To be annoyed the charity shop would not accept my donation

[Bearbehind]

I've had a bit of a clear out and had some stuff to take the the charity shop.

I checked on line it was open today then took the stuff into town.

You can't park right outside so I carried the stuff, in the snow, to the shop only to see a sign which said they no longer open on Sundays.

Oh well, I thought but, all the lights were on and I could see at least 3 people inside so I knocked the door and someone opened it.

He said they were shut and I explained I didn't want to come in, just drop these donations off.

He outright refused to accept them, because they were shut, and I'd have to go to another branch of theirs that was open today or come back tomorrow.

AIBU to think that if someone has made the effort to bring a donation to a charity shop and if there's are people there, they should accept them.

I'll be buggered if I'm taking stuff to them again.

Anybody feeling a bit jaded about donating to charity shops should have a read of this - www.oxfam.org.uk/donate/donate-goods/what-happens-to-your-donation/wastesaver

Basically anything that is clothing or textiles will be used by Oxfam and avoid landfill. Shame it is not better known about.

I have some stuff I am about to donate to Oxfam via one of their car park collection bins. If I have anything that is less saleable then I will mark it for Wastesave in a separate bag.

In the late 80s and early 90s many of the vintage clothing stores bought their stock directly from Wastesaver.

Nobody who is associated with charity shops/volunteering has said they get annoyed at general donations nor have they accused people of generally using them as dumping grounds.

Huh? Which thread are you reading?

This thread has just managed to do a HUGE amount of harm to the donation process. What a bunch of absolute fools. There will be dozens and dozens of people reading this who will never donate again.

(Naturally, the 'volunteers' here won't care, because it would all have been junk anyway. And they only want nice things from nice people.)

Ohhereweare, I wonder if the person you spoke to was fully truthful? In my charity shop we don’t put much primark or very cheap when new stuff out, because it really doesn’t sell in our shop which is in a wealthy area. Ppl won’t pay £2 for a teeshirt they can buy new for £3. Yet it would take up the space of something more upmarket which we can sell for a higher price.

This is good business sense.

However the primark stuff does not go to rags. It goes to our shops in other areas and sell for a lower price.

Selling stuff without the correct labels is a real grey area. What if a child choked on a button that was on unsafe clothes? Can charity shops really risk the law suit?

Try donating a sofa without the correct labels and you will get told where to go. Car boot sales are different where its buyer beware.

Don’t talk rubbish, Stoic. Charity shops are not that selective! But they exist to make money. They cannot sell things ppl won’t buy.

tiktok Your right volunteers dont usually know where 'rejected' clothes go. Its usually to a store in another area but all you see is bagged stuff going out to the 'bins'. They dont see it being transported elsewhere.

Julie I think you are exaggerating with the unsafe button thing. We check buttons are secure.

However hand knitted children’s clothes don’t sell well. Even lovely ones. Ppl don’t want them.

WOW! lots of ignorant comments especially from ShowerGel9. He probably does feel important, yes he is working for free, yes he probably has a badge. You try working in a charity shop and then come back and post comments on a subject I doubt you know anything about!

Maybe the unsafe button was a bad example. I was trying to say that without the correct safety label the charity shop is liable for any problems. Should they be taking the risk? And we now live in a very litigious society.

Charity shops are not that selective! But they exist to make money. They cannot sell things ppl won’t buy.

No kidding? If they exist to make money, some people commenting on this thread need to STFU and should be nowhere near any kind of business. Even (or especially) a charitable one.

Talk about shooting yourselves in the foot.

Ok Julie :)

You are right about making sure of safety. We cannot sell electrical items of any sort as the law says they have to be PET tested and it’s only our big branches that do that. But unlabelled clothing is ok. Toys are checked by a trained processor.

tiktok The shop I am in is right beside a different charity shop. Our head office says no to certain items, on health and safety grounds. But we know next door 's head office allows those items. Which is why I said its a grey area. Personally I just do what I am told lol.

Turn some items away but in same sentence say next door will take them. :)

I think they were being unreasonable jobsworths.

I am in the US. There are two charity shops near me, a Salvation Army shop and a Goodwill. You can leave stuff outside the SA any time after closing - they take it all in in the morning. Goodwill is open for donations during their opening hours, which are 9am to 9pm daily. They take everything and put it on a conveyor belt. They hand you a dated tax receipt and thank you for donating. You estimate the value of your own items, based on a handy list of brands and items available on their website. For instance, a Gap child's sweatshirt, tax value $5.00. For every individual claiming $$ thousands in donations every year there are hundreds who shove the receipt into their pocket and forget all about it.

Goodwill prices everything except luxury stuff at $6.99 and down. I bought a vintage red Coach bag there for $19.99 for DD3's last birthday, and a Land's End down-filled black coat for myself for $9.99 last winter. I saw Target surplus buggies there today in their boxes for $59.99, which is about half what they were in Target. I bought a mid size painted bookshelf there last summer for $2.99. The place is always heaving. They move their merchandise. If they can't sell stuff it is baled and sold on in bulk for rags or some other purpose.

Would you buy an adult colouring book with half the pages done? What about a mug with a big chip out of it? Or would you buy a half-used toiletry set? No? Then don't give it to us and think you're Lady Bountiful
All of that sort of stuff sells for 50 cents in my local Goodwill. I have seen small girls beaming with delight when their mother or gran forks over 50 cents for a half used cheap perfume or body lotion or similar. One man's trash is another man's treasure after all.

I donated a few old perfumes today. Sarah Jessica Parker 'Lovely', 'Sunflowers' and 'Pleasures' by Elizabeth Arden. Someone will buy them even though they were all about 3/4 full and not in their original boxes. They will probably be priced at $1.50 each.

You don't have to waste time pricing everything carefully. Price it all to move. It will be bought.

Some really strange ideas about how to run a charity shop.

Every charity has different rules.

If one charity is paying 1000.00 per month for rent, then the type of goods they need to sell to recoup that cost (let alone make a profit) might be very different than the shop next door that only pays 600.00 in rent (because it got a better deal years prior, or is smaller etc).

One charity might have a larger number of people cable of PAT testing electrical gear, whilst another doesn't so refuses to take electrical items etc.

Sometimes it's simply down to some charities needing to make more money in general because they have greater overheads as a company whilst the smaller charity can afford to take 'lesser' items.

Julie8008 yes selling goods without the correct labels can be a grey area but there are sometimes ways round it, DH had three large bags of stuffed toys donated, they were lovely toys but the donator had cut all the labels off, I am sure they had a good reason but by cutting the labels off they had cut off the CE mark which meant that DH couldn't put them out as Toys, so he put them in a dump bin with a 50p sign on and sold them as dog toys (he allows dogs in the shop) he did tell all the buyers that they had no CE mark on BTW just so people knew - he sold out within the hour, he said the sight of a huge bullmastiff walking proudly out of the shop with a tiny yellow ducky in his mouth will stay with him for a long time.

the sight of a huge bullmastif walking proudly out of the shop with a tiny yellow ducky in his mouth will stay with him for a long time.

Perfect.

YABU to refuse to respect the sign on the door saying no.

the assumption that everyone who donates to charity shops is a skank

Nobody's said that. You're off being professionally offended again.

Hi, Bearbehind. I think you were wrong to knock on the door of a closed shop and badly wrong to get so peeved about not being able to donate your stuff easily that you considered just throwing it away instead when it was all in good condition. However, it was equally wrong of me to get so angry with you and be rude, so I apologise for that .

Imo, if you know you are doing the right thing in trying to find an alternative to chucking perfectly useable stuff away, you should not just chuck it away in landfill if there are other options open to you. I get that volunteers in charity shops are not always all sweetness and light, nor are they all particularly good at what they do, but they are only human, like you and me. I have found that some shops are run better than others, some are more well manned than others, some will normally be OK but their volunteers occasionally get compassion fatigue (usually because there are not enough of them to help and they are knackered and beginning to remember how they are not being paid for this!). I tolerate some volunteers ocasionally being a bit off with me because, tbh, I would not be willing to volunteer to do their role, it looks far too much like thankless hard work, whereas my donations represent considerably less work and I even occasionally get thanks for it (even though it's more of a convenience to me to have somewhere to take things that I do not have to make the effort to sell). If I would not be willing to do someone else's work, I do not think it right to be too judgemental towards the people who have colunteered to do it. I just accept they may be having a bad day, or are not the best at interaction!

Anyway, I hope you are also feeling more calm this morning and apologies for winding you up further when you were already cross.

In fact, looking back, I was very cross!

On the washing instructions things - quite a lot of people seem to cut labels out of garments for some reason, not just the ones at the neck but the ones with instructions too. My very large chain (which I suspect is the same one as Julie works at) will happily sell clothing which has no washing instructions. We'll sell hand knits, foreign brands, handmade dresses.

One thing we're not allowed to sell without labels is soft toys - they have to have the CE mark for safety. Things bought outside the EU do not have this mark and cannot legally be sold - even if it's a brand new still in the box Mickey Mouse from Florida. We're also not allowed to sell counterfeit anything and we do get quite a lot of fake bags and hoodies.

Tatty - offering to wash and iron is a lovely idea but might not be the best way to help. We don't wash anything in our shop, it gets steamed to remove creases and that's it. Most people buying clothing or linen take it straight home and pop it through the washing machine anyway.

mathanxiety

Do you often think that when businesses are closed that they should open on the customers request? Otherwise they are unreasonable jobsworths?

It is very kind of people to volunteer in charity shops, but doing so does not entitle them to speak on behalf of the charity!
Making up your own rules about what is and is not wanted, and telling people that their items are not good enough and will be thrown away, is unlikely to he the policy of any of these charities, and they should be referring you to the website for specific guidance if there is any.
Staff working in other high street shops would not make up rules and lecture the public's on web forums about what they have decided is acceptable in general in that type of store - they would be told to stop very quickly if they did.
Being a volunteer does not entitle you to turn away what is the livelihood of this type of shop on behalf of charities, on the web!

I'd urge anyone thinking of giving up donating to charity shops not to take any notice of the random rules and views of a few individuals on here. Hopefully most shops are run by pleasant people who follow the charity process for ensuring items raise money in the most efficient way. A lot of money is raised for worthy causes through this approach, and has been for years, its unlikely a few individuals on this thread know better.

the charity shops in my village only take donations when they can cope with them. So sometimes you get turned away as they have too much. They go through the donations with you to make sure you aren't just giving them stuff they have to dispose of themselves at a cost to them and they also sort out a gift aid form.
They had a massive problem with them being treated as a dump

This thread hasn't put me off donating because I know that not all volunteers are bad, the vast majority are lovely people. I stopped working in a public facing role because it wore me down so know the grind of feeling hatred towards people sometimes but because I felt like that I chose a non direct public facing role instead. Sounds like some should do the same!

I donated a lovely, fairly expensive M&S coat last year which had hardly been worn. It had been a gift from an ex for Christmas, I wore it a few times in January/February then by the time winter came around at the end of the year I had finally got away from my abusive nasty ex and didn't want to wear anything he gave me. I could have easily sold that coat for a nice little sum but instead it was important to me that I donated it Mind instead for specific reasons. So I won't stop donating but some people in these shops need to maybe not work in a shop, voluntarily or otherwise.