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?

@Debjam1963 a lot of charity shops won't sell electrical goods (ie a hoover) or if they do they have to send them to a central place to be tested first.
Some donated goods get transferred to different branches because the managers know what sells better in certain areas.
So it doesn't mean your donations weren't sold just because you didn't see them on the shop floor of where you donated them.
Also the shops get so much donated that has to be sorted through your donations might not have even been gone through until a couple of weeks later so unless you were checking daily you won't know when the goods were eventually put out for sale.
Just because someone told you "it's fact" that staff are creaming off the good stuff doesn't actually mean it's true.
I feel really sorry for charity shops reading this thread. People don't trust them or treat them like the municipal tip.
So sad.

I had a VERY irate woman a few months ago angrily demanding to know why none of her "good stuff" was on sale on the shop floor.

Transpired that:

she'd donated a lot of old books which had been taken to the specialist bookshop where they would raise more money.

she'd donated vinyl records which had been taken to the specialist music shop where they would raise more money.

she'd donated a ballgown which had been put online to see to a wider audience and raise more money.

she'd donated winter jumpers/jackets which had been put in bags to store until autumn.

We can't sell electricals, even new and in the box because it is a legal requirement to PAT test them, and we can't. the DEBRA shop along the road can though, so we take donations of electricals to them. We also can't sell your brand new, still with the tags on, Mickey Mouse toys bought in Florida as they are not CE marked.

So many assumptions from people that have never set foot in a charity shop sorting room. Because they don't see "their" items on sale within 2 minutes, they've been stolen. 3

Kassandra ... agree with your comments, it's a bit like everyone having an opinion on teachers although few people teach. If so many of you think we all 'cream off' the best donations why aren't you all rushing to volunteer with us and see for yourself what you are 'missing' .

And clearly there are some wonderful donations, charity shops exist to make money and if they don't make money they will be closed down ... two have recently been closed in my town.

I have no doubt there are some unscrupulous managers and volunteers around ... as there are in all areas of life .. but the vast majority are doing a tough, demanding job for very little financial reward - or none in the case of volunteers. And how frequently is 'retail' looked down as on a career on Mumsnet. .

I used to live near a charity shop like this. The woman was awful! She would stand at the back emptying jigsaws and books into the bins. They often had a sign out at Christmas time saying no toys donations. They only ever had a few broken cars in a box toys wise. My friend went to the bins and pulled bags and bags of stuff out. Jigsaws that people had carefully bagged up and labelled complete. Loads of nice kids books on as new condition - Julia Donaldson books etc.
Just never understood it but we never donated to that charity shop again

maxy I find that really hard to comprehend... all charity shop managers have targets to achieve and we have constant appraisals, reviews, audits etc ... any manager deliberately getting rid of saleable stock would not last long in the charity I work for. Can you be 100% sure the items were in good saleable condition - I've had to throw out jigsaws, they may be incomplete, battered box etc and our 'recycling' service will not take jigsaws. The same with books .. they might be Julia Donaldson's but are they in perfect condition? Customers are, quite rightly, very discerning and will not buy books unless they are in very good condition.

I've no doubt some charity workers pilfer the best donations as no-one has any idea what's been given.

But they're still doing me a service by taking it at all, so it's hard to care.

I think there is also a difference between the big household name charities like British Heart Foundation, Oxfam, Marie Curie, Shelter etc which have multiple shops and head offices and policies and auditors and procedures, and the one-off Debbie's Donkey Sanctuary shop, run by Debbie, her mum and her sister.

Again this "best donations" thing - you're right. Me, as a size 14 50-year old woman is pilfering the size 8 clubbing gear from Shein, expensive skiing gear and men's clothes. 🙄

If charity shops are so overwhelmed with donations, why don't they lower the prices and get the stock moving on more quickly? I sometimes see the odd thing I'd like but the price is ridiculous.

Few reasons.

To keep stock moving very quickly you need an endless supply of volunteers to sort, price, steam, fill the shelves, man the till. Most charities don't have that.

We are there to raise as much as we can for the charity, and for people who donate and pricing a designer frock for 99p is not achieving that.

But most importantly, lots of the stuff which is skipped/recycled would not sell however cheaply you price it. Nobody wants misshapen clothes or handle-less mugs.

This is very true, it annoys me too. When I used to work at one the manager used to put the most ridiculous prices on things - £5 for a top from primark or M&S that probably didn't cost much more. We always had a massive backlog of stock and hardly any customers (I think the most sales I ever made in one day was about 4 totally around £10!) and threw lots away and I suggested having a "everything £2" day to get stock moving and make way for new stuff only to be met with "oh no, we couldn't do that - the place would be ransacked!" Etc.

It would seem a good idea to at least try it now and again when you can't move for donations.

Is it though? Or is it a better idea to phone round other shops in the chain to see who isn't deluged and get them to send a van? Or keep fresh stock moving into the shop by culling anything which hasn't sold in 3-4 weeks and move it on, either to another shop or to be recycled?

MN has experts on everything. All the experts on charity retail who have never volunteered a day in their lives. All the experts on the constitution and law, and every other subject under the sun, who have formed their opinion on something they once saw on YouTube or a single conversation with someone years ago?

I am incredulous that all those people saying they no longer give to ‘unworthy charity shops’ but put everything on Freecycle clearly believe that all those who turn up to get something for free are the ‘deserving poor’ and not dealers who are collecting stuff to put on EBay, Insta, etc. as I know someone who has made above average salary every year by doing this.

gingham as previously stated ... many items will just not sell, whatever the price. I often put our out a box of books, CDs etc (all in good condition) with a sign 'free - help yourself' ... no one wants them.

On the back of a very similar thread a few months ago I actually did a day of 'name your own price' in my charity shop ... it really had no effect - either people want to buy things at our fair, reasonable prices ... or they don't.

So many experts on charity shops ... please come and work or volunteer with us.

I did often wonder how a single private seller on Ebay could purely sell cashmere woollens and many of them, in varied sizes!
Either she has affluent, generous, donating friends or she's getting them from donated piles in a charity shop.
In a well to do area, very rarely have I seen any decent quality cashmere jumpers for sale in our local charity shops.
I do suspect the better value items are filtered off by people working there.

A very good charity shop that I support local to me has a big sign up, which I have seen on other shops too. Anything left outside the shop after hours will be considered as fly tipping and will have to be disposed of. The staff told me that this is for health and safety reasons as they can't take anything that may have got wet or had rats running around it. Even if it is good stuff they have to bin it to prevent others from fly tipping. I found some toys outside just before Christmas one year and took a plastic toy that I knew my kids would use, cleaned it up for my kids then redonated it a few years later. I considered it a win all round.

Or she’s buying them legitimately from charity shops?

i price a cashmere jumper at £8. Someone buys it and sells it on EBay for £13. To get that extra fiver we’d have to photograph it, write the listing, package it, deal with questions, take it to the post office. In all the time that takes, I could have priced another 50 items.

but don’t let me get in the way of the “all charity shop volunteers are scummy thieves”

@askmenow or the seller of cashmere could spend her days going to charity shop after charity shop (or private house clearances, car boot sales etc) to source her stock. She could be on well known terms with charity shop managers who let her check through the donations to see what's real or decent quality and then pay the charity shop an agreed amount to purchase in bulk.
She would be using her knowledge of cashmere and fashion to sort out what is good to sell, prices etc. This is what antique/collectables sellers and dealers do. How do you think stock is sourced?
It's a perfectly legit thing to do and is an actual job.
She will be using her time and knowledge to sell the goods so it is perfectly normal for her to make a profit on it.

Rubbish. Are you seriously suggesting that you wouldn’t bat an eyelid if you saw good stuff being thrown into a skip by a charity shop you’d just donated to? Sure.

Of course it’s the OP’s business. She’ll want to know whether to donate there again for a start.

I would definitely ask head office about what is going on.

People donate to raise funds for specific charities, not to line the pickets of unscrupulous workers/volunteers.

Of course it is OPs business.

If you donate to a food bank, would you like the food to not be given to someone in genuine need?

Obviously Volunteers help them self's to the best stuff, I used to volunteer for the British Heart Foundation and the old ladies working there used to give away and take all the best items to their family and friends and their self's.

All the good stuff was always taken by workers in the shop most of the time they popped a bit of spare change in the pot, but most of the time they just kept stuff.

Another lot of nonsense about “all the good stuff”.

@KassandraOfSparta were you there NO, thought not. You don't have a clue 🙄

Actually I do have a clue. Eight years of volunteering in a charity shop clue.

You are not defining "good stuff". Your "good stuff" might be signed Take That CDs and Michael Kors handbags - neither of which holds ANY interest for me, or anyone I know.

And it's always "old ladies" isn't it? Filling black bags with all this nebulous "good stuff" and cackling away in old lady glee about diddling the BHF.