AIBU to think charity shops are there to make money, not provide cheap stuff?

[TinfoilHattie]

Cards on the table - I'm a volunteer at a charity shop. One of the large ones which has branches nationwide.

We have one regular "customer" who is nicknamed the Smiling Assassin by the volunteers because she comes in a lot (3 or 4 times a week), smiles and says hello to everyone, then spends the next 5 minutes bitching about the prices. She rarely buys anything. She is of the opinion that our shop is there to provide her with cheap stuff. Cheap as in 50p for practically everything. She is horrified when volunteers explain that we're trying to raise as much as we can for the charity, and the best way of doing that is by pricing realistically - not giving away Jaeger suits or "mother of the bride" type outfits for £1.

She was particularly horrified and commented loudly on a bracelet we have in the cabinet priced at £170 - it's antique, 18 ct gold, emerald and sapphire, and has been valued by a jeweller. We would be daft pricing it at £19.99, even if it is the most expensive item in the shop by a long way

So anyway, what do you think charity shops are there for - raising money or providing cheap things?

(Disclaimer before everyone starts about their local charity shop which prices bobbled Primark tops at £29.99 - mistakes happen, stuff slips through the net. Even if the manager has a "price to sell" policy, she/he isn't going to check each and every item and some items will be priced too high or too low by well-meaning volunteers.).

I take it you've never been into Primark or into a cheap shoe shop? The smell of chemical finishes evaporating into the air from their cheaply-produced products is overwhelming

I'd definitely agree with you there!

MerchantofVenice Literally all it achieves is a brief moment of superiority for the person identifying it

How do you know whether I feel 'superior'? It's a factual recognition of the smell of unwashed clothing, if you're correct about the non-washing business. Not everyone takes care to send clean clothes to the charity shop, unfortunately. Nothing to do with superiority. In fact if anyone comes across on this thread as superior, then it's you... you've expressed all your arguments angrily, as if holding an opinion on charity shops which is different from yours is personally offensive to you.

calculated once that in a London high street charity shop of every £1 income only 1p goes to the actual charity. The rest goes on maintaining the charity shop.

Really struggle to believe that - it's just not worth it to the charity having a shop earning so little. Yes charity shops have overheads like rent, utilities, telephone, manager's salary etc. But our small shop covers its costs and sends twice as much in profit. (So say running costs a year are £50k, we take in 150k, so £100k profit). It's also not as simple as that, as the charity's accounting methods mean that any cash deposited into the collection boxes, or handed in as a cash donation goes in its entirety to the charity rather than being counted as shop turnover. And that's without getting into the whole gift aid thing.

I doubt such a small percentage goes to the charity - it's just not worth their while. The large charities concentrate their effort for maximum reward. Or at least where they're making a profit - there's a small shop in our chain in a very small town which takes £600 on a good week. But on the flip side they only have a manager 10 hours a week and their rent is exceptionally low.

Its okay the shop being stubborn and refusing to knock prices down, but. When you don't make a sale. It's the charity's pocket you're hurting.
Well done for volunteering, BTW

I volunteered for a lovely local childrens charity shop which is ran by a local woman she refuses to charge loads for anything at most a brand new toddler outfit would go for £5 and pushchairs for about £10 she started it to help people in the community who where struggling and the money goes towards helping the homeless and with food banks. It was such a great place to work always packed with people and more donations than she knew what to do with. Its the only charity shop in the town that has many customers.

I recently saw a very worn and dirty dolls house in a shop window for £50 which seemed pretty steep for what it was. Surely if they didnt price stuff up so high they would sell more.

My old neighbours had a £300,000 house and privately educated children paid for by the income of a charity shop area manager

Bollocks.

Whoops, premature posting.

retailjobs.bhf.org.uk/vacancyView.php?requirementId=10394&source=

The going rate for a charity area manager job for one of the large chains like the vacancy above is £28 - £35k tops. That is not enough to pay the mortgage on a 300k house and for 2 or more school fees without other income.

Store managers are on a lot less, around £17k for 35 hours a week including weekends and bank holidays.

Blimey, he/she must have had a lot of time on their hands. They should have done some volunteering in a charity shop
Are there any charity shops that take volunteers as a one-off for, say, one hour, SuburbanRhonda ?

But seriously: no, Rhonda, said family member believed in spending their leisure time with their partner, given that they both work extremely hard.

Speaking as someone who grew up pretty much exclusively dressed in Charity Shop and Jumble Sale clothing I can assure charity shops do, or did, provide a valuable service to people on limited incomes. It's all well and good rebranding it as vintage, marketing it as a "find" and charging £30 for a vase, but that is essential a very limited niche market, which will dry up when vintage falls out of fashion. Meanwhile poor people lose a valuable resource, and can't complain about it without being labelled "entitled". If charity begins at home surely we should acknowledge that those buying from charity shops out of poverty and need are themselves in receipt of some charity?

Where are those of us who are poor supposed to shop, if charity shops prices are bloated and unrealistic?

What's the point of pricing worn Primark stuff at more than it costs to buy new?

Charity shops are there to serve both the charity and the local community.

There's one in our town that thinks it's shabby chic but it is in fact just shabby with chic prices.

Fine to price antique jewellery at £170 if appropriate BUT everyday stuff really needs to be priced appropriately. It amazes me just how grabby charity shops often are considering they depend almost wholey upon volunteers and the goodwill of the community to provide a whole shop full of items.

My favourite charity shop has a fast turn over because it's utterly packed with reasonably priced donated goodies.

Nearly all the tops in my local charity shop cost around £6, it's a total rip off so I just shop on eBay instead.

Also as someone mentioned, dogeared kids books for £1? Ridiculous.

Rent electricity gas water isn't that much compared to the thousands of pounds the charity shop earn each week

The best charity shop I know has a turn over of 5k per week. 1.5k on a busy day!!

Charities must have aims and objectives and must have a specific reason to be a charity. Therefore selling goods to the public at knock down prices not usually a charitable function for the vast majority of charities. It is fundraising for their stated aims and objectives. Around here they sell rubbish. Even when you take them something decent, they stick it in the loft with the bags that get left on the doorstep. We, as a family, now sell on eBay and make money. I give money to the charities I like but the charity shops around here are naff. I was bored witless sorting broken toys when I volunteered for one. The whole lot should have been binned but they insisted on me sorting through bags and bags of largely cheap, nasty, dirty, incomplete or broken toys that no-one would ever want, to find a couple of decent ones. Dreadful waste of time. Obviously I didn't bother to go back.

I visited some charity shops with the kids yesterday. Very deprived area, but we're not low income. It was fabulous.

Got puzzles, games and a designer Tshirt for DH (awkward size) all for under £10. (3 different shops).

The shops were well run, clean with friendly staff.

I'm trying to teach my children about value for money and recycling stuff. It was a real win-win.

The kids understand the games will be donated back there once we're done.

It didn't occur to me that I might be depriving the community of their chance to buy puzzles etc. I was really pleased with the goods, and the price. The fact the charity will benefit is also a plus.

I agree that charity shops are there to make money. If poorer people are helped then that's great, but not our main aim.

I volunteer in a charity shop and I don't know the financial situation of our customers. We are in a poor area, but we get a lot of people in from all over the place. We are happy if we meet our targets whoever buys the goods and most of our customers are happy with their purchases.

We price our goods reasonably well - sometimes mistakes are made but we will change them if they are pointed out to us.
The company policy for 'new' items with tags is to charge 50% of the given price. Now, we are well aware that in our shop, nobody is going to pay, for instance, £27.50p for a jacket but it may sell for a tenner.

I suspect that in the main, the customers looking to haggle are well able to afford the asking price, but just like the idea of a better bargain. We do get quite a few people with the mindset that nothing in a charity shop should cost more than say, £20. I love the bewildered looks I get when I tell them e.g. that a (genuine) Gucci bag is £30 and they say ' but it's a charity shop!'

And then there are the people who, after haggling down to £3 from £4
act as if they are doing us a favour - 'well, it's for charity'
Yes, but the charity isn't you mate.

a (genuine) Gucci bag is £30 and they say ' but it's a charity shop!'

That attitude baffles me. Yes, it's a charity shop that happened to be fortunate enough to receive an expensive donation. Therefore, the item should be priced according to its market value / price and not in accordance with the income of the local residents.

snory and notsmart, lovely posts.

For me the issue is that most charity shops price their items without taking into account the following differences between them and a regular high street store:

• no returns
• no choice in sizes
• the items were in someone's home before ending up there, no idea if they was smoke/pets etc
• the shop itself is usually not as nice as other stores (someone mentionned the smell, sorry but it is true)

a (genuine) Gucci bag is £30 and they say ' but it's a charity shop!'

I'm snorting at the idea of finding a Gucci bag in any of the charity shops I've visited in the last ten year. That stuff is syphoned off to sell separately, except in very wealthy areas (where I lived in London has this type of product). I have been looking out for a leather bag lately in charity shops- absolutely none around, only plastic/cheap/colourful ones.

I think the purpose of individual shops may be to make profits for the charity, but the wider giving of charitable status and exempting of shops from regular business rates, VAT, allowing Gift Aid which allow really quite poor turnover shops to carry on in many high streets IS precisely because of their perceived social contribution, it's called 'public benefit'. If that social contribution is considered lesser over time, then those favourable trading conditions which allow them to sell free goods using (mostly) free labour will be gone.

I love the bewildered looks I get when I tell them e.g. that a (genuine) Gucci bag is £30 and they say ' but it's a charity shop!'

I'm surprised you don't get your hand snatched off for that. Even poor people know how to trade. Some of them even more so that people who don't need the money.

Perhaps your genuine Gucci bag has seen better days. There's a YSL Mombasa clutch for £200 in a nearby charity shop. It's a fair price but no bargain.

On the whole I agree with this from Foureyes

the wider giving of charitable status and exempting of shops from regular business rates, VAT, allowing Gift Aid which allow really quite poor turnover shops to carry on in many high streets IS precisely because of their perceived social contribution, it's called 'public benefit'. If that social contribution is considered lesser over time, then those favourable trading conditions which allow them to sell free goods using (mostly) free labour will be gone.

I'm snorting at the idea of finding a Gucci bag in any of the charity shops I've visited in the last ten year

Snort away, but I donated the Gucci bag myself, along with several other items, raising a nice little amount including gift aid. (It was 15-ish years old but still in great condition, by the way).
Other staff have donated designer items none of which has been 'syphoned off'.
I'm happy to donate items to my own shop as I know they'll be put up for sale at a good price (the manager did reduce the bag by £10 as it didn't sell at first at £40, but that was at my suggestion).

I can't imagine that we would ever be given anything worth hundreds of pounds but in that event I expect the manager would look into the various selling options and probably end up auctioning it. With anything of lesser value we always opt for trying to sell in the shop first - targets to meet and all that...

Don't see many genuine Gucci or similar bags through our shop, which is in a fairly affluent area. We do get a lot of other decent brands though, like Radley. Selling price will depend on condition.

We get a lot of fakes, most of which are very easy to spot. They actually cost the charity money as it is illegal to sell counterfeit goods and they have to go in the bin.

The "siphoning off" thing confuses me too - we are in a large city where the same chain has a specialist bookshop and a music shop. If we get a musical instrument, or rare vinyl, or a first edition of a book, it makes sense to send it to them to try to sell it for the highest price. Our store stocks a lot of the more expensive jewellery (gold and platinum, or vintage constume) because we have a locking cabinet where it can be displayed safely without lightfingered people making off with half of it. It's not "siphoning off", it's maximising sales.

And the manager has made friends with someone at the local auction house, who puts the really good stuff into auction and kindly waives fees on the sale too. They recently sold an original piece of art for just over £2k.

£30 for Gucci bag in great condition even 15 years ago? And it didn't go well at £40? And you were happy for it to sell there rather than ebaying it and giving the money to a good cause? Where's your charity shop?

It's a different world now. Shops are flooded with cheap items of clothing that don't last and we've become a throw-away society, literally, as a consequence. I spent a lot of my time in my 20s hunting round jumble sales for bargains, honing my sewing skills altering and mending clothes I'd bought. When the kids were at primary school we had fabulous jumble sales and could clear £600 of a morning for the PTA with minimal effort and a lot of that stuff came back for the next jumble sale. A lot of the kids clothes came from jumble sales and charity shops when I wasn't working. It was a similar experience with charity shops on picking up bargains, but not any more. I'd never go into a charity shop looking to spend over £100 on a piece of jewellery.

These days, I'm usually on the look out for china. My old Habitat set is discontinued and every once in a while I might see a piece. Mostly, it's just an odd saucer, plate or cup. Should I own up that it's that vital last missing piece for me and offer £10 for one saucer because that's more like what it's worth?

A local shop was selling a Cath Kidston bag last week for £22.50. Yes, it's a sought-after brand, but at the end of the day, it's just someone's old, unwanted bag. The same bag will probably be there again next month, and not because someone bought it cheaply, had some fun with it and then donated it back.

With higher prices, I spend a lot less in charity shops than I ever used to.