Aibu to make money from a charity shop purchase?

[Partnerprobs]

Recently went to a charity shop and found a couple of items for sale that I liked and were in very good condition. A handbag and a book. Both were in a locked cabinet. I bought them for £25 in total and have sold them on eBay for £75 and £34 pounds, so I’ve made about £84 (less eBay fees which I haven’t seen yet)

My best friend was really shocked and said it’s like stealing and I should donate the money to the charity - this has surprised and unnerved me as I thought it was fine (as they were in the cabinet so had been picked as higher end items, and also they were more expensive than normal items)

I thought it was a lucky break and was looking forward to treating myself.

Aibu?

• judge you

@Tryingtryingandtrying

What would happen if you came across a first edition Harry Potter book 1 priced for £2.50. Would you buy it and sell it for its true value or let the manager know?

Having done exactly this, I can confirm I stuck it on eBay without a second glance. They had a full set of HPs for £5 and the 1st and 3rd books were first editions. Made a lot.

@NashvilleQueen

It's just not very nice somehow. Yes it's technically fine but charity shops find it hard and so buying something you know to be significantly under-priced so you can make a profit it just a bit grubby.

People who rely on charity shops because they can't afford new might like these items to use. They won't be able to afford the marked up eBay price.

Do what you think is right but I would just you.

So again: do you want the shops to cater for people on very low budgets who might not have nice things otherwise (low prices), or do you want the charities to benefit from the best possible eBay profits (higher prices)?

And what about people who stop themselves from being impoverished by employing themselves as eBay resellers?

I'm not even going to go into the fact that it isn't time efficient for charity shops to faff about with long online auctions and postage and eBay fees because that's been covered so many times now that anyone who doesn't get it is choosing to ignore it.

Charity shops were originally set up to help those in need

True. But not in the way you think. The first charity shop in the UK was opened by Oxfam in 1947 in Oxford.

Oxfam = Oxford Committee for Famine Relief.

The aim of the shop was, just as now, to raise money for famine relief overseas. The purpose of Oxfam has never been to let people on lower incomes have nice stuff, cheaply. Nearly every charity shop on the UK high street is supporting a particular cause, which does not include a mission statement of "cheap stuff for poor people".

BroccoliFloret I am charity senior manager and in the area I am (Scotland) I know of three charity shops who work with us to help with home start up costs at reduced price.

Maybe things are done differently in England and this sort of partnership working doesn’t happen.

Also the first charity shops were set up by the Salvation Army, long before Oxfam, and were to help those in need. Which they still do fantastically well.

You bought them, you paid for them, they belong to you. What you do with them is up to you. I can't see what the problem is- the charity shop got what they were asking for it, so didn't lose anything!

I'm in Scotland too. I still think you're totally wrong about how charity shops should be operating.

I find it deeply concerning that several charity shop staff are so disregarding of the views of those that donate to their shops and wonder how many would be happy to say the same in front of their Directors of these charities. Not great PR to be honest.

@MissM2912

BroccoliFloret I am charity senior manager and in the area I am (Scotland) I know of three charity shops who work with us to help with home start up costs at reduced price.

Maybe things are done differently in England and this sort of partnership working doesn’t happen.

So you have somehow become a senior manager at a charity without understanding that other charities have different objectives to yours, or how charity shops work?

Confession time: I also have significant charity experience. Putting conditions on your gifts and donations is a bad thing because it limits how a charity can use the resources and stops them from directing them where they could do the most good. Very often, such stipulations actually make the gift completely unusable. They can even cost the charity, depending on what they are and what restrictions you've placed upon them.

@MissM2912

ManifestDestinee I suggest you go and read up on the history of charity shops and why they were set up!! It is actually you that is being quite ignorant.

www.charityretail.org.uk/charity-shops-faq/

When was the first charity shop opened?
In the 19th century the Salvation Army ran second hand clothing shops to provide the urban poor with cheap clothing. At the outbreak of World War Two, other charities such as the British Red Cross also started to operate shops as a way to raise money for the war effort and relieve hardship.

Modern charity shops as we understand them – retail units selling overwhelmingly donated goods to raise as much cash as possible for the parent charity – did not appear until after World War Two. The first of these was opened by Oxfam in 1947 and is still in operation today. Oxfam were swamped by donations from the public following its appeal for aid to alleviate the post-war situation in Greece. The success of this appeal yielded so many donations that it was decided to set up a shop in Oxford to sell a portion of these and to use the profits to further fund aid in Greece.

@MissM2912

I find it deeply concerning that several charity shop staff are so disregarding of the views of those that donate to their shops and wonder how many would be happy to say the same in front of their Directors of these charities. Not great PR to be honest.

That's because you are comparing a shop that works with you to help reduce home start up costs (whatever "works with you" means in this context) with shops that exist to move in-store stock as quickly as possible to the local market, considering profits in terms of time taken to raise rather than individual best prices.

@MissM2912

I find it deeply concerning that several charity shop staff are so disregarding of the views of those that donate to their shops and wonder how many would be happy to say the same in front of their Directors of these charities. Not great PR to be honest.

So are you saying we should quiz customers on what they will be using the items for? I would be happy to say that we priced goods to get the highest profit for the charity.

Also, you seem to think that everyone who donates to a charity shop is doing it to help others. A large percentage are not, they are doing it to get rid of their old crap. It's no coincidence that as it's been harder to get to the tip and bin uplifts have reduced, that we have had more tat donated.

Things I sorted through at work today
Balled up socks
Underwear
Crusty old towels
Mugs with tea stains in them
Pans with bits of foot still stuck to them
Wellies caked in mud
Stained clothes
Diaries dated last year
Toiletries dated from 2003
Clothes which reeked of green

@slashlover wasn't in today but was on Thursday and I see your list and raise you

VHS video tapes
Colouring in books which had been coloured in
DVD cases without any DVDs in them
Shoes with the soles hanging off
Paperbacks with the covers ripped off
Chipped mugs
Broken jewellery from places like Primark.

DrSbaitso I take exception to your attitude that it essentially doesn’t matter what the person donating stuff thinks. I think that is very rude and shows almost a disdain to those who are wanting to support the charity and like I have said- provide donations of things they feel would benefit those in need!
As a charity manager I am genuinely appalled at this attitude. That may well be what and other shop managers think but it is not at all respectful to those who may have a different agenda to you!

I have absolutely no doubt that some people donate crap which is unsellable, but others do not.
But none of this is actually relevant to the original question about whether people should make personal profit from buying stuff in charity shops cheaply and selling on.

No, Miss M, you are not getting it.

People donate to (for example) Cancer Research to help them raise money to fund research into cancer.

End of story.

They cannot then say "well i'm donating you this box of old books to sell to raise funds for cancer research, but you will price them according to what I think is appropriate, and you will make sure they only go to poor unfortunates who can't afford new books, even though poverty relief or improving literacy rates has nothing to do with cancer research".

We get VHS sometimes, cassettes too.
Pirated DVDs
Kids books which have been scribbled in
Jigsaws where the person who donated has helpfully circled on the picture which two pieces are missing.
A lovely lamp which had the plug cut off
Bags where the donor has obviously just upended the toy box into a black bag.
Black bags which have clothes in them and, randomly, very sharp knives.

And the always lovely, stuff which has been dumped outside when we're closed and been rained on OR dumped outside as we've refused to take it (car seats, furniture with no fire safety label, health and safety aids etc.)

BroccoliFloret how do you think I think charity shops should be operating?? I haven’t given an opinion on that other than I know of several who work with partner charities to assist genuinely in need people with furniture and clothing as well as being open to the public- not sure why you would think that isn’t a good thing.

At no point have I said how I think staff should run things operationally? I have however explained what I believe are some of the reasons that people donate which go beyond just making money for the charity shop by selling things.

Perfect example, actually: the lady upthread with the valuable vintage china set. Teapot alone was worth £90, so let's say the whole set was worth £150 or whatever.

Nobody goes into a charity shop looking to spend that much on one item. Maybe you'll get very lucky and find the one person in town who appreciates it and knows the value but it's vanishingly unlikely. If tea set lady had stipulated that the set had to sell for that much, the shop would have had to have it sit on the shelf forever (losing sales appeal all the time), taking up space that could be used for less valuable stock that will actually sell. Or put it online (with a reserve price, which puts many buyers off) and faff with the fees, p&p and so on, possibly costing more in staff time than it's worth. Or have it sit in the stock room, again taking up space from stuff that'll actually sell in the local in store market.

My charity was once gifted a house, but only on condition we used it for something worthy that was absolutely impossible to do in that area. We weren't allowed to sell it and use the proceeds for something similar. I don't know what happened in the end but it wasn't a gift worth having.

White elephants are not helpful.

Well quite clearly, @MissM2912, you have an issue with anyone buying something in a charity shop which they could potentially flip to sell for a bit more elsewhere.

You are ignoring the lengthy explanations given by me and other volunteers detailing WHY it's not always the best and most efficient strategy to price things for the maximum they have ever sold for on Ebay.

You seem to think that we should be vetting customers to make sure they are not buying to resell and are "needy".

@MissM2912

BroccoliFloret how do you think I think charity shops should be operating?? I haven’t given an opinion on that other than I know of several who work with partner charities to assist genuinely in need people with furniture and clothing as well as being open to the public- not sure why you would think that isn’t a good thing.

Now who's misinterpreting people???

You know quite well @BroccoliFloret wouldn't have an objection to that. But a business model in which you deliberately set aside certain donated goods to sell cheaply to people you know to be in need is entirely different to the sister shop that exists to sell stuff and more stuff and more stuff and just raise funds fast. How on earth do you not understand the difference? And again, how on earth do any of your clients, or your charity, suffer if someone buys one of the general charity shop items and sells it on? What does that cost you that their keeping the item would save you???

@MissM2912

I have absolutely no doubt that some people donate crap which is unsellable, but others do not. But none of this is actually relevant to the original question about whether people should make personal profit from buying stuff in charity shops cheaply and selling on.

Which would you prefer - people buy it to sell on or the nobody buys it and the charity loses out on money? For something like the handbag OP purchased, there's every chance it was previously put out at a higher price and then was reduced as it did not sell. It is better that the charity gets £20 for it and OP sells it on or for the charity to reduce it further and get less money?

You might say that wouldn't happen but the only people who buy our higher priced items - £20 for a dress which would be £150 new, designer shoes which are priced at £30, are the resellers as most of our customer base would never spend that amount of money.

I think it’s immoral and I wouldn’t have done it, but there you go.