Am I being unreasonable to be mad as hell about a scam going on at this charity shop?

[Bunpea]

Am I being unreasonable to think there is a scam going on at a local charity shop?

I took three bags of things to my local charity shop for a well-known mental health charity. My OH took the bags in to the shop at the front. The bags contained ‘good’ stuff (mainly nice clothes, with some new bedding still in the cellophane wrappers). All good enough to have sold on eBay, but I want to support this charity.

The shop has a car park round the back you can pull in to. I drove round there to turn around and wait for OH.
In the car park was a man sorting through boxes and bags of goods, putting some things into three large zip-up shopping bags, and everything else he put in a skip.
Into the skip went lots of kids toys which looked in great condition - plastic ride-ons, a small dolls house, soft toys, toy cars, as well as books and other stuff. He kept testing the weight of the bags - presumably he was taking them somewhere.
He seemed uncomfortable that I was there, lit a cigarette, picked up a few random pieces of small litter (but did nothing about the bigger mess) and generally hung around.

Just as OH appeared at the side of the car, the shop manageress opened the back door of the shop and handed the man one of my bags.
I got out and asked her if the stuff I had donated was no use to them, that I was never sure what was useful to donate, and if it was no good would take it back and deal with it another way.
She hastily grabbed the bag back from the man, saying it was ‘being taken upstairs to be sorted’ (no it wasn’t), and that ‘we sell it all’.
Hmmmm.

I can understand that charity shops probably use dealers for disposing of some goods they can’t sell, and that some stuff goes for rags. Or that they move stock from shop to shop. But this didn’t look like that. And all the good stuff that had gone in that skip…
Am I being unreasonable to be mad as hell about a scam going on at this charity shop?

What do you think the 'scam' is?
If you're concerned, contact the head office of the charity in question.

Once you’ve donated it it’s not yours anymore so really none of your business.

I'd certainly ask the charity head office about it -- the to-do over your bag seems a bit iffy.

That sounds really dodgy. However, he was putting things in a skip - if he was up to no good wouldn't he be putting things into a car, to take home to sell on?

That does sound a bit odd.
Id not donate to them again

Most charity shops are given far more than they can sell or store including an awful lot of items that are frankly rubbish unsaleable. Some is ragged, some is skipped and some stuff which is considered good will, if unsold, be rotated between different branches of the same charity. So yes a lot ends up in a skip. If that bothers you best rehome yourself using free cycle or the like.

The shops get donated more than they can possibly hope to sell in my area, so I could envisage a scenario where they might throw out perfectly good stuff. It’s frustrating and a shame but I am not sure what the answer is if their shop space is limited. It would be interesting to hear from charity shop workers.

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I don't think it is a scam necessarily, but not very transparent about what happens to donated goods.
It's possible, I suppose, that the stuff going in the skip had small cracks or bits missing and therefore no good for sale. And maybe the clothes aren't good enough so go off to be weighed and get scrap money.
But it's hard to tell! I mean, you could (if feeling brave) ask the person who works in the store what exactly happens to your donated stuff.
I also appreciate they probably get bags of utter shite where people can't be arsed to throw it out themselves

Definitely worth flagging to head office.

Testing the weight of bags sounds like taking stuff to the places that do "cash for clothes"

It maybe by that they were just distributing stuff to their other shops and sorting stuff that isn't worth selling but probably no way of actually finding out

It’s not a scam as no one (other than the charity themselves perhaps, as bags of stuff sold by weight would go for less than individual bits sold in the shop) has been left financially worse off.
You wanted to hand over your stuff. They took it.
You can’t dictate how it’s then processed, although you now feel robbed of the feel-good factor from imagining people choosing your items and feeling they had a bargain, but that doesn’t come under the umbrella of ‘scam’.

I imagine lots of charity shops have more stuff than they can display in the shop and nowhere to store it, so it’s quickly moved on to companies who pay by weight. The money would still go to the store, so if you demand your stuff back, the charity is still missing out.
You could take it to a car boot sale, sell it and then donate the money to the same charity if this makes you feel better.

I'm not sure it's a scam. What do you think the scam is?

I think almost all charity shops throw away quite a high percentage of stuff that is donated. I would imagine the big plastic ride-ons went in the skip because they're too big to keep in the shop. Cuddly toys went in because most people are reluctant to buy second hand teddies because of germs/dust etc. Lots of books go in the bin because they're donated more they can sell (along with CDs and DVDs).

Please take it further op. A friend of mine who has obviously SN was imo robbed by a well known charity who advertise as collecting stuff for free yet charged her £20...the matter was taken very seriously.. The men collecting were not honest.

This is going on massively in all of them for years, especially the main, large sorting centres. I worked in them for years. At one point if it was men's clothes it was immediately ragged without going through, all men's items were ragged instantly for about 9 months. This is because the sheer volume being donated is way way too much for the charities to cope with and they simply don't have the time to actually sort it but it's policy in all of them to turn nothing away.

I was passing a charity shop the other day and saw a girl throwing a bag of clothes into a skip - they were in a blue bag so don't know if they were going to recycling.It made me wonder too as same shop has been asking for donations.

The charity shops near me turn things away all the time!

Fwiw the charity receives about 9p per bin bag full of ragged clothes and the small crates for recycling items about 20p

Did you actually ask the manager why the toys were going in a skip?
Did you actually say to her "Hi there. Can I ask you - just out of curiosity - why is that stuff being put in a skip - some of it looks ok"
If you didn't ask - you won't ever know the reason.
Weird sort of 'scam' because they won't be making any money of toys chucked away.
Are you sure it was a rubbish skip and not just a large sorting out skip? They could have been just putting all the toys etc in a large storage container (ie a 'skip') so they are together and can be sorted out later.

Sorry let me clarify on that before I get jumped on, yes they turn stuff away that's against policy so cuddly toys with a fire label, walking sticks, car seats, things that are obviously damaged or bad quality but if on first glance they have no reason to turn away they won't. Head office massively frown on it and they wouldn't do it if an area manager was in the store at the time.

There are actually very strict laws on the resale of toys for charity shops. For a large part donating toys to a charity shop results in a loss to the charity as they have to pay commercial rates to dispose of those donations. Anything going in a skip is going to be an expense to the charity.

I think the ‘scam’ is not a scam in the real sense of the word .
When we donate to charity we expect that they benefit from our donation. If those donations are going straight from the person through the back door to the skip it does’ feel ‘ those donations are not needed and worse the charity are paying to dispose of things.
many people donate to charity to make sure we ‘re use and recycle’ so if charity shops are not doing that - then they should state that - new items going to landfill is bund boggling!

can you explain what you think the ‘scam’ is please?

Sorry let me clarify on that before I get jumped on, yes they turn stuff away that's against policy so cuddly toys with a fire label, walking sticks, car seats, things that are obviously damaged or bad quality but if on first glance they have no reason to turn away they won't. Head office massively frown on it and they wouldn't do it if an area manager was in the store at the time.

Sorry I didn't mean that to sound like I was coming at you, i was just surprised.

And genuinely most of the charity shops near me do just turn things away with the reason being that they can't sell them, like children's clothes, toys, books etc even if they are in good condition. We have several smaller charity shops that do this but our Marie Curie shop is one with such policy.

I uses to work in charity retail management. Staff theft was rife as donated stock isnt tracked

Wed put secret cameras in if we suspected

Probably about one theft case a month ( large national charity)

It attracts theives unfortunately as so easy to manipulate the stock/ donation tin.