, vases, china/glass goes through our till as bric a brac. Yes we get all the twee little crinoline lady ornaments which your granny had, but also much more modern stuff. And there is a HUGE market for retro 60s and 70s homewear.

@MaturingCheeseball no one wants books? What utter rubbish. New paperbacks cost £10. We sell loads of books.

I love browsing bric-a-brac and buy lots of books.

if you can get a top for £2 new why pay £5 for the same in a charity shop?

i would say that 90% of the young people i know would rather buy 2nd hand than from Temu, Shein or even H&M for the most part.

My DDs and their friends do car boot sales, Vinted, 2nd hand shops and all that. They also have regular "clothes swap" parties, where they just bring the things they don't wear any more, and anyone who wants them can take them.

A friend of mine buys a jigsaw every week from her local charity shop - does it and takes it back the next week and chooses a different one. My mum often buys a book, reads it then takes it back (and occasionally has been stuck with it because 2nd hand books seem to be a thing nobody wants).

ETA: i love to buy 2nd had books, and the shops that just bung them on the shelves without rhyme or reason are my favourites, because you never know what you will find. One of the best books i ever read was just sitting there on a shelf, the only one face out so i saw it right away. (Attention all Shipping by Charlie Connolley - try it. It is FANTASTIC)

I often buy books from the charity shop to take on holiday, I'd rather pick up a couple of book for 1.50 each in a charity shop than 8 or 9 each in waterstones.

I don't buy anything from shein and neither does teen DD. Like @Brefugee says she goes to boot fairs, or gets from.Vinted, de pop or charity shops. A £5 top in a charity shop might be a lot better quality than shein.

Sometimes I sell or give things away on local FB groups, but it takes time and effort to sort out, message people, label things, arrange to collect , wait in to find they got held up and can no longer make it etc etc. If I haven't got time, I take stuff to a charity shop. We have lots of different charity shops, so there is usually one accepting donations at any given time. I ask first but it's not a personal insult if they are not taking in new stock that week.
A friend used to have appointments at the Royal Free hospital and often checked the charity shops in Hampstead when she visited, there was lots of expensive or designer brands and at that point (it was 20 years ago, before the advent of Shein) the clothes in the charity shop were more than she paid for new stuff.

Interesting experience this morning at my local Sue Ryder. Bought a few bits and bobs including a brand new body spray/ perfume from M and S, presumably an unwanted Christmas gift. The woman serving scanned it and shouted through to her colleague in the back "your perfume's just gone ' whilst totally ignoring me throughout the whole transaction, clearly aggrieved as there was no humour attached to it. I paid, said 'you're welcome ' and left. Bizarre.

What's weird is that so many people seem to see charity shops as a service, rather than as... well... a shop!

I've just returned from a fruitless drive to 2 charity shops with good quality items only to be told they are not accepting donations this afternoon. I'm inclined not to bother.

@Tel12 if they can't take them, they can't take them.
"Quality items" has nothing to do with it.

That’s really thoughtful of you to store the coat and clean so thoroughly. I do obviously only donate clean items but I am definitely not that thorough and I donate coats in the spring due to lack of storage.

One might be offended if charity shop workers rooted through the bag of donations and turned their nose up, and made rude comments at the items inside. Simply not being able to accept donations at any given moment isn't a personal insult, it's more likely about lack of storage.... for anything regardless of quality.

@Fizbosshoes exactly!
But it always seems to be that mumsnetters feel sooo insulted because they only ever donate "quality" and how dare the charities turn them away 😂