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?

Oh for goodness sake, it was the rag man. It sounds just like the guy we use. You wouldn't believe the amount of unsaleable textiles we receive. Things that are still wearable once laundered go overseas (ever wondered why there is always a random child in an Arsenal shirt in documentaries about the Third World) whilst the ripped and tatty things are shredded and remade into things like blankets for removals or seat stuffings.

Perfectly reusable stuff going to landfill grrr

in that case make your own arrangement to recycle, reuse or upcycle the stuff you no longer want, stop expecting other people to do your social conscience hard lifting for you.

Eg tell people to stop buying things for your family,
sell things yourself,
regift unused item

I helped in a charity shop and although they were scrupulous, they did tell me that managers are fired from time to time for ‘selling out the back door’. It is a well known issue in charity shops as there is no way of auditing what comes in.

Managers are paid £22k pa so have quite an incentive to do this. Very hard to know what can be done about it.

I would certainly tell the charity what happened as they may well try to track it.

What a daft thing to say. When you donate to charity rather than sell it, it’s so a good cause can benefit, not some bloke supplementing his beer fund. It’s totally your business to care what is done with the things donated.

Please flag this up to their head office

Definitely report to head office. If it’s legit they’ll be aware, but if the manager and the man outside are stealing, HO will have an opportunity to investigate.

@CranfordScones I agree - the shops are full of tat but we all know that some very good stuff gets donated. Where does it go? My DH gave something expensive and good quality of mine by mistake (long story and I was gutted because it wasn’t replaceable). As soon as I found out I raced down there to try buying it back. He would have only taken it the previous day. The staff didn’t remember any such thing coming in and I searched the whole shop, it wasn’t there. They said there were no recent donations in the back, everything was out in the shop. It was distinctive and there’s no way it wouldn’t have been noticed. I strongly suspected it had been “re-routed”.

A certain mental health charity starting with M.? I work in the charity sector and know a few people who used to work for them. They all quit because they were treated atrociously. Lots of pressure on the charity shop manager, forced to sell at high prices e.g. Primark t-shirts for double their tag price, low wages, long hours. Might have been a regional problem, but I don't donate goods, time or money to them anymore.

I volunteer in one
Things we cannot sell get collected as rag paid by weight ditto bric a brac etc
Have constraints on some things we cannot sell
Ebay used to sell high end good quality items to obtain a larger profit for the charity

I think if your main concern is avoiding waste and for the goods to get into the hands of those who need and can use them then you're much better off giving them away for free on Facebook marketplace. I always do this now, it's more convenient and people are always so pleased to collect even things I would have thought were just junk or rubbish, it's surprising.

Charity shops are trying to make money and as they tell us over and over on threads like these are not there to provide cheap goods in the community only to raise my obey for the charity and so they create a lot of waste when they reject usable but imperfect items, in my opinion they should have a free table for these items.

In my experience people will come and collect almost anything for free and quickly.

Photograph them and offer them for free on Facebook marketplace or your local free to a good home/buy nothing group.

Was it a skip (as in 'rubbish') or one of those metal clothes donation bins. One of our local ones has limited storage room so use a few of those bins out back as 'holding' whilst they shift stock and have room....

I know our local hospice charity received far more than it can sell. It has a chain of shops across the county. Any clothing that doesn't sell within a month gets shipped to the 'clearance shop' where everything is a pound. If it still doesn't sell it gets packed into bales and sold by weight.

Anything that doesn't sell give away for free on Freecycle or Facebook or somewhere. People will come and collect almost anything for free and in my experience are always really pleased and happy to have things, often even things you thought were definitely rubbish.

Some years ago now I volunteered in a charity shop. Initially I sorted out clothing donations, and we did get a lot of stuff which went straight to rag. I did buy some things but only if they had already been priced, and I paid the full amount.

However, the Assistant Manager was a total chancer. She had young family and every time nice kids' clothes, toys or DVDs were donated, she 'put aside' the things she wanted before they were even put out for customers or priced. She claimed she would pay for them later, but we never saw her do that. I don't doubt there are many like her.

People often donate stuff to charity shops because they would like someone else to have them. If they knew the charity shop was throwing them out they would keep them or find another way of passing them on.
We've just been clearing out my late parents house. We gave lots of good stuff to local charity shops. I would be very upset to think they'd just been skipped.

Obviously a lot of charity shops are inundated, but there must be a better way.

I can easily believe a lot goes to rags. But it seems unlikely this would happen immediately or within five minutes of making your donation.

So on that basis I would write to head office to clarify their policy outlining what you saw

Does sound a bit dodge.. our local charity shop used to get items from the wealthier area so that the best items were spread around, which could explain why things were taken away but not why the manager would lie. She could have just told you that so I would assume something underhand too. Maybe write to the charity.

In Dunelm today and they had a crafts basket for old craft supplies like wool, materials etc, I thought it was a good idea

theres too much stuff.

On average most people have 75% more stuff than they need and billions is spent every year on people buying duplicate items (so a second potato people, a 15th unneeded mug, a spare umbrella just in case etc...)

When you dont need it, few other need it either.

As for the workers getting perks of first dibs, most are volunteers who donate the time to the charity shop which is worth more than your bag of unwanted kids tat, are you really that mad that after working 16+ hours a week for free they got 50% off a £4 second hand pro-cook coffee strainer?

Its NOT a scam but you do seem increadibly naive.

Most people dump stuff on charity because its quick and easy and they are too lazy to put in the effort of a full time job to list and sell all those items themselves... dont kid yourself that people do it just for selfless reasons.

If people wanted to run self employed online shops they would, they dont so they dump stuff on charity shops because the other option is to pay to have it taken away usually.

A relative of mine used to have a contract to collect unwanted goods from charity shops, often the goods were taken directly to him as soon they had been donated as the shops storage area were full or at busy times (espaecially just before and after Christmas etc) , he would give the charity so much per kilo not matter what it was, clothes, books, toys etc and he would then take it away and sort it all. Many of the clothes etc were then sold on to poorer countries, he was always bragging to us about how much money he was making, drove round in a rolls Royce and had a villa in Florida. His house was full of antiques that he had found in the donated items. He also sent a lot of stuff to the local auction house and he used to say that he couldn’t,t understand why the charities didn’t do it themselves, regularly found jewellery inside coat pockets etc.

Please please don’t think this is true of all charity shops.
When I started volunteering the manager made it clear that volunteers couldn’t buy anything until it had made its way down to the shop floor and been priced by her.
I used to have a quick look around at the end of my shift and certainly didn’t get any discount.

People often donate stuff to charity shops because they would like someone else to have them. If they knew the charity shop was throwing them out they would keep them or find another way of passing them on.

While that's the case for some people, a lot of will just bag it all up and dump it with charity shops because it's quicker and easier than taking it down to the tip.

Whilst I think you are commendable to donate to charity. But from my point of view I am struggling to understand why would you give expensive items or nearly new stuff to a charity shop? What was the point of buying them in the first place. I can understand outgrown kid stuff. I just don't understand tbh

For all the reasons listed on here, I always give stuff away on local Facebook groups now, or sell myself

@Sunnyqueen The shops near me won't take anything at the moment! Nothing at all