Charity shops

[Worzilgummidge]

To think they have become a tad expensive.

In the shops where the pricing is on the lower side, there is a much greater turnover, but often I see in the shops where the clothes are overpriced that stock just doesn't sell, not many people are going to pay £8 for a used top when you go to Primark, Matalan etc and get a new top for the same price.

Yep, I won't be spending more than a fiver per item in a charity shop. My local one wants £12 for a second hand non-branded handbag... I'll go to primark then!

I started volunteering in a charity shop today!
It's not expensive at all!

And oh yeah on the stealing. Awful. We have a lady with learning difficulties who operates the till a lot. People switch tickets - take a £10 ticket off a leather jacket and switch it with a 99p one.

And swappers - quite often on a Monday morning my first job is to tidy the shop. Often I'll come across a scabby top, dress or pair of trousers on a hanger without our label. People come in wearing their own manky stuff, choose something out of the shop, change in the fitting room, put their own clothes on the hanger and walk out.

All jewellery worth more than about £3 has to be kept in a locked cabinet.

And this is all in a nice, middle class area. Some people are just total scumbags.

I agree that the pricing does seem quite random and doesn't seem to take into account what the item would have cost new (i.e. Asda George items at same price point as designer!)

My local hospice shop still has some great bargains though

There’s always someone on these threads who’s seen a secondhand Primark top selling for more than the new price.

It’s normally faded and bobbly though

I would assume, like any business, they would price their items as high as they think they can get for it. Therefore they make more money for charity. That's a good thing.
So, if you don't want to buy it, don't, they obviously feel that someone else will.

One person's overpriced is another person's bargain though.

I priced a whole bag of lovely things this morning - Reiss and Planet smart trousers went out at £5, men's Ralph Lauren and Hilfiger shirts at £5, Gap jeans for £3, kids M&S coats for £3, cashmere Jaegar jumper for £8, couple of full length wool mix winter coats for around £12.

Yes I probably could go to Primark and get a new coat for £12. But it wouldn't be as well made and wouldn't have any wool in it at all. Plus I have no desire to walk down the street and pass 6 other people wearing the same thing. Sometimes great quality second hand is better than not so great quality new.

DP went in one at the weekend and a guy was trying to bargain with the woman. He was looking at a sofa in pretty decent condition for £30 and basically asking for her to reduce the price... People are CF’s. It’s a charity shop, not Gumtree.

Anyway I agree to an extent. I have got some great bargains before now but the one local to me was selling an Ikea high chair for £15 when it’s £14 brand new...

We have a local one - a lot is tat but I do like a good rummage.

There's another one I don't fominto very often because they have a rule of only taking one item in each category (one boys' top, one men's trousers, etc). It's odd.

@supersop60 I saw a french connection dress in British heart foundation for £35 last week! The prices there are crazy.

After my wife passed away I donated most of her clothes to charity shops of charities that she supported. I was very disappointed seeing some of her lovely expensive dresses going for £3-4 at one shop whereas most of the shops knew what the value was and maximised the profit for the charity. The shops are there to maximise the money from the donations; not to sell expensive dresses to people who are just going to sell them on.

Many near us have signs saying they don’t want more donations. They have supermarket clothes at practically the same price as they would be new. They can’t shift them because they are overpriced.

I think that a lot are struggling to attract decent stock. Most people eBay anything half decent these days and only use charity shops as a dump.

I volunteered years ago and our manager was shit hot on pricing and quality control of what went out on the shop floor. Her view was if you can get it cheaper new in primark then we wouldn't be able to sell it. So we charged a bit more for books instead.

British Heart Foundation have just opened a shop near us they want a minimum of £5 for a t-shirt and boots are £15-30 a pair. They're right next to a cancer research where nothing is more than £3.

Our local Salvation Army shop is very good. The clothes are not tatty and they charge decent, but not silly prices.

The Help The Aged place a bit further down, is much more expensive.

£3.50 per second hand paperback in local oxfam. 1p plus postage Amazon.

Charity shops can only charge what people will pay otherwise they will go out of business (& charity shops that don’t make a minimum revenue will be closed down). I run a charity shop & we understand that we have a responsibility to the doner to get a fair price for the items that have kindly been given to us, and we have to balance that with what our local customers will pay. It’s not rocket science .

And different charity shops can get away with charging different amounts, I am lucky enough to have a well run, boutique style shop and people come to our shop because they know we look out for designer labels, present them well and price them fairly.

Other shops may charge a lot less but they are more like ‘jumble sales’, so yes, you can sometimes get a real bargain in those sorts of shops. In our town the paperback price varies from 3 for £1 to £2.99 - lots of customers don’t want to rummage through piles of books, they want to see them neatly presented in alphabetical order and still get a bargain at much less than a new paperback would cost. Equally some customers just want 6 random books for a couple of pounds to take on holiday.

I ‘ve been in retail all my career (not just charity retail) & I love it, I have a lot of loyal customers as they know I will always point out new stock or their favourite designs. The key is to get to know your local charity shop ... if customers point out something to me that is seriously over priced I will reduce it if I think they have a point, equally some lovely customers actually pay more sometimes if they think it is worth more to them.
And I would never sell a bobbly Primark jumper .

My daughter loves the ones where I live (rural county town) as they are still cheap. She says the ones in London are a rip off. And she really is the charity shop queen!

I think it depends where you live to some extent. I currently live in a relatively deprived town. Charity shops prices are very good here - lots of bargains, across all the shops. I get most of my clothes there and have largely furnished my house from them.

My sister lives near a big city, and we have visited the charity shops in one of the posher areas - the prices are outrageously high. They simply would not sell in my area. but I presume people are prepared to pay that or they wouldn't do it.
I do get slighty sick of 'old and tatty' being labelled as 'vintage' so they can charge more - but if people will pay the asking price then I guess it's a legitimate thing to do.

They did. Might have something to do with top retail positions and rents nearly no one else can afford? 🤔

There is one shop I go to regularly which is reasonably priced and have a high stock turnover. They generally have nice things. I bet they do well. Of course, it means I take stuff there too. Win win.

I don't bother with a lot of the others because they charge the same, or more as the item would be new. Most recently, a shop wanted £20 for a George coat which wasn't exactly new looking.

What bothers me about big charity in general is there's someone getting the monthly equivalent of £150k a year before anything else happens, before anybody needy sees any benefit of that money.

I much prefer to donate locally, help out, take food to food shelters. Smaller charities are far more efficient than bigger ones and have. And I know for a fact that the going rate of certain charity collectors is around 40%. These things really aren't in the spirit of what charity is supposed to be about.

May I ask those of you who work in charity shops, what happens to clothes you can't sell (I.e too poor quality) and how much of the stuff you are donated, you would say is unsellable? Do the clothes get shipped abroad? I've heard that other countries are overwhelmed with our unwanted clothes. Are clothes ever recycled into new fibres? I often have stuff that I think isn't quite good enough for a charity shop (worn children's school uniforms being an example) but I hate throwing them in landfill. Is there an alternative? Sorry for the thread derail!