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?

Here, someone is clearly stealing OP’s gift to the charity, presumably in return for a bribe.

Well no, because it's not clear what the OP witnessed at all. Maybe her donation coincided with the weekly visit from the "rag man" and it was all entirely above board. Maybe it wasn't.

Are you being unreasonable to be mad as hell at something you made up in your head without having the sense to check.

Yes. Also you need therapy.

I now tend to post in my local Recycle Facebook group or Freecycle groups. Everything is usually collected on the same day.

It's unfair to assume this is a scam. The charity shop will have targets to meet and it will be in their interest to sell everything they can. I volunteer in a charity shop and a lot of donations don't see the light of day due to the fact that storage is an issue. If they start selling things too cheaply, then it opens up a can of worms and although it's hard to believe, there are good quality items (tv stands for example) that you couldn't give away as people's needs have changed (hence a disparity between supply and demand). Next time, I suggest you gift aid them if you are a taxpayer, and insist on going through your better items with the manager so you can check they'll go out. It's frustrating - but so unlikely to be a scam. Also, the best thing we can do to help is buy, buy, buy from charity shops. There are GREAT things to pick up much cheaper than online auctions.

Awful as it sounds but it looks like they’ve got a scam going on there; sorting out tge stuff they can flog on selling sites like Facebook possibly/Carboot sales maybe; then dumping the rest that’s maybe too identifiable & traceable; might be worth contacting head office to raise your concerns & report what you witnessed; they may well have suspicions already especially if takings are lower than they expected even in the current climate.

I can’t for the life of me understand why the charity shop Wouid be putting potentially good stuff into a skip!

I once worked in a charity shop and there was a bit of a racket going on there.

One older lady very bossy had worked there for years. I regularly saw that when expensive or collectible things were donated, she called her daughter straight away who used to rock up with a big old fashioned empty pram and load all the expensive donations onto her pram and off she’d go with it. The woman was so mouthy and domineering people working there were reluctant to speak up.

How ever one day an old lady came in and swooped her shoes for a different pair from the shop and trotted off. The mouthy woman chased her down the road threatening to call the police.

i said yes let’s tell the police about the young woman loading all the donations onto her pram and making off with that while they are here.

She looked at me daggers but decided not to call the police and was suddenly much nicer to the elderly lady who’d swooped her shoes.!
She never even spoke to me again after that !

I have donated some very nice items to the charity shop. The better items never seem to make it out on the shelves. My friend lives nearby the shop and pops in almost daily to see what’s new. Most of my things never appear, so I wonder whether they’re taken home by workers. I have started offering things to my house cleaner because if I’m not giving to charity I would rather give to someone I know.

For those who say that volunteers and staff "cream off" the best stuff... I have NEVER seen that happen in our store. Fantastic things are donated and we are over the moon when people buy them. Staff can purchase items only after they've been appropriately priced for sale and have been placed on the shop floor.

I work in a large charity shop, we're allowed to refuse items we know we can't sell - white goods, some furniture, car seats etc. but we're not allowed to refuse due to volume. (It's happened twice in the 4 years I've been there and included sending photos to the area manager to prove to him that it was becoming a health and safety issue). We literally have people pull up with car boots and even vans full.

A lot of stuff donated is tat and will automatically be sent to the rag man - if we open a bag and it reeks of stale smoke or hash then we'll rag the entire without going through it. If we open a bin bag of clothes and the first few things are bobbly/stained/manky then we will rag the whole bag because chances are the whole thing will be like that. Yesterday I got a carrier bag full of balled up socks and pants.

We have connections with some other shops/people in the area for example, we keep brass and gold to sell by weight and the money goes through the till.

The thing is that a lot of the 'good stuff' just doesn't sell and after the amount of time we've worked there we know what does. For example, at the moment lots of people are handing in really nice summer sandals, shorts, summer dresses etc. but people aren't looking for that sort of stuff now so it's mainly going to rag as we have no room to store it until next year. We get SO MANY DVDs and CDs that even selling them at 10 for £1 we have to send lots to recycling.

They know what they csn and cannot sell

People assume everyone is happy to take their unwanted shite but it's not worth any money

Not true at all - op donated for a specific charity, if workers are stealing donations so the charity doesn’t get the money - that us very much op’s business!

there are good quality items (tv stands for example) that you couldn't give away as people's needs have changed (hence a disparity between supply and demand).

We had those black, glass TV stands and reduced them to 50p and still nobody wanted them.

I have donated some very nice items to the charity shop. The better items never seem to make it out on the shelves. My friend lives nearby the shop and pops in almost daily to see what’s new. Most of my things never appear, so I wonder whether they’re taken home by workers.

Or your very nice items have been sent to one of the other shops in a better area where they'll get more money. Or they've been put out and sold immediately. We have customers who come in every day first thing and buy the really nice stuff to sell on. We put stock out at the end of the day, and they're waiting outside for us opening at 10am.

My husband did voluntary work for Sue Ryder. Initially he worked in the shop but when they found out he had photography skills they got him working in their industrial unit photographing good quality items to sell on ebay. A lot of charities do this as it makes more money for them than selling in the shops. Maybe that is what this charity does.

Sounds to me like some of the good stuff is being stolen by whoever was in charge at the time. I’ve been a paid manager at 2 large chain charity shops and I would never donate to a corporate charity shop again.
This sounds like theft and I would ring their head office and tell them exactly what you saw.
Corporates do bin masses of really great stuff because they either get too many donations at once or they don’t know the value of it.
We were told to smash everything up before binning it so that no one could take it out of the bins overnight…I used to give our good stuff to the independent charity shop next door because it seemed like such a scandalous waste to smash and bin it.

Thus wasn’t in Swiss Cottage was it? 🤣 there’s just such a woman in our local charity shop - She does not come across as the charitable type at all! Grumpy tough woman who I’m sure could throw a good punch. I just on is she’s there for what she can take, it’s in a reasonable we’ll heeled area.,

Me too. I am quite horrified at how little my many bags of decent goods have generated. I carefully sort at home and will donate bags of clearly marked rag (usually requested by the charity to only be 1 at a time), but decent ceramic, bric-a-brac, clothes, toys. I take my books to an Oxfam books shop because they are clear that they can get money from pulping. So eg my dads old OU materials. Decades out of date, but with his dementia it was easier to promise him they would go to a good home, and after conversation with the Oxfam book shop - they did. I can recycle kerb-side any paper - so I am hoping they didnt agree to take them and it cost them money.

but decent ceramic, bric-a-brac, clothes, toys.

The thing is that a lot of really good stuff just isn't sellable. For example, where we are crystal (vases, glasses etc.) just won't sell, lots of ceramics won't sell or sell really cheaply (we get LOADS of those Willow Tree figures and end up making them all 50% off or less), we rag out of season clothing, we'll rag a toy if it has loads of bits we need to build or lots of small parts (people use our toy section as a soft play and things get broken/have parts missing CONSTANTLY).

Neither have I - volunteer for 8 years and counting. The chain I volunteer with has fairly strict rules around volunteer purchases. You don't price things you want to buy yourself. Everything is written in a book with your name, description, receipt number and price - so 11/9/22, Kassandra. 2 x balls of wool and a ladies top. £9.98. When the auditor comes, they always look at the staff purchase log to identify if purchases are being made which are excessive which may indicate trading, or too cheap. As someone else puts the purchases through the till, you would need two or more people colluding together to allow it. Not saying it doesn't happen, but most chains have processes in place to stop it and make it very difficult.

Also this concept of "best stuff" - what is that? My "best stuff" would be a bag of 100% wool sock yarn, or maybe some Hornsea pottery. The lady I work with on a Thursday - her "best stuff" are those 50s vintage tea sets, or artists' drawing equipment. Neither of us are interested in children's clothing, jewellery, handbags, shoes which aren't size 6, clothes which are under a size 12 or over a size 18, DVDs, Christmas decorations/tat, etc etc. This idea that we're all raking through bags carting everything off home, even if it doesn't fit, is totally not our style or just totally useless (what would I do with designer toddler clothes?) is just wrong.

I also agree with this. People hand stuff over saying it's "really good" but it's often really not or stuff people don't want. Things like mugs or gift sets for a 25th/50th/70th anniversary. Expensive to buy, great condition, limited appeal. Crystal decanters are very out of fashion and we get loads donated. Same with men's ties - unless they are 100% silk and fairly modern they go straight in the recycling. Ceramic figurines. DVDs are rapidly becoming obsolete. Nobody wants things like books of school exam past papers as they're all online. Same with 5+ year old books on computer software or technology - however expensive they were to buy, they're useless. Clip earrings. Valence sheets for under the mattress.

Things that just don't sell, whatever the donor's emotional attachment to them.

they can flog on selling sites like Facebook possibly/Carboot sales maybe

This puzzles me because I sell donations on ebay for charity. Most for about £4/sale. It takes huge amounts of time to raise a pittance. The charity would be far better off if I donated my equivalent (salary) hourly rate. I only do it because it prevents the items becoming rags. Maybe there are charities receiving lots of truly highly valuable items that can be pilfered away for ebay sales, but that didn't sound like what OP described. As for carboots, I've never made a penny, only ended up out of pocket doing those.

If OP thinks something dodgy was happening I definitely think a call to the security team at head office would be the right thing to do or even another charity shop in the next town if it's a chain just for clarification of how things might be processed.

The chain charity shop I help in occasionally is inundated with donations as it's the only shop in town accepting them regularly at the moment. Easily 70% of the donations are only fit to be sent to the various rag men (clothes, books, electricals) who collect and pay by weight weekly. So much stock donated is stained, smelly, pulled, scratched etc and rules are we have to wear gloves to sort things as it's so filthy and has the potential to be hazardous. I've overheard, so many times, donors say a bag is full of good quality items only to open it in anticipation and find stained clothing, pans with food still in them (why??) and bedding I wouldn't let my dog sleep on. Just because it's come from a fancy shop originally doesn't ultimately make it a good donation if it's unsellable. A lot of donors treat the shop as some kind of waste disposal place as the nearest council tip is miles away. Toys have to be thrown if there's no CE marks even if they are in an as new condition, it's a Trading Standards thing. Of the stock that can be sold some is put aside for later in the year as it's the wrong season and some is sent to the online eBay shop as they can make more money for items there. A fair amount of unsorted "raw" stock is sent on to our busier shops almost immediately because they may not get as many donations as we do and is collected and delivered by our volunteer drivers who use their own cars and vans. Yes, the really "good" stuff usually sells within an hour or two of it going out onto the shop floor as customers often seem to scent a bargain. I agree with a PP who said if a bag is opened and the first few items smell or are downright disgusting (toilet mat soaked in piss comes to mind) then the whole bag goes to rag as unfortunately one smelly item can pollute a whole shop (remember that musty smell in old fashioned charity shops?). Bags sent on to rag or other shops cannot weigh more than 8 kg for safety reasons, hence we do lots of weighing before moving stock on.

This thread makes me feel quite sad that most people's immediate reaction must be that theft is happening and that most people working/volunteering in charity shops are dishonest and only out for themselves. My own experience is the exact opposite and I would like to think that there will be a plausible explanation somewhere.

That's pretty much how my MIL's charity shop operated as well. Surprisingly they still had shop lifters...

It's not unknown though for some individuals to have a side hussle going on. I knew of one shop the volunteers would pick through everything for themselves before putting out the balance..

The Op's shop definitely needs a check up by the sounds of things.

It’s a well known scam. Someone gets a job there takes all the good stuff for themselves to resell. I’d inform the head office and give the staff members name.