to think £5 is too expensive for a charity shop purse.

[highho1]

It is a wallet style plastic one which to be new but no tags. Not a designer brand

Charity shops are charging ridiculous amounts these days!!! I've stopped going into them!

(I still donate)

I agree that charity shop prices are ridiculous. Paperback prices £3.99 for a paperback costing about the same elsewhere!

I donate too. I also buy loads from this particular shop.

Of course you do. Many people donate to avoid having to go to the tip, or fill their bins up.
That's why all CSs need a skip that is regularly emptied.

I frequently donate used clothes to charity. I used to sell on ebay, but I've got fed up with people wanting things for 99p, then complaining about postage charges (I always check the weight first and round to the nearest 50p to recoup the packaging costs). I'd rather the money went to the charity shop.

I think charity shops will suffer now there are the cash for clothes things - I personally won't use them as my clothes are really lightweight (I wear a lot of outdoor sports type clothing) and I can't be bothered for 50p. I imagine the charity shops will have to put prices up.

Well actually I always sort though stuff. Junk goes to tip or is recycled. Only decent stuff goes to charity shop.

Yes, you are right, LEM, but it's a competitive market now. Surely they will adjust?

YY, I have sometimes paid over the odds for something in a charity shop and consigned it to donation in my head>

YANBU

I mostly go into charity shops for books and I pointed out in our local British Heart Foundation shop that a cookery book they were selling for 7 pound was only a fiver, brand new, in Asda. They wouldn't budge on the price and the assistant was quite rude. This was before Christmas and the book is still there now.

The back of the shop is piled floor to ceiling with stock that they can't put out because there's no room. There's no room because their stock isn't selling. It's not selling because its overpriced.

It will probably close soon, I doubt it's even covering costs.

I volunteer in a charity shop and I get tired of these posts, they appear periodically on MN. I think things vary so much depending on shop/charity shop manager. Ours makes a lot of money (best performer of the 19 shops the charity has), partly because we don't sell things for ridiculously cheap prices. I think it's about knowing your market though, which our manager does extremely well.

For example, as our shop is in a 'naice' area, we don't sell any supermarket/primark clothes, instead they get shipped over to the shops in poorer areas where they can sell things for £1.50-2.00. We sell 'better' brands, not designer but MandS, Next, Hobbs, Fat Face, White Stuff, Boden etc - tops usually £3.50-£7.50, coats £8.00-12.00 etc. People occasionally say how expensive it is but our takings are still going up. The function is to make money for the charity, not to provide people with cheap clothing?! Like anything, if they are pricing too high, people won't buy and consequently the prices will come down....you wouldn't go into Marks and Spencers and tell them their prices are too high would you?

highho, it is worth asking your charity shop if they take rags. Most have bags which go straight to the rag man, they get about £8.00 for a large bag. We get lots of people who donate bags of old worn out childrens clothes/work clothes etc, and tell us when they hand them in they're for the rags. We appreciate it

I guess the problem is the person pricing often doen't realise the true value of something. Our area is quite deprived too.

You can get some brilliant bargain though in some of the London shops. This morning popped into one in Brook Green bought suede knee high LK Bennett boots, £26 reduced from £40 would be £200 new

I find charity shops vary a lot, some kind of dear & some bargain hunter's paradise. Shop around.

I'm not sure how all charity shops work but I know one of my local ones sells brand new things as well as donated things (a friend helped out in the shop for a while)

She was absolutely flabbergasted that they got brand new kids chairs and stool sets in but because they weren't tagged properly they couldn't sell them and the manager had to literally take an axe to them! Such a waste