Charity shops seem to be unrealistic with their prices and I can't afford them anymore!

[AutumnFairy01]

Firstly, this isn't to do with not giving to charity. I give to charity separately and donate items to local homeless charities, food banks, etc but I've always loved supporting charity shops too. They're great (or were great) for grabbing a bargain and reusing an unwanted item. I love secondhand wherever possible.

However, I've now come to the conclusion that charity shops are largely unaffordable for me now. I browse round charity shops weekly I would say (in more than one town) and the prices are just crazy! I always buy secondhand clothing for myself, dh and children but quite often the charity shop prices seem more expensive than buying new or at best, very little difference. For instance, in Chelmsford the other day, I went into the BHF shop and I saw a very simple baby's top, not designer or anything and it was £4! And then for adult clothing, I couldn't see anything below £6/7.

Boots sales and Facebook marketplace are my go to places more and more now. Sometimes freebay too.

I can understand charity shops putting their prices up a little with rising costs of everything but there has to be a balance surely?

AIBU to think charity shop prices are unrealistic for secondhand items?

Are they becoming unaffordable for anyone else?

I looked at coats in maybe five or sox charity shops in a high street near me yesterday. I needed (not for myself) a women’s size 18, padded style. Any colour, any length. I couldnt find anything under £25. And this is for very dated indeed, supermarket/primark level coats. I thought they were really overpriced.

Yeah haggle away in any shop, but not a charity shop.
There is total shame in this- you are taking money away from a cause in greater need than yourself.

Trouble is, their misguided overpricing means there's no stock rotation for a really long time.
For charity shop regulars the stock becomes stale very quickly, same items three or four weeks running, they don't knock anything down for at least a month so regular customers stop going in.
Those bargain everything £3 shops are few and far between.
Charities need to stop using ebay as their pricing guide.
There's so many more second hand outlets now , ebay has also become overpriced and its model is outdated now.

I wanted to buy the jumper, it wasn’t in by budget, I didn’t buy it - I bought my jumper elsewhere in my budget. It’s a charity shop and like everywhere they want to sell their stock. Take a look at yourself.

I initially wanted to agree with you in theory re CEO's, but was sceptical as to how much goes to the causes...... but just googled it and it's a lot more than I thought. So I retract some of my comment.

Ours aren't bad if you stay on the little local high streets and not the town centre locations. I don't tend to buy much in the way of clothing from them as I'm very plus sized and my kids are at that age where they grow slower so there's not the steady churn of clothes sizes there was when they were younger - but I do pop in for books for the kids in particular on a regular basis, and random toys and things I can use for work therapy sessions (anything that pops up and can get a reaction type things). Between 50p and £1 a young teen type book is the general thing.
Think my current bag is a Barnardo's special actually - been using it ages

Yes this.

I find myself being careful about prices in charity shops now, just like I do in other shops.

What's wrong with a charity having a CEO- would you rather they didn't and were poorly run?

The point is that many jobs for charities are paying higher salaries than some very robust commercial organisations.

Just as an example, when by DCs were looking for work, after uni, (both with excellent degrees in science) they found that charities like MacMillan were paying more for grads than Tesco for example.

It's the same with organisations like English Heritage and the National Trust. Their CEOs get huge salaries, huge hand outs on retirement or when they just 'leave', great pensions, yet they are listed as charities. You'd assume the money would go into whatever benefits the members or medical research and it seems rather unethical to me that a lot of it doesn't.

and we had a pricing guide that put tops at 30-50c, trousers at 2 euros, dresses, tunics, nice shirts etc. ranged from 1-4 euros, children's clothes were 20-50c apiece.

Charity shops in city centres wouldn't be able to cover their costs if they charged such low prices.

I volunteer in a charity shop but it's a local charity. Kids stuff mostly under £1 starting at 30p. We don't pay rent because we are a charity. Just the services.

I still look around charity shops but I too have noticed if all the clothes start from £6 and from sainsbury's then I'm not interested. I do still find coats for 10-15 I would buy. It's easier to use Vinted but I do enjoy looking. Regardless of any shops business model or required profit margin, it's irrelevant to me what they need to charge to survive if its out of my desired price range.

So for example maybe they need to charge £3 for a pair of kids leggings but I too have issues with CoL so I will buy a pack of two for £5 in the supermarket. I wonder how many people will ulteristicaly buy second hand clothes fractionally less than for new? If that business model works then fantastic. I just don't see how it does tbh.

Strsngely you won't find many people qualified to run a organisation as large and complex as the National Trust for a pittance. If you are one of them, by all means make your pitch

Personally I won't support any charity that doesn't pay its staff properly. Totally false economy.

I give a lot of DS clothes to charity when he grows out of them. The clothes have been bought from shops like H&M, Nike and Ralph Lauren or NEXT.

£4 for a good condition top isn't unreasonable tbh.

We have 2 in our small town, one is hugely overpriced, the other one really cheap, I got 2 kids mountain warehouse coats for my dd for £1 each, 4 kids tops for £2, 4 kids books for £1 and a pair of lovely curtains for £1.50.

There is only one charity shop I use because the prices are reasonable. I was put off charity a longtime ago when I watched that programme with Esther Rantzen to find they were having lush dinners that were incredibly expensive and that the actual charity only got something like 1 percent.

There seems to be two types of charity shop really, doesn't there? The spit & sawdust types where it can smell a bit musty as you walk in, but very cheap. The others who tend to think they are some kind of luxury retro boutique. Those are the bigger charities, anyway.. not too far from me, there's a hospice shop & all is clean & bright, I tend to donate rather than buy, these days, but the furniture in particular is amazing..

As I've got older, I find I seem to live in jeans & jumpers or t shirts, so have donated a lot of skirts, dresses, high heeled shoes etc.. each item I buy new nowadays is usually around £20, in sales or on offer, & I either wear them to death or decide they aren't for me & donate. (Yes, those are mine, lol, with the tags still on!)

I don't do Vinted.. hate the idea, tbh. How can you know what you're getting? Anything can look good in a photo.. plus I LIKE donating to charity. I've been told many times by folk wiser than I, that if you give things away, you get it back tenfold. I totally agree. Sometimes it's hard cash, sometimes it's contentment & happiness.

Ok, onto the big charities.
My mum died in June. My sis & I wanted to donate her furniture, which was very 'good', solid stuff, but mahogany & out of date. I would have LOVED to have donated it to say, a womens' refuge, so that a mum & kids setting up on their own would have something maybe not great to look at, but damn solid, & covered with a tablecloth, who'd know..
I got in touch with quite a few charities, but only BHF would come out. They dismissed the furniture as being 'just veneer'. Didn't want it. Asked around locally on FB - people might have wanted the odd coffee table.. we couldn't do that, it ALL had to go.
Well, dear reader, we ended up getting a skip & my brother-in-law chopped the lot up. Broke my heart. Btw, BHF - it was all SOLID. As I thought - no veneer in 'ere. :-(

@mamabear715 i know a little off topic but when I use Vinted I always filter by “new with tags” for quality control

Ah, @VanCleefArpels I didn't know that was a thing!

This is really interesting. I work in an independent charity shop. we did have to put our prices up a bit to cover costs. But recently we have revised our prices due to cost of living crisis. Heaters for example-we test them so have to charge but we make sure they're affordable.
Our general pricing policy is look up stuff on ebay, find 2cnd half price of it then we price it at half or a third of that price. Furniture if its really nice we do charge hundreds for, cos the second hand price is hundreds.
But tesco clothes/kids halloween stuff we put out at £2-4 or 50p for wee things.
I just bought an Abercrombie & Fitch top for £6. Monsoon tops are £5-£10. Next tops/jeans £3-£5.
We have to strike a balance of surviving ourselves but helping our customers. One of my colleagues over-prices, another under-prices so we do a lot of checking/amending!
We know a lot of our customers so those who are not so well off, we often round down the total price. So we make something and customer is happy with a bargain. Its tricky but we're popular so I hope we're striking it right!

But it depends on the brand. £4 for a good quality Ralph Lauren top, bargain. £4 for a primark t shirt, even if never worn, ridiculous as it would £2 new.

Those prices seem about right Heckin, you seem to have a hit the balance. I just struggle to understand the high prices in some places when they obviously limit the turn over of stock.

It’s interesting. DD bought a Ralph Lauren slip dress new with tags on Vinted for £40 for her prom. It appears to be genuine as is great quality. She now can’t sell it on even at £30!! New it would have been £:300+

I agree! The prices can be the same as new or more for clothes. I was astounded watching a woman pay £4 for a used kilner jar the other week, B&M is over the road selling them for £2 new.

I think the independent charity shops are better value than the national ones, but only slightly. I've given up and use Vinted now, I bought four brand new jumpers for £4 plus postage, no way could I have found a bargain like that in a charity shop.

If charity shops are run as businesses they should have to pay full rent and business rates and be taxed on their income. As it is, they are a con, volunteers running the shops work for nothing, and most of the money made goes to the executives who are paid ridiculous money, very little actually goes towards the "good cause".

@Florenz , do you have any facts to substantiate what you have said? The shops are staffed by employees and volunteers usually.

Completely agree. I am a big charity shop fan and have been for years buying clothes for my family.
But now the prices are so high.

And it means the same old stock is there week after week never shifting as no one wants to pay £5 for a bobbly tatty primark jumper that only cost £5 new.

I know they want to raise money but the prices have just become too high.
Which means they don't shift enough stock which means they keep refusing more donations of stock.

Surely it's better to sell something for a few pounds then just end up chucking it in the rag bin after a month as no one has bought it for £5+?