to think charity shops are too expensive and have lost the plot

[Hermi0ne]

Its just silly at this point. Was browsing through one of my local ones and they want 5 quid for a bobbly primark shirt! I can get that new for less! I thought, originally, charity shops wanted to also help poor people being able to afford clothes, those days seem long gone. It just really annoys me.

This may out me (because ive told everyone!)

I went in my local charity shop a couple of weeks ago, i bought DS2 a nice gray Next top, i bought some black Primark trousers for work and 2 paperback books. When i got to the till the lady looks at all my stuff and said "just call it a pound"

A fucking quid for all that!!

Went in British Heart Foundation a week later and DS1 saw a transformers book he wanted. £4. I felt well and truly ripped off, i kept telling people "that would be 25p in my local charity shop!!"

I was outraged

Yes indeed, LittleMissStubborn -- that pricing suggestion makes sense.

A large US charity chain, Goodwill, has standard prices for every category of item. You can pick up clothes originally from Saks 5th Avenue and Walmart-- cashmere and polyester all for the same price. My local one has people waiting outside for it to open most days.

Goodwill exists to provide real, paid employment for hard-to-employ individuals who want to work and need some experience, so there are no volunteers. Retail provides a good start. They also offer other employment-related services.

I thought charity shops were exempt from business rates? I agree though with the overpricing observation....£12 for a next top? Really? Furniture is ridiculously priced too. But i have a favourite furniture store - i often find 50's and 60's furniture at great prices....i even get a loyal customer discount!

There is a huge difference between a well managed charity shop and a poorly run one (I know, I volunteer in one ). We believe we price fairly but occasionally something will always get priced incorrectly, volunteers can't know every single designer make and designs go in and out of fashion very quickly. Equally, it is easy to say 'look something up on google and sell it the appropriate price' but you might not have internet access in the store, or the time, volunteers to do it and there just might not be the market for a 'valuable' antique in the town you are based in. Some charities sent items to Head Office for ebay sales but the administration/transport costs all add up and are very time consuming. There are very strict rules about not taking items home to ebay yourself or sell direct to a dealer etc.

Since volunteering in a charity shop I have realised that there is so much more involved than bunging out a few dresses on rails .

But I still believe there are lots and lots of bargains to be had ............. I never buy clothes full price and I can also pick up lots of decent bric a brac, books etc - just going out for a full day's charity shop browsing with my mother .

THere is a price difference between 2 shops where I live - British Heart Foundation being much dearer than the local RSPCA shop.

I've found oxfam and bhf to be the most expensive. Me and dp went into a bhf furniture one today and there were items.you couldn't even buy in store they had signs with the eBay number on them so you could bid for them. I get they have to make money but they don't have to do it by taking the piss.

Agree with what others have said that local charities tend to be dirt cheap and as a result are often very very busy.

I think Bloody Mary Portas has a lot to answer to.

I bought 3 decent costume jewellery type necklaces today for £4.50, from Sally Army shop. I thought it was a bargain, anyway. One of them is worth at least that much in scrap metal I suspect.

Barnardos is the local 'expensive' one. An indie purely local charity chain that supports a school & town in Africa is the cheapest one. I wish my town wasn't mostly charity shops. :(

I'd been finding the same last year and the very begining of this year.

The charity shops I usually went to started looking rather empty,customer wise.Thankfuly they seem to have noticed that the lack of customers has coincided with the prices having got so high.

They all seem to have lowered they're prices again.Which has been brilliant for me.

I agree BHF are pretty awful and are the worst for asking double the price that a primark shirt costed when new. There Is a BHF furniture shop near me which sells furniture and the have awful, tatty, dog eared stained things you'd have a job shifting on free cycle for £80 a pop for an armchair.

There is an excellent Oxfam bookshop near me and Cancer UK are brilliant. I find the trick is to look in 'naice' areas as you get better stuff there.

Isn't it because of ebay/gumtree/fb selling pages?

There's less stuff going to charity shops and it's of a lower quality.

So the prices have to go up even though the stuff is worse.

The best I saw was in the local red cross shop. It was a small, crumbling old box frame (about 20cm square) with inside a (literally) mouldy, moth-eaten assemblage of paper, cloth and wood that bore a very remote resemblance to the figure of a peasant woman. When I picked it up, it half fell apart in my hands. There was a label stuck on the back saying 'handmade in Germany in 1910'. It can't have been very good even in 1910, but it was truly revolting 100 years down the line. It was on sale for 12 quid. I loved the idea that the person doing the pricing had thought 'hmm, this must be an antique, we must therefore try to sell it for lots of money', without realising that some things can be old, but still belong in the bin!

I had a very interesting conversation today with the manageress of my local Salvation Army Charity shop, the shop is next door to a BHF But the SA shop is a lot cheaper.

I said jokingly that her prices could drive the BHF out of business.

She said although the BHF is dearer, for a lot of people its the charity itself that is the driving force behind the prices, a lot of people are affected by heart disease and cancer and it's those charities that can charge higher prices as although many customer want cheap clothes and shoes, many people will pay higher prices as they feel they are supporting the charity rather then just getting a cheap pair of shoes. which is also the reason why people donate more and volunteer more.

She know her own charity is not as 'popular' or has the same type of emotional pull, many people see it as a religious organisation and are not comfortable with that aspect, or have not had to deal with homelessness, addictions or hunger which is a large part of the charities work.

She also said ( as someone on here said) BHF etc have price lists that they have to adhere to, where she can set her own prices and only her and her assistant are allowed to price stock. She also sets up her own promotions (like her back to school 99p rail)

I absolutely agree. People go to charity shops for a bargain. What's the point in paying nearly full price for a paperback you might as well buy from Amazons or Smiths. And the clothes are a joke. I don't even bother looking at them. Don't want to pay £5 for somebody's BHS or George's cast offs.

They've lost the plot.

I wouldn't donate any good items to a shop that sold it as cheap as chips.

I think the point of the higher price charity shops is people are more willing to donate higher value items to them if they believe they get the best price possible to support the charity work they fund.

I think there are still real bargains to be found but you do have to be careful.

One shop like I say does regularly charge substantially lower than most others and it is this one I tend to buy from.

Another shop in a different part of the town where I live sells children's clothes two for a £1 - I bought an amazing short sleeved dead smart shirt for my 10 year old ds from Gap for only 50 pence simply incredible! The other item was a fantastic quality t shirt again by a good brand.

It is the usual expression - it does pay to shop around.

I've had some amazing things via Freegle.
A few years ago someone offered a set of 6 Edwardian dining chairs, including 2 carvers - she'd inherited some better ones! I had to recover the seat pads, but they're gorgeous! Someone offered oddments of a 1970's dinner service the same as my sis's; she was over the moon to fill in a few gaps caused by breakages over the years.
I also found an Edwardian display cabinet and a 1930s oak tea trolley. Back in the days of FC, I got a long cream coat which had a Harrods label - wore it to a wedding, felt like the queen!
The stuff I've given away has been great, too - single beds, chairs, bookshelves, and a kitchen - someone had our old kitchen units to fit into their garage when we did a refit. Like someone upthread, I've made a few friends, too.
Hmm, must push off and list some stuff I have lurking!

Don't know if anyone is any where near but last week I managed to get lots of really nice clothes for myself from a charity shop in Weymouth.

Plymouth Town Center has been really good in the past as well,they seem to have lots of charity shops there,lots of them had sales on(which is not something I'd heard of charity shops doing before)and one of the charity shops there had big signs up saying everything £1,that charity shop had that offer on all the time apparently.

I've found the cat protection league,sue Ryder and the cca are all really good in our area,I've found some lovely bits for all 7 of us and the prices are usually really fair in those one's.

I have to travel a bit but love our local charity shops. I can get to 2 towns that have Frock Exchanges and I know were they send their unsold items... last week Per Una silk skirt £4, a slub silk top with the £75 tag still on it £4, a County Collection dress, as new, £8, a cashmere twinset that could match the skirt, £10.

There are week when I get nothing, other weeks I strike lucky. As I need to be smartly dressed but am just setting up my own business I find them utterly invaluable. I now have a not quite capsule wardrobe of posh frocks etc that has cost me less than £50. I can now buy comfortable, smart, shoes

Oh, I also have a Boden dress for £1, a Jasper Conran for £5 and a lovely East wrap dress for £8 - but may need to lose another pound or 3 before they fit well, so I get diet motivation too

Also mil. Is 65 she woukdn't have clue how to check out antiques etc on the Internet.

Really? After all, those of us now in our 60s are the generation that invented the internet!

That said, there's something very wrong with some of the national pricing structures in charity shops. Round here the silly pricing culprits are Oxfam (who have always been expensive) and the British Red Cross.

The local animal sanctuary have the best charity shop for miles around. Because their prices are sensible and they have staff who know the difference between a Primark pullover and a Clarice Clift tea-set, they have a good turnover in the shop as well as using better outlets to sell genuinely valuable donations.

I don't know where some of you shop - our charity shops are just full of really good bargains, nicely displayed stuff, reasonably priced books. Yesterday I bought a fab jacket (£1.95) a Per Una shirt - this season's (£4) a brand new hard back I had been looking for (£2) - today I got a very nice top (£1), hair straighteners (£3 - unused in box), couple of paperbacks (£1 each). I couldn't be happier .

I must live in the same town as OurBlanche .

Yes, OP they are ridiculously expensive. Yes they have lost the plot.

Lower prices mean higher turn around so they would make more money.

Most charities have lost the plot these days.

Hard selling and constantly badgering you is not the way.

I feel for those that gift aid since a friend of mine gift aided but give too much stuff and then had a demand from the tax people for £20. Does the gov really look that closely!

JuJu - that is clearly just not true. If charity shops weren't making money they would just shut their doors - some charity shops do close down in towns where they are not profitable or if their rent goes up to an unsustainable level. The charity I volunteer for has recently closed a couple of shops - but opened more in different areas.

But the vast majority of charity shops DO make money - they just wouldn't stay open if they didn't. . Charites have to publish their accounts annually stating how much the contribution from the retail division is - the Trustees would not (in the vast majority of charities) allow shops to continue trading if they do not return a profit.

They are in my area. Ridiculously expensive, many have closed actually.