To think charity shops refusal to reduce is sometimes unreasonable.

[roseforarose]

I realise that some charity shops aren't allowed to but i think some shops must lose quite a bit of business by their outright refusal to accept a "knock down", usually saying "we aren't allowed, it's a set price" sort of thing.

I wonder if that's always true, because recently i asked if they'd take a bit less on some walking boots which i thought were a bit dear, got told "no we can't" then i noticed the brand new price underneath theirs and it was only about £2 less brand new. When i pointed it out she said "well if that's the case I will reduce them for you" . So she did have the power to reduce after all.
So when they say they can't reduce, maybe in a lot of shops they can if they want to?

kali just because you haven't, so what? i'm always seeing it, perhaps it depends on the area you live in. I know many round my way who depend completely on clothes from charity shops, they often can't afford to pay what's asked. Personally i would never look down on someone who asked for something a bit cheaper. We don't know their circumstances. I certainly don't think they're "mean" or "penny pinching".

Completely unreasonable to haggle in a charity shop. Shame on you. And I do mean shame

Trying to summon up some fucks... and some shame... nope, not happening!

The stuff is donated, doesn't cost the shop anything. Things are often overpriced by a quick websearch. They are businesses so surely a higher turnover is preferable to things staying on the shelf. Also a lot of the stock from the mainstream charity shops will go in the wheeliebin after a certain time

Op i have lots of them by me and never in all the years ( and it's many) that i've gone in charity shops have i ever seen people haggling
Many shops actually have signs up saying "no haggling" (usually the overpriced ones), so I wonder why they'd put them up if it never happened.

Just saying i've never seen it in any compared to you seeing nearly everytime you go in!

I know some will go to eBay for pricing, but these are usually the same charities that have lots of highly paid staff up top, which does annoy me, so I avoid if possible. I don't get the correlation between selfless CEO of charity and 6 figure wage.
I think car boot sales / jumble sales are better if you want to barter. Where some shops are this is the price that's it, I know some charities, like the hospital charity shop, all books are a cheap fixed price. So it is about raising money in a fair manner.
I know that not all people who use charity shops are poor, I think some shops cotton on to this, especially with vintage clothing. It might smart a bit selling a dress for £5 that is bought by a vintage shop and sold for £50.
So conflicting views in my own mind. Saying that if you are going to a shop because you are low in cash, most towns/cities have furniture and clothes shops aimed at that market. You just need to ask about or search the net.

Oh it's one of those!

Op - AIBU
Posters - YABU
Op - no I'm not , you're all wrong and I'm right and you should all agree with me.

Yes YABVU and a cheapskate. Insulting the pp that have answered your AIBU is not helping your case.

If you think something has genuinely been mispriced, I think it's fine to query the price. I think that's what happened with the boots.

But actually haggling in a charity shop would be another thing all together. I normally go the other way and tell them to keep the change.

One year I had the delight of the bric a brac stall at the school fair, nothing was priced, we were told to try and get rid of as much as possible.
I remember some ornaments that everyone was bypassing was spotted by a lad who liked whatever creature they were. He had 20p, I thought 20p over them gathering dust for all eternity at school was a good bargain. They were pretty grim though.
I guess my feelings about these ornaments came back round to bite me when DD proudly bought home this porcelain figure, probably 70's or 80's that doesn't go with anything, but is nestled in with other ornaments since she prides it so much. That person had pretty much said 'have it' to her.

Just to add, I select charities based on research, but also people will say the prices in 'X' charity shop are crazy, you could buy 'X' piece of furniture new for £5 more.

I always wondered, these places that pay per so many KG for clothes, what happens to them? Do they go to charity shops? I should do a clear out as got so much that just isn't my style anymore. I'd rather donate to a person that size who is struggling, people do say on SM, I'm looking for size 'X' clothes if possible.

If the boots were used and needed a further reduction then how did you see the previous price sticker? Slightly missing the point maybe.

If you want to haggle then do it, they can only say yes/no. I don't see the issue.

I give a lot of things to charity shops new and with the price labels still on. I would like to think they'd try make a bigger profit margin on the item before they went to the lowest price.

A lot of the charity shops on my High St have a note stuck on the window telling customers not to asks for discounts as their profits are for charity and discounts won't be given. It's fair enough, but as pps have mentioned, a lot of things are very over-priced and considering most people (including me) go in them because they can't necessarily afford to pay full price for stuff, it does put a lot of potential customers off. For example, I went in in a Help the Aged shop yesterday and they had priced a toy Poundland lorry at £2. Same toy was in Poundland new for half the price. Another shop prices bashed-up toy cars for a pound each, when you can pay £1 or less for new ones in Tesco.

It's a charity shop
If you don't support that particular charity, it may be better not to go in?
I've gone in charity shops, had a nose - maybe not bought anything, but still put a pound in their collection pot. I'm not loaded, but will spare a bit of cash if I support the charity.
I wouldn't go in and haggle over any item I wanted to buy. It's for charity, I support or I don't.

It's a charity shop - trying to raise funds for charity.
if you want a bargain go to Poundland or wherever has a sale on.

Well to sell something at a cheaper price is better than not selling it at all. Its a bit daft for them to price themselves out of a sale.
Especially, when these charities are dependent on these sales.

I help out at a charity sale where our items are priced on the spot at point of sale. If someone is bolshy about the price we tend to put the price up 😂. Fortunately we have more people give MORE than we ask than people who complain we are too expensive. Our prices are really low and as we are more of a car boot sale type of charity rather than a shop our overheads are lower.

It's actually quite tricky to price second hand things. I've had amazing things not sell and crap things sell for way more than we've asked for. I sold a mirror with a big chip out of it the other day . Generally people are very happy to be buying something AND giving to charity.

The stuff is donated, doesn't cost the shop anything. Things are often overpriced by a quick websearch. They are businesses so surely a higher turnover is preferable to things staying on the shelf. Also a lot of the stock from the mainstream charity shops will go in the wheeliebin after a certain time

Every part of this statement is incorrect based on my experience.

• Stock costs money. They may need drivers to collect it from houses or collection points, they will pay to provide bags and sacks for people to use, many charities have collection bins which cost and require emptying, promotional costs also need to be factored in. It also costs in terms of time. Time taken to sort the good from the bad, time taken to size and tag the item, clothing gets steamed to ensure it looks it's best. There's a chain of actions that get taken before this item sees the shop floor
• Generally managers are experienced in pricing. Yes we've all seen the occasional item massively over priced and not sell but a good manager will recognise this and learn from it.
• high turnover is important. However as a donator I'd be offended if the good stuff I donate goes for sale for very little. I donate not only to the shops I support but to the ones of those where I know they will price items accordingly.
• where items don't sell the larger charity shops will generally have some form of stock rotation. Old stock will go to another store or a clearance store. Trust me if you over price all the time moving loads of stuff is tiresome so you learn. Charities get loads of stuff dumped on them that quite frankly is clearly shite but some people are lazy, charity wheelie bins get filled with stained Tupperware, broken stuff and random junk. Anything charities can do to reduce waste they do because waste collection costs money.

whisky while you raise some valid points ime (community service at HTA) everything had a date on it and would be skipped after few weeks I think it was. Clothes sold to the ragman.
The manager was on a salary based on a retail managers salary

OP do you go into other shops and try to haggle? Here's a tip - haggling in a charity shop makes you look like a bellend.

The charity shop i sometimes work in has stock rotation between branches, people who do the pricing are realistic with it and anything broken/not suitable/not sold etc goes to the rag man who pays them to take it away.

I still think there appears to be a general perception on here that some charity shop volunteers and paid staff simply don't know what they'ew doing. According to posters they are overpricing stock by a massive amount, stock is sitting on shelves for months, nobody is buying anything because it's expensive, then it's all going in the skip.

Do posters really think people who run charity shops are that stupid? That they're not capable of looking at sales figures and seeing what's selling, what's not and having the common sense to mark down stuff which isn't selling? That they're happy in a shop with no customers, no sales and a stock room they can't get into because it's chockablock with donations?

Also it all comes down to your definition of "realistic pricing" - you are going to be able to get more for items in area where people have more disposable income. The two stores in the chain I work which consistently have the highest sales figures are in very well to do areas. Shop managers know their customers, know what they can sell things for and yes, will price something as high as they can and still sell it as their aim is making money for the charity! Yes that doesn't always filter down to each and every volunteer and mistakes can be made, but it's not "policy".

wouldnt more people come in because they know there will be new stuff from one week to the next?

Most of the leading charity shops do cycle stock on a fortnightly basis..
Anything that hasn't sold goes on the sale table. There is rarely anything left after that - our shop has high footfall and will generally have at least half a dozen customers browsing at any one time and often a lot more.
People try to haggle every day so we have to stick to one rule.
No reductions till the stock has been on the shelf for a week, or if there is a fault that has been overlooked by the person doing the pricing.
Letting customers set their own prices would result in chaos and the takings would drop. The loss of the odd sale to a customer who'd like to pay less than the ticket price would have minimal impact on the overall
income of the shop. Somebody will come in 15 minutes later and be happy to pay the ticket price. I work there and I watch it happen.

Anyone heard the phrase " she could peel an orange in her pocket"

They rotate the stuff regularly.

By all means, those of you who need to haggle, try it in other shops (where the profits are going into shareholders' pockets rather than a charity) - I'm sure if you ask if they can take something off the price in a supermarket they will be glad to help

Or 'she squeaks when she walks'