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?

@KassandraOfSparta
I have posted up thread about some bad experiences but we also had some top ladies. Someone who did the washing, jewellers who mended good gold that was weighed and sold at auction and me who was ex Harrods fashion.
We had one manager who was working there purely to stock her vintage business in the opinion of others. It was very difficult to defend her sometimes. I made sure any sales to staff were double awitnessed on my watch.
You can't stop greedy people (some of our best customers were clothes traders) but you hope for a fair price. One posh woman had a stand up row with me over a new Crombie coat (£600 labe intact) I put £100 on. Ridiculous price. Blah blah. We live in a chi chi market town and they can afford it. We had a reduced rail if the couldn't and another non boutique shop nearby. I also agree try volunteering it is hard work but great fun.

usual rudness

That’s an unfair comment!

I don't think it's unfair - but could have been phrased better.

Once you've donated, you relinquish control over what happens next. You have to trust the charity to do the best with your donation. If you don't trust them, don't donate. Simple.

It’s not that simple, not in law anyway. If you do trust a person/business, and hand over money/goods on a certain basis/understanding, then the criminal law can step in and call it fraud.

thats how it feels - fraud.

You feel it’s fraud - but haven’t the full facts!!

ask plenty of cashmere jumpers in my charity shop ... I price them around £20 (if new - we get corporate donations from a High Street retailer) and they sell .. if someone wants to put them on eBay and get a bigger profit that's up to them.

I thought of this thread this morning, got into work at my charity shop to find a large box of VHS tapes dumped on the doorstep ... No one wants video tapes any more .. now I have to find a way of disposing of them.

Bunpea so what are you actually going to do about this situation, are you going to contact the Head Office of this charity or just moan on Mumsnet?

I don’t understand- what do you think the scam is? How is throwing some stuff in the tip a scam?

No, we don’t have the full facts obviously. My post was carefully worded to say the criminal law can step in in certain circumstances. It was to counter this idea, which I disagree with, that it’s none of the OP’s business.

There's actually a bit of a growing demand for VHS players, tapes, records, old computer games and consoles at the minute.

My partner is a collector and most retro games are selling for £25 anywhere up to several hundreds depending on the title, being in those circles we also cross over with the VHS collectors who again depending on title will pay ridiculous money for the rarer titles and would be over the moon to see things like this popping up in charity shops

Me and my partner found an old Mario game in a local charity shop recently (for the SNES) and we were over the moon.

Depends on your area though and of course these things may sell better online if the market isn't in your area

Just thinking about all the responses on here.

If goods I have donated are being siphoned off and sold for profit by someone other than the charity I thought I was supporting, that’s not right.
I’ve no idea of the legal position, but it feels like a theft has taken place somewhere.

If perfectly reusable goods are going to landfill, that’s not good either.
I had assumed that all charities behaved responsibly about disposing of stuff they don’t/can’t sell. People have made good points about how onerous this can be, and how some donors just donate rubbish. But that doesn’t let charities off the hook. Maybe they need to turn more donations away, and be more specific about the goods (and quality) they want. IMHO its not OK for them to just keep filling up landfills because that’s how they make money.

Right. So it’s the charity shops’ fault fit sending stuff to landfill, not the people who bought the landfill in the first place, and saw fit to donate it? Sounds fair.

Bunpea but how would you stop someone buying something from a charity shop and then reselling it themselves to make a personal profit? .

And yes, I get the previous point about some VHS tapes being valuable ... but certainly not the ones that were left on my charity shop doorstep.

At least two charity shops local to mine now have signs up 'no more donations' as we are totally overwhelmed. As Kassandra says, it would be much more helpful if people were thoughtful about what they donated to charity shops and not just use us an alternative to the tip.

Bunpea you still haven't answered as to whether you are going to follow this up with the Head Office of the charity ... it would be interesting to have a definitive answer.

If goods I have donated are being siphoned off and sold for profit by someone other than the charity I thought I was supporting, that’s not right.
I’ve no idea of the legal position, but it feels like a theft has taken place somewhere.

I love how in this thread we've had both nothing should be resold for profit but also, why don't they sell things dirt cheap to get rid of them?

@Ragwort, I’d donated my stuff with Giftaid, so I’m going to wait and see what the returns are on that. Hopefully they reflect reasonable sales and I will cease being suspicious. I’m also going to keep more of an eye on goings-on at the back of shop. It’s easy enough for me to walk past every day. If I still suspect something funny is going on, I’ll contact the charity’s HO to suggest they review processes at this shop. It seems I’m not the only person with concerns; a couple of friends I’ve spoken to locally say they steer clear of this shop. This is a small town and word gets around.

No problem if someone buys from a charity shop and then manages to sell it on at a profit, provided they have paid the price the charity asks (and that is the best price the Charity thought they could get). It takes (a small amount of) work to post something on eBay, or perhaps find a specialist sale, or clean or repair the item, or do some research on it which reveals extra features…that all adds value. And the item gets reused rather than going in a skip - good outcome.

Although the vast majority of VHS will be landfill all the way, it's probably worth having someone look through them as you'd be amazed what some films, especially horror or those with a collector scene fetch these days.

If someone buys from a charity shop and then sells on for a profit, I can't see what is wrong with that.

It is entirely different from someone working in a charity shop getting first pickings of what arrives or, worse still, syphoning off the good stuff in bulk and selling it. If good items are removed, fewer people will use the shops and so it will affect the charity's profits.

I feel quite sure that most managers/volunteers are completely honest but those appear not to be above board should be investigated.

t's probably worth having someone look through them

Problem is that most charity shops are SO short of volunteers that this is just not a good use of their time. Thinking of where I volunteer, we have one ancient desktop computer which is used for everything. It could potentially take a couple of hours to go through a donation of something like VHS tapes and google them, working out if you've got anything worth while.

In that couple of hours, an efficient volunteer could instead have powered their way through a whole pile of donations and put them out for sale. It's just not an efficient use of volunteer time. Managers are making those sorts of decisions all the time. In an ideal world, with loads of volunteers and loads of tech, they might make different decisions.

It is entirely different from someone working in a charity shop getting first pickings of what arrives

I don't have ANY problem with the volunteers getting first dibs on what arrives if they pay the going rate.

I'm a regular charity shopper and am definitely price sensitive. I will not buy stuff if it's over priced.

For example a toddler t shirt or trousers should be £1 or at most £1.50. Any more and I might as well buy it new from a supermarket.

But I will buy stuff not in perfect condition e.g. dog eared books or jigsaws in battered boxes.

The rules are also rather odd. Why not sell bike helmets and high chairs.

The rules are also rather odd. Why not sell bike helmets and high chairs.

Because we cannot guarantee how they have been looked after and stored before they came to us and if they are damaged in some way, someone used them and got injured, the charity shop would be liable. Same as toys without the CE quality label - we do not know what they are made of, what they're stuffed with, whether the eyes are secured in properly. So can't sell them.

I agree people who let you down and don't turn up are annoying, glad to hear you're learning from this behaviour, but when someone is clearly really pleased with something (sometimes they send an extra thank you message which isn't expected but is nice) then that's always nice.