Ok. I suppose I am. Or mean at least. But charity christmas cards..£5 for 8 cards

[Hekate]

£5 for 8 cards. This is a place my kids attend. The cards are to raise money.

But £5 for 8. I think that is ridiculous. I think that if they weren't so expensive, they'd actually make more money because more people would buy. I don't want to pay a fiver for 8 cards. I know it's for charity. I would happily pay a fiver for, say 15 or so charity cards just because they are for charity - bearing in mind I normally go for the big cheap packs of 50 for a fiver or so. But any less than about 15 just feels like them taking the piss and taking advantage. I think that by making them so stupidly expensive, many people just won't bother at all.

Or am I being stingy? Are there people who think £5 for 8 cards - 62and a half pence per card - is normal? Am I a tight git? If I was to get those cards for everyone I have to send to, it would cost me £50! Who in their right mind would spend even half of that on bits of paper that will get thrown away a fortnight after they're sent?

I agree.

The only time I would pay that money for cards is if they were hand-made.

I made all my own christmas cards last year, and sold them for around £1-£2 each, but they were decent cards and a lot of time and effort went into them.

Made about £40 but once materials etc had been paid for, profit was about £10.

I wouldn't for xmas cards - I get 99p or £1 packs in the local discount shop - saw some of the small ones a couple of weeks ago that were 30 for 99p, which is great.
If I want to give to charity I do so - I don't want to be made to do it by buying cards that I don't want because of the guilt trip that people out on you for not buying them.

I rarely buy Christmas charity cards.

I find the backs tend to say, "1p from the sale of this pack will be donated to x charity." For this you are charged £5.

Or you can spend £3 on virtually identical cards and give £2 to charity (which I do)

Shops make a lot of cash out of charity Christmas cards.

I agree - they are really expensive!!
If you have the money then great, but why pay that amount for a bit of cardboard???

problem with xmas cards is they cost loads to produce if they are at all nice or if you are not printing squillions. so charities end up overpricing them in order to make any profit. and those ones in shops which pass tiny pence over at least do get the charity's message out. but otherwise yes it is all crap.

they are good for getting a small amount from people who would otherwise not donate to charity

I think that expensive too. But if you go to the charity shops themselves they sell their own cards and afaik, they make more profit from those ones than the ones you buy in supermarkets etc.

Maybe the charities don't pay poor wages to people in other countries to mass produce the things?
I don't bother with cards though. All that card ends up in a landfill.

try here www.studio51.com/ for cards and read this for an eye-popping dissection of how crap most charity cards are.

Does that hold for charity cards sold by the charieties in their own shops? So if I bought cards in The Meningitis Trust charity shop, I'm assuming they get all of it, but if I bought them in a supermarket the supermarket takes the money?

I always go to the charity card sellers who set up leading up to christmas in Churches and similar venues. Not sure if this is just a london thing (actually don't think it is as my Mum started it). A far higher proportion goes to charity.

The one I go to -

www.cardsforcharity.co.uk/shops.asp

A couple of others -

www.cardaid.co.uk/cardaid_shops

www.christmas-cards.org.uk/diary2.html

In the top one 80p in the £ goes to charity.

WT
have even seen less than penny on offer!!!
....interesting the small print, as ever!

i do get charity cards but from the churches for christmas but NOT at £5 per 8!...

wheelbug
i just saw that, that is what i do ..
its their thing i think, the churches christmas n that..

not
just sainsbury's et al...
though they all do pretty well out of it all

have trained ds to say in shops, 'look at these christmas things they are TOO EARLY'...

its nice to go to church even though non beleiver i like the buildings..

I get cards for the girls to send to their friends in Oxfam, 20 cards for £1.99. I assume that if I buy them in the charity shop, then the charity gets all the proceeds?

I hardly send any cards at all to adults but if I do, I make them. And donate what I would have spent to charity instead. Last year we raised over £100 at work doing this instead of sending cards to colleagues.

I have been asked to shell out two lots of £6.50 for 10 cards (have 2 children) that have been designed by the children at school.

Out of the £6.50 per pack £1.50 actually goes to the school. I think I will just send an envelope in with a £3 donation rather than fork out £13, especially as I am a Phoenix cards rep!

The price of most chaerity cards is a piss-take. Can't bel;ieve they haven't worked out that bringing the price down might mean they actually sell more.