Or was she? Charity shop purchase.

[JiggleJiggleFold]

I went in a charity shop yesterday and saw a set of figurines, 6 of them for £20.

I asked if I could buy 2 of them separately and the lady said no, they're a set. Fair enough. I had a few other bits to get from other shops, so left without them.

Whilst shopping I googled the figures hoping to get them from ebay or somewhere, as I only liked 2 of them. Turns out they end up at around 10/12 quid individually with postage anyways so 20 for 6 was very good.

I went back in and asked for the set. I paid the £20 and said to the lady "I only really want these 2, you can keep the other 4"

She told me they come as a set and you cannot but them individually.
I said I'm not asking to buy them individually, I'm paying the full price but only taking 2.

She told me I wasn't allowed to do that.

I said I'm keeping 2 and donating back the other 4 and that she could sell them as a set of 4.

She was adamant I want allowed to do that and made me take all 6 of them :s

I walked into the charity shop 2 doors down and donated the 4 I didn't want.

AIBU to think the whole things was just ridiculous?

She was really huffy and abrupt with me about it, like I was trying to rip them off or break the sacred rules or something!

They absolutely can but having worked in this sector for years, it's also incredibly common for the person on a till in a charity shop to have social learning difficulties. And shoppers really need to be mindful of that. Part of the social benefit of these shops is that they can provide a work experience environment for people in a way that benefits their ability to learn about professional social interaction while also benefitting the charity by helping with the running of the shop.

If a charity shop is desperate to get rid of books rather than selling 10 for £1 wouldn't it be better to sell them individually at 10p?
Who can carry 10 books? At 10p a book I would be tempted to go in several times and maybe get 2 or 3 at a time bit would really struggle with carrying a bag full of 10 books.

Oh and on the "volunteers can't be managers" - one chain I know of locally has a paid manager who covers about 5 shops. Most of hte time, the volunteers are in charge. This morning when I volunteered I was the most experienced volunteer in the shop, the manager doesn't work a Thursday, I opened up, did the banking. This morning, I was the "manager". But I didn't get a badge.

YABU because you could have had 4 spares.

Need no ... because then you might only get rid of 2 o 3 books at 10p each, the money is not important- it's the getting rid of unsaleable stuff that matters. We have to pay to get rid of unwanted donations... after lockdown ended my shop was so overwhelmed with unwanted stuff that I used to put it outside the shop with 'free ... help yourself' signs, most of it still didn't shift.

You’d get done for fly tipping in my London borough for doing that.

A lot of this thread suggests that the charity shop concept is fundamentally broken. People think they are doing something good for charity and the environment by donating, but shops seem not to want most donations. Why do you take things that won’t sell? If you were in standard retail you would buy your stock more carefully. I know I complained about the manner in which I was sent packing by my local shop, but I suppose they were at least trying to follow that approach.

Havering yes it is possible that I might inadvertently turn away 'good' donations but I have worked in the sector for many years and you do get a 'feel' for what may or may not be good donations (there are always exceptions of course). My shop is very small and sometimes I just don't have the physical space to safely accept any more donations and (some) people get very disgruntled when I turn their donations away. You mentioned that your donation was toys .. to be honest I rarely accept toys, despite what people say they often have bits missing etc and, certainly in the shop I manage, toys take up a huge amount of space and just don't sell.

A lot of this thread suggests that the charity shop concept is fundamentally broken

I don't think it's broken - I get most of my clothes in charity shops, and they are always busy when I visit - but I think they suffer from charities listing the best stuff on eBay nowadays.

Also - pricing is sometimes bizarre. Bobbly Primark t-shirt for £4.50, for example. Obviously you are benefiting the charity and the environment by buying it there rather than new for not much more, but it doesn't feel like great value.

Having said that I have had some great bargains - unworn Monsoon wool coat for £7.50 for example - so I suppose it balances out.

@Ragwort I think if a book won't sell at 10p then I don't really know what a charity shop can do other than give them away for free. But even if the books were free I still would struggle with carrying a bag of 10 so wouldn't take that many.
I don't really have a solution to that I am afraid.

I believe the charity shop model still works but people need to be realistic about what they donate - no one seems to like taking stuff to the tip but quite honestly that is where a lot of unsaleable donations end up. Charity shops these days have strict budgets and targets and if your shop is not returning a decent % then it will (quite rightly) be closed down. Not wanting to sound conceited but I took over a poor performing shop and turned it round into a very successful charity shop, but that clearly means taking tough decisions about what I can accept for sale.

Last week someone came in with a bag of clothes, she said 'these have moth holes but I've washed them', she seemed very annoyed when I (politely) refused to accept them.

Eurgh yes. One of the local ones here keeps posting on Facebook saying please don't just dump donations outside because once they're wet etc we can't accept them and in fact have to pay to dispose of them (I suspect like shops lots pay for waste services by weight?) Anyway queue lots of omg so ungrateful, someone thoughtfully left a bag of broken, soiled and unusable items for you and you don't want them.

The charity shop model is not broken.

Donors though need to look VERY hard at what they are giving us. Would you pay money for a mug with a big chip out of it, a DVD case without the DVD in it, or a paperback book with pages missing? No? Then why donate it to us thinking you are doing a good thing?

People would not like having their donations raked through on the shop floor and us refusing to take the stuff we know won't sell. So we accept everything with a smile and a thank you, and then have to sort the crap. Textiles I'm not particularly bothered about, it all gets recycled. But we fill two massive dumpsters with broken stuff and other tat every week. All stuff that well-meaning donors could have put in their own bins and saved us the hassle and expense.

People quite rightly feel guilty about binning stuff. But the answer is not to just make all the stuff you feel guilty about binning a charity's problem.

The shop I wanted to donate to has a large dedicated toy area. They did not have bits missing and had been very carefully cleaned and checked.

And they do sell. I buy them! The toy area has a fast turnover.

I sold the stuff on a local Facebook site in the end. Have the proceeds to a different charity.

Havering clearly in the example you give they were good donations, I know in my town there are shops that sell toys well and I always suggest that customers donate toys to X charity shop, equally many people know that my charity shop is the best for books, so we get lots of books donated. Maybe you were just unlucky that day and met a grumpy volunteer- it can happen. Or maybe they genuinely didn't have enough space to accept the toys?

Some toys sell well in our shop - playmobil and lego always flies off the shelves, we do well with jigsaws, puzzles, Barbie type dolls, anything Frozen or Disney. Outdoor toys too. What doesn't sell is soft toys. We get soooo many as donations, often "well-loved".

Toys are a bit of a legal minefield too, volunteers have to know to look for the CE mark as it;s illegal to sell without, check it's safe etc. I'd say 75% of the soft toys we get go straight in the recycling.

What doesn't sell is soft toys. We get soooo many as donations, often "well-loved"

There's a local lady who knits small Teddy bears etc and donates them to us. None of them sell. They're quite. .um. .amateur. Obviously we accept them all but they have to be cleared out as rags after 12 months. Shame.

God, that's kind of sad...

Most people who work in charity shops are disabled (no offence to anyone just observation!) and don't like to wonder away from what they've been told.

Shitty post.

Which is fair enough, disabled or not, isn't it? They certainly don't deserved to be challenged repeatedly on the same point, be talked to smulgy or called a mutant.

This thread is so depressing. People are really unkind.

Maybe in your shop but no way would Tesco or Asda let customers take one out of the pack then try and resell the packet with one or two missing.

Yes but the point is Tesco and Asda don’t take donations of things to sell… charity shops do.