Do you think charity shops have lost their minds with overpricing items?

[luluxxx]

Been into my local charity shop (not a big city ,just a local area and it’s in a pretty working class area )
Used to be able to get some bargains but today they have two new rails “new with tags “ and a “top brands “ rail.
On the new with tags was a skirt from select (£7 ) the skirt itself was only £14.99
A Primark pair of beach trousers (£6 ) tags were £10
Then on the top brand rail was a clearly used M&S jumper for £8 and a shein dress for £6
Are people really going to pay this ?

Our local one decorated a “Vintage Area” with lots of over-priced olden clothes. Thinking it would attract young, hip folks. When I lived in central London & Paris, in my 20s I was all over this type of thing.

But there simply isn’t this demographic, where I live now. It’s mums like me looking for nice basics, a good wool coat or something quality for a wedding or party. The jazzy area was removed within 6 months…

I agree with you here, You could buy a nice enough new 'wedding esque' dress for much less than that in a high street shop. Ridiculous IMO.

I can understand a bride wanting a budget wedding dress, but there are some on vinted for a fraction of that. I am not saying Shein/Temu etc are great by any stretch but if someone wanted a nice enough wedding dress, something you only wear once I would imagine they'd go somewhere like that (and possibly pay for some alterations) rather than pay £400 from a charity shop.

Ours aren’t bad and I buy loads of stuff but 2 important factors, one is that we live in a largely wealthy area so lots of good brands knocking about, and two that we’re off shore so vinted (either buying or selling) is a complicated faff when it’s even possible, and lots of people don’t need to bother with selling things for peanuts, because of point 1.

I got a lovely Boden sun dress last week for £10, have had a Volcom parka that was I think £15 and was still available online new for £160, a Ganni dress for less than a tenner and so on. All worn but good condition. New with tags stuff is obviously more but not ridiculously so, I saw a dress last week, can’t remember the brand but I think it was £30 in the charity shop and still had the £265 tag on it. Sadly wasn’t my style!

Years ago they wanted 3 quid for a child's tshirt. Asda had 2 pack for 5 quid which we bought instead

Turnover is what makes it work surely.
Stock is free
Staffing is mostly free.
Do they get discounted rents still?

Always look at what the CEO of the charity earns.

A quick and easy sale means a repeat visitor.

Do you think a CEO of a charity should earn less than say CEO of John Lewis or M&S.

Yes we've hashed through all this before but here goes again....

Mistakes get made. Most charity shops have 1 paid member of staff employed for 35-40 hours a week, the shop is open 60 hours a week. The last shop I volunteered in had no paid staff at all. People do weird stuff or don't recognise that Papaya is actually Matalan, or that Aquascutum is designer level.

No charity shop will ever have a policy of pricing something higher than the original selling price, totally unhinged to do so. But again, mistakes or not recognising brands.

"Poor people" are not the charity. BHF is there to raise money for heart research. Cancer research for cancer research. RSPCA for animals. And so on. It is not in their remit to provide stuff for "poor people" and besides, how do you guarantee it's a "poor person" who buys it and not a very well-heeled person looking for a bargain? Given that there is enough clothing on hte planet to clothe the next 6 generations we should ALL be buying second hand.

Quantity of donations has not slowed, quality has. Not just Vinted, but the quality of new clothing has declined drastically in the last 20 or 30 years and your second hand shite from Shein or Temu is worth nothing.

Clothing is not all charity shops sell. The last place I worked we took more on toys and games and bric a brac.

I don't recognise extortionate pricing in my local shops. Cancer research can be a bit much sometimes but others still offer great deals.

I love charity shops! I’m still overjoyed by finding a Le Creuset enamel grill pan in volcanic orange in our local Oxfam last week. It was £9.99 instead of £165. I think it was priced to sell as it was slightly grubby but it has cleaned up brilliantly. Another children’s hospice shop gives my DD2(10) first dibs on any Lego that is donated.

These threads always end up in a bunfight with everyone insisting that they’re right!

We had a charity shop locally where the books were way overpriced and they wouldn’t accept any more book donations as they “had too many already.”

They ended up folding… now there’s another charity shop in that location.

I give all my donations to the local church charity shop, which uses the proceeds to support its free breakfasts for the homeless and other charitable activities. It doesn’t ask high prices though, as its other missions are to reduce waste and to provide a service to the local community. I’ll have to tell them they’re doing it wrong.

No, I’m not. I guess it was twofold, with much more emphasis on making money now. For example Oxfam was always about supplying affordable clothing and about making money.

Jumble sales were always about making money, usually organised by clubs and teams.

I agree that they are very over priced, or some of them around here are.

I am now very selective about the charity shops I buy from.

Of course I want the charity to make money, but when our local charity shop is selling a Primark child's well worn tee - shirt for £2.50 and a women's well worn bobbly berghaus fleece for £20 then something has gone wrong somewhere.

I prefer to buy on vinted these days even with their crazy sizing, fees and postage it is frequently less than the charity shop would be.

I think charity shops have had their day and only sell the tat, nobody else wants ( because they are selling on online sites and making money that's going in their own pocket and why not?) at highly inflated prices.

I bought a silk wedding dress for £300 from Oxfam year ago and it was a bargain, had never been worn as it was a shop model.

If you live in a well off area I imagine the donations are better (cost more to buy new and don't need the money so happy to donate) than in less well off areas where people are selling what will sell on vinted.

I don't mind paying up to a quarter/third of original value of something that is nice and decent quality, bearing in mind that the shop will have sold at 50% off in its own sale. What I do mind is supermarket/Primark/shein stuff being priced at almost it's original value. Or prams/other baby items priced way higher than more desirable ones are on market place that they've had outside every day

Yes, they need to make the charity money, of course they do. If you have a nice mid century table and chairs or big name designer coat, compare it to sold prices on eBay etc,list on eBay if they want and use those big items to make ££. But most high street second hand clothing, books and toys, no, let people have a relative bargain with items the charity isn't paying for in the first place. People like a bargain and they will come back to shops with fast turnover.

A lot of charity shops are fussy about accepting donations before they even know what it is you have to donate, which suggests they have too much stuff that isn't shifting. I would donate rather than list on Facebook for free if I didn't think I'd get interrogated.

I took dc to choose puzzles from the local charity shops- we ended up buying them from the Works as they were cheaper (and obvs, new).

@LostInTheDream if you saw some of the truly revolting times that get donated, you would probably ask a few questions before accepting a donation.
items with holes, filthy dirty, broken, sinking of smoke. There’s a reason we wear gloves when sorting donations.

I have to balance my previous comment by stating that we do get some fabulous donations where people have washed and ironed all the clothes!
we do ask questions as there are some items we don’t take in our shop: no electrical items as we don’t have anyone to test them, nothing with a potential safety risk eg car seat and items which are not in season (Xmas decs in the summer) as we have very limited storage space.
i am polite when refusing donations, explain why and redirect to other charities in the town which I know take the items.

How is it better value to pay £8 in Primark than to pay £6 in the charity shop if both are new with tags?

Well it’s not, obviously. But that’s not what she said.

In answer to your question OP; Yes, people really are going to pay this.
I can't say about other areas, but where I am all the charity shops, in towns and cities, have been separating clothing that has come in with either ' new tags attached' or else gently used higher end clothing labels, and selling them on a separate rack with higher price tags. They've been doing this for a few years now.
The great majority of clothes are still much less, although a bit higher of course, than they were a few years ago.
Other gently used, higher quality items, find their way to a separate display area, or in to a silent auction, so the highest bidder wins the item.
Many of these charity shops, thanks once again to SM, are not just there for those who can't afford to buy new, they have been inundated by hoards of people rocking up in their new cars and remarking to their friends on SM and in the shop itself, what a bargain they have just found!
Those running the shops have realised that they would be fools not to elevate the prices on new with tags and higher-end clothing and other item labels.
The shop has bills to pay to you know, and they would soon run out of nice things to sell, if priced inexpensively,
Also take into consideration that it's often down to supply and demand.
Over the past few years of rising prices and COL, people are hanging on to their clothing where once they had donated and bought more.
Also less people are buying and then donating nicer clothing, instead giving it to friends/family not as choosy as they once were.
So any new items of higher value are snapped up by the charity shops and separated to be sold for more.
The only place, in my area, that doesn't do this to such an extent, is the church-run sale that exists to fund events to raise money for the church and their many out-reach programmes.
It's now my preferred place to support, as so far, it serves mostly those who support the church.

I picked up a t shirt last year for my son. Got to the till and it was £6. I said no thanks. Silly prices now, i only buy books Lol

People need to realise that the cost of clothing has gone up. If items are new with tags, then why shouldn’t they charge 50 or 75% of the retail value? You are still getting them at a discount compared to retail.

Ours isn't too bad,it is well run though, I've got nice tops for about 3£ talking sea salt,next,m and s, I went from an 18 to an 8 in 6 months so I really relied on my local charity shop,!! It does stink though,a weird musty smell,😂a good wash is always needed, I don't know why,the stuff put out is always clean looking and nice quality.

It is what she said. OP is talking about new with tags items in the charity shop 🤷🏻‍♀️

Yes I do agree!

If you’d donated your wedding dress (that you originally paid £1000+ for) and saw it in the charity shop window for £50, wouldn’t you feel insulted? Would you ever donate to them again, because they obviously don’t know the value of items?

charity shops are criticised for overpricing and selling things too cheap because the team are evidently ignorant of the true value of goods. They can’t win.