To think charity shops should be cheaper?

[Chocolatelover45]

The prices in my local charity shops are ridiculous (small northern town) .
E.g.
£2.50 for a rattle
£1 for a scuffed pint glass
£3.99 for a children's t shirt (George)
£1.50 for dog eared children's paperbacks
£4 for hardback puzzle book with half the puzzles already completed
£2.49 for 4 small plain Christmas baubles

Why do they charge so much? Surely they'd sell a lot more if it was cheaper? Or is there a good reason?

We have one that used to be staffed on Sundays by "Pound, love!" as he came to be known...beautiful Karen Millen tote bag..."Pound, love!"....pottery vase that I knew was worth about £50...."er..pound, love?"

Did I feel bad? I did not. It only worked on stuff that hadn't already been priced up and barcoded. I would feel like running out of the shop with the thing sometimes after giving him the pound coin.

Went into one the other day and the kids T-shirts were all $5 plus. I could have went and got brand new ones for cheaper at Kmart(australia) for $1.50. Very strange the pricing was so expensive for second hand clothes

I work in an American chain charity shop. Sales benefit Big Brothers/Big Sisters, a youth mentoring charity. Some of our items are donations, but we also buy clothes, soft goods, house wear items, and other stuff as unsorted bundles by the pound. We have professional paid and trained employees sorting items, pricing by condition, style, and brand name. We rotate goods; nothing stays on the floor for more than six weeks. Books are in good to like new condition, selling for $ 2.49-3.49. Children's books are $ 1.79. If you buy four books, you get one free.

  I price jewelry for the store.  Most items go for under $ 4.00.  Sterling silver and some designer items are priced higher.  Local eBay pickets have complained there is no profit left for them, as we have priced too fairly.
  We do have frequent sales, and 55+ persons get all items for 30% off on Tuesdays.
  it's a good place to work and shop.  We have unisex dressing rooms, lavatories for customers, and shopping carts.  Employees are not allowed to purchase items until they have been on the sales floor 48 hours, so they can't skim the good stuff.The store is well organized by type and gender of clothing, and the clothes are sorted by side.
  As proof of our value, foster moms buy carts of clothing for their current and potential wards.
 Stuff that doesn't sell is recycled or sent free to developing nations.

Just came back from our women's aid with a little haul. Barely used cath kidston bag (with what I assume is a bottle holder), new with labels cape, a new with labels and plastic protectors set of three Christmas earrings, a cup, a disney tinkerbell badge, 4 angel decorations, 2 new pairs of heart earrings with labels and plastic backs all for £9.

Bargain. It's probably the shop I buy most from too

All those defending their charity shops... I once heard on BBC Radio 2 That charity shops need only donate 7% of the profits to gain charity status. Seven bloody percent!! They get subsidised rates and rent, Get volunteers working for free. There's little wonder that the RSPCA is reportedly the second biggest landowner after COE (or was)

They are just a smokescreen for creating wealth.

I view charities like I view politicians in that they all start out with good honourable intentions...until they get a whiff of the money!!

Thanks Sunburst

It's interesting that many people who buy stuff in charity shops agree with OP, but those who volunteer or work for them disagree. If the people who spend money in them arent being listened to, how much longer will they be viable?

05contentedsoul so the RSPCA is not doing a good job that who exactly would do, if it wasn't for them?
In the other hand, yep I work for a charity... we are national and own quite a substantial amount of property... Problem is, some is listed & it takes years to raise the funds to restore it. And selling on would mean losing space we desperately need.

I’ve often picked up hardback novels in almost unread condition for a pound or two. Given how much brand new hardbacks cost that is quite good.

I once heard on BBC Radio 2 That charity shops need only donate 7% of the profits to gain charity status

There is more scrutiny on the charity sector than on any other business sector. You could easily go online to the charity commission website and trawl through accounts and annual reports to see what's being generated and where it's being spent.

When you look at the big chains of Cancer Research, Oxfam, Save the Children, BHF and the rest, once running costs are taken off, ALL Of the money goes to the charity. Where else would it go???

When you look at the big chains of Cancer Research, Oxfam, Save the Children, BHF and the rest, once running costs are taken off, ALL Of the money goes to the charity. Where else would it go???

wages. some people like managers and assistant managers get paid.

Didn't you read the bit which said "after running costs are taken off"?

Sand, I think the people agreeing with the OP are saying they don’t now shop in charity shops, but plenty of customers do , as I have mentioned (repeatedly ), I run a busy, successful charity shop with plenty of regular customers. Since I took over I have increased the ‘profit’ element of the shop I run by three times, like any business there will be ‘good’ charity shops which make money for the charity and those that don’t .... and they will be closed.

I listen to my customers all the time ... as any good retail manager would .

The prices in one of our local hospice charity shops has dropped dramatically. Last year & fir year’s previously it was £10 a top, £20 trousers etc. Now much better, got my teen daughter trousers from Zara & urban outfitters top for £7 all together. We’ll be going back!

Mmm the way I see it is it's technically giving to charity on top of buying something but yes some stuff is over priced but I've also got bargains. They check online now to see what stuff goes for. But the managers are on £20.000+ plus so I don't get it really. Also someone I know whose family member is a manager nabs all the decent stuff wen it comes in and sells it for 4x the amount on eBay etc disgusting so slot of underhand shit going on anyway.

I’m really shocked by how many people’s understanding of charity shops is different to my own.

I’ve always thought they were to make items accessible to people who have very little and in doing so raise a bit of money for a charity. When I donate clothes and items (which we do frequently) I expect that they will be going to people who couldn’t have afforded them otherwise - not sold at retail value 🤔 FFS I might as well stick them on Facebook market place.

@Ylvamoon - If you want to think you're doing a good deed by donating to the RSPCA, fine your money do as you wish.
Me, I wouldn't even spit in their collecting tin!
The joke is you only see RSPCA when there's a either a film crew or a chance of publicity. They are one of the biggest scams going in my view.
I would love Panorama or Horizon to infiltrate them and expose them as for what they really are - just a bloody big smokescreen hiding behind images of sad eyes to tug the cash from hand!

Appalling tactics

However my local BHF furniture store is just ridiculous. They advertise beds and sofas in the window that cost a similar amount brand new.

Some of the stuff they sell is brand new - all the mass produced "corona" pine for example. They sell those elephant footstools that someone started a thread about on here, once, too.

But the managers are on £20.000+ plus so I don't get it really

They're really not. £18k to £19k is the average. Perhaps a bit more for a very experienced manager, or one in central London.

And for that salary they are looking after a store open more hours than they are employed for, carry the responsibility of being a key holder and all the other things like Health and safety, safeguarding, everything else. It's not a well paid sector at all. Yes the statutory rights of pension and maternity leave. No bonus. No company car, no staff discount, subsidised gym, all the other perks which other employees might get. Oh, we get £12 towards our christmas meal, whether you're paid staff or a volunteer.

Plus if you work for a charity you constantly get the little digs about fat cats, how people should be volunteering rather than having their noses in the trough, and dealing with haggling CF customers. The manager's job came up at our shop recently, it was something like £17.5k. I thought long and hard about it as I know I would have done a cracking job. But considering what I earn at the moment freelance versus the time commitment and salary, it's just not a sensible financial decision.

Faded, shrunken Primark tops for a fiver in one of my local charity shops. Piss taking prices.

£20k plus pa ! Maybe in a very few city centre branches but most charity shops managers earn around £16k FTE. I work part time & barely earn more than NMW and like most charity shop managers do more hours than I am paid for. But I love my job, most of us aren’t in it for the salary, it’s for a genuine interest in the charity and because we enjoy retail.
Years ago I had much more senior job (still in retail) with company car etc etc but I enjoy using my skills to raise money for a cause I believe in.

There must be more Primark tops in charity shops than in Primark branches judging by the comments on this thread

Sustainable fashion seems to be on the rise. Have a nosey on Instagram. Whole community of people, sharing their love of pre loved clothes. I wonder if there's a relationship between the two? Growing up late 80s early 90s it was something to be embarrassed by. Seems to be a cultural shift. Kilo vintage events are popping up everywhere. depop and Vinted are growing massively, people can browse at leisure online. stand alone vintage shops are popping up, there's two in my very small calls itself a city but is really a town centre. Could it be they're pricing to follow suit? I'm lucky to have a few small independent charity shops that price to support low income community but the town centre ones are soo expensive for what they are.

Charity shops, especially in London, have been taking the piss with prices for years now, I guess since it became much easier to research what things may be "worth". The best charity shops have a low pricing policy which leads to a much better turnover of stock.

I also dislike the fact that some charities sift donations to local shops, extract designer/expensive stuff and send them to "boutique" versions of their shops.

I used to work in management in charity retail and can tell you the reason for these high prices:

1. gentrification: the wealthier an area gets, the higher prices of everything will become

1. This is the most important one: thrifting and second hand clothing is now fashionable.

Before, charities would sell second hand items cheap because it was mostly low-income people who shopped there so the prices had to match their income. But now that it is trendy to wear second-hand Levis and more and more middle-class people are using charity shops, the price has increased with the average salary of the shopper.

Is it fair? No, it is sad that low-income people are now finding that they often cannot even afford second-hand clothes. However, the truth is that a charity is a business first and foremost and is only interested in getting money for its cause, it has no obligation to providing cheap items for poorer people, though this is a service it has traditionally provided.

Hope this clears things up.

P.S: a lot of middle-class people also shop second hand now for environmental reasons. Basically just a heck of a lot more people are using charity shops now and are willing to pay more, so charities charge more. It's a numbers game and yes, these new higher prices are gaining charities more money in the long run (so far).