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?

It does vary quite a lot.
Where I am, there are about 7 charity shops in my local High Street.
One in particular (yes, I'm looking at you BHF) is really expensive. It is the quietest shop. So, pricing their things for sale high, means the till is opened less often, not that they get more money.
At the other extreme there is one shop that sells everything for £1. It is very busy. They must take a lot more money each day than the BHF shop. As all the goods are donated - the 'cheap' charity shop is therefore making a lot more for the charity.
All the others are in between.
I shop a lot in Charity shops. When things are priced low, I buy quite a lot. When they are priced higher, I only buy things I 'need'. If others are like me, then, once again, by pricing things higher, they get not money.

I know it's not for charity but if you are looking for cheap baby/child bits then have a look at Mum2Mum markets. They seem to be all over the UK. People sell their baby/kids stuff when they don't need it anymore. I got some babygrows for 20p each!

I live in quite an affluent town, although there are lots of charity shops. The chain ones tend to be more expensive than the local hospice.

I agree to some extent. The items are donated for free, the staff work for free .. however some charity shops do struggle a lot with the rent from the council, which ties their hands a little regarding how much they need to make. Add to that, a lot of them run vans etc for pick ups and deliveries.

We have a local charity chain that has 4 shops, and a distribution warehouse which you can walk round. We live right by the warehouse, and things are lots cheaper if you go there, as it saves them taking things to their shops.

You can get paperbacks at 6 for £1 in there - and lots of the time the books can be brand new or barely touched! So my books cost me about £2 a year these days! But if you go into the shops in the town centre, they're 2 for £1. Big difference, really.

Some of them are so misguided too! Our local charity shop has a vintage section....fair enough...they should make more from collectables...BUT they seem to overprice things badly.

A set of 1960s kitchen storage canisters which routinely fetch about 15 quid on Ebay (see this particular set often) was priced at 40 pounds!

Nope! All someone in the shop needs to do is look at the going prices on Ebay for things and they'd sell more.

I donate things to charity shops both to help a charity raise money and to enable those who can't afford to buy new to benefit from the stuff we didn't use /lightly used. So I don't expect or even want the stuff to be sold for anything near the original retail price.

I have stopped donating to some local charity shops because they were charging excessively. Instead I often now sell the clothes etc on local selling sites and then make a donation to a charity of my choice.

DingDongSchadenfreudeOnHigh on the Wirral

Within about a 5 mile radius there must be at least 50 charity shops. Most weeks I pick up bargains from brands like Reiss, Whistles, Jigsaw, LK Bennett, Hobbs etc. I send parcels of work clothes every month down to my daughter who works in London. I even got a pair of brand new authentic Jimmy Choo wedge sandals (receipt was still in the dust bag) for £40 last month. Ive put them away for next summer. All that was wrong with them is that there was an indentation on the inner sole that you cant even see when wearing.

I have pretty much stopped using charity shops these days because they all are set out like boutiques and all sell the same sort of things - womens clothes, accessories and cards/gift wrap. the prices have gone through the roof for supermarket brands and lower end high street ... they seem to constantly refuse donations ... no children's clothes, no toys (even if CE marked), no donations whatsoever because we have too much stock (yet clothes are on rails for weeks). I think many have lost their way

YADNBU

As at least one other poster has mentioned, charity shop culture used to be as much about offering those on low incomes affordably priced used goods (acknowledging the fact that many people who struggle financially don't qualify for charity aid). But in recent years that ethos has gone out of the window with many charity shops, and it couldn't have happened at a worse time for the victims of Universal Credit and the bedroom tax and other austerity cuts and slashed public services, eg. libraries and children's centres.

I often go hunting for bric a brac, books, clothes, soft furnishings, etc. and am often delighted with what I find. However, as I'm on a low income I can't afford some of the unfairly inflated prices and it's common knowledge that many people with higher incomes don't need to use charity shops to clothe themselves or their children, or to make reading affordable for them, or decorate their homes with ornaments, or to plug gaps in kitchenware. I frequently notice poor quality stock that doesn't get shifted, unless the stock itself is 'recycled' (ie. moved around from one shop to another within the same charity). It doesn't make sense to structure pricing in a way that barely competes with retail outlets selling new items, but people like Mary Portas have done very well for themselves by encouraging charity shops to charge higher prices at the expense of both alienating and disenfranchising shoppers and depriving charities of higher revenue. It's cynical and unethical, in my opinion.

Anyway, haven't had time to read the full thread so not sure if anyone has mentioned Charity Shop Sue, but I love her! Here's a link:

I don't mind paying £3 to £5 for a second-hand Monsoon or Boden top, but second-hand Primark should be no more than £1. I've stopped going in charity shops now, they are mostly full of things people can't sell at carboot sales.

I go to a local hospice charity shop. and it's a lovely place,with super reasonable prices, nothing is expensive in there,and its all good quality items.

I used to go to lots of other charity shops in a local town, but not any more, as places such as The Heart Foundation, and Oxfam etc, were starting to get very overly expensive.

I agree OP. I can't bear waste and love a good charity shop but it's hard not to just go to Next for a jumper that costs £12 when the bobbly faded ones on the charity shop cost £8!

A few months ago I was in one and there was a hatched Hatchimal (no egg) - for £20!

I agree with you. When the prices are pretty close to the price of new items (and we have one shop here that prices at the same as new) I don't buy there.

I might as well buy new things with a warranty on them if I am paying that price anyway.

Op shops are also meant to be affordable for those who don't have much money and some of them just aren't.

As another poster pointed out, years ago primark, home bargains, b&m etc didn't exist, the culture of high street retailers selling brand new items at ridiculously low cost was not known so charity shops were the answer to providing low income households with goods. Realistically a charity shop is never going to compete with primark on price, people on a low income can more likely afford the £1.80 tshirt in primark over the offer of second hand in a charity shop.

In recent years the view has also changed. To some people it's a game trying to find a great buy in a charity shop. The ethos is no longer about selling household items at rock bottom prices to raise more money AND providing affordable goods to the less fortunate in society. Charity shops don't care who buys the items, they don't care if the items are going to someone who desperately needs it, they just want the money and if that comes from the bargain hunter in their brand new 4x4 then so be it.

PeninsulaPanic I came on here specifically to say, blame Mary Portas! I have shopped in charity shops for 30 years, and MIL helps runs a shop for a local charity. We both noticed a difference almost over night after her programmes came out in the mid 2000s. Prices went way up, but also the levels of professionalism in the shops in terms of displays and quality control.

However, I can't complain too much, I shop in them because I like to ethically shop and I like vintage, not out of need for cheap items. I can understand the frustration if you shop out of need not want.

I've bought some incredible items over the years. Favourite bargains are handbags: a butter soft Mulberry handbag for £30 in great condition (would have cost over £2k originally), a similarly gorgeous Jimmy Choo handbag for £7.99! Have recently bought some Boden long suede boots, clearly never worn, for £20 and some fabulous Russell and Bromley boots for £10.

I agree, OP, and whilst I understand that their main aim is to make money for their charity, it comes across as very grabby to charge what they do, for what is often, other people's cast offs.

I've also regularly seen things that are either more expensive than what you can buy new, or just a few £s cheaper, which then isn't generally worth it.

I have a friend who relied on shops like this when furnishing her new rental, and it was, in most cases, actually cheaper to buy stuff brand new from B&M, Argos, IKEA, etc.

They're definitely not there to help the needy anymore, they're just there to line their own pockets.
Quite simply, they are businesses.

I think it's wrong, but greed is the driver here. 🤷‍♀️

YANBU, it's ridiculous. I'm not going to pay £4.99 for a bobbly Primark jumper that cost £8 new.

I don't get the logic of charging near new prices when the clothes are showing signs of wear and are Primark, Tesco etc.

I've noticed charity shops are less busy than I remember 10-15 years ago. Meanwhile Primark is rammed even on weekdays. Not good for the planet or the people having to make the clothes with crap pay and conditions.

Furniture is ridiculous, I tried to buy some drawers recently. Well damn I should have sold the old ones not left them for a neighbour to take! Ikea ones start from £40. Charity shops selling them from £60 upwards for nasty smelly abused MDF. Even on FB marketplace the prices were outrageous. I don't get it. Ended up not buying any bloody drawers from anywhere. And decided to keep my big old knackered set which luckily I'd not got rid of yet (just the smaller set) and clearly were worth about £120 at 2019 prices..

I don’t go in the Charity Shops where I live,way overpriced.But I do go in the ones in Cornwall where my son lives,always come home loaded up with bargains.

The online Oxfam charity Shop never ceases to amaze me,the prices are ridiculously high for most things,plus £3.95 postage.I have had a few Cashmere jumpers from them for about £16 each,which I don’t mind paying for,but not £10 for an old M and S plastic necklace!!

since ebay charity shops have used ebay as a price guide. the problem is many a time the price used is on a completed UNSOLD item not a sold one. a little shop in a street won't get anywhere near the level of viewings as a worldwide webpage either.

I hear a lot of shop workers say if a reseller can get such a price why can't we? Well different amount of potential customers for one. Plus resellers won't buy something they can't make a profit on so the charity shop sales go down on items that used to be cheap enough to buy.

Lower the prices. Get the stock shifted. Take more stock. Shift it. They'd make more money

This could well be true, however, I work in a charity shop and it can be difficult to get enough volunteers to process the items. Stuff needs sorting, cleaning, pressing, tagging and hanging. There isn't always the manpower. Volunteers often don't turn up when they say they will.(I volunteer btw) it's not like retail where everyone is paid to turn up and work. They wouldn't make much money at all that way. Having said that the prices in the op do sound too high. We do books 2 for a pound and children's 3 for a pound. They go pretty well and don't need much processing.

The charity shop I volunteer in has a lady who has a ebay business selling books and China etc, she comes in weekly pricing up the things in our store room. She looks on ebay to see what the best prices the items have been sold for and prices them at that! (Ebays a world wide market place) and our little market town shop has no hope in selling stuff for the daft prices she puts on!