To think Vinted has killed charity shops?

[Finlesswonder]

I'm sure in posh towns or areas they are still alive and well but I went into 3 or 4 in my city yesterday and they were completely barren, I guess because people are now thinking why give their unwanted stuff to a charity when they could make a few bob?
It's a bit sad I used to love a mooch around a charity shop but these were seriously slim pickings! Anyone volunteer in one and know if that's true or did I just get unlucky with the day?

The london charity shops i have visited have been expensive and nothing special, i found the ones in surbiton were great, not sure if still the case...good items and new stuff at low prices. i like the ones in sussex but havent been for years, i find items on vinted a lot cheaper than the charity shops now.

An associated issue with charity shops is the selling of unwanted stuff abroad...Ghana has a huge problem with dumped items on the beaches and its killed off their own garment industries, there is also a huge landfill in ecuador full of items flown in by charity shops, flogged off cheap to these countries. and drive down purley way croydon where a lot of charities have the hq...see the flash motors in the managers parking bays.....high end jags and mercs....hmmmmm.....

Clothes dumping in Ghana is not the fault of charities but of fast fashion.

Are you telling me you've staked out charity HQ carparks to see who's got what car? Sounds like you've made it up to be honest. Anyway, do you think you can get a CEO to work for £30k?

Charity shops are killing themselves with the ridiculous prices they demand. Honestly! £4 for a bobbly TU tshirt. And we're not in an affluent area quite the opposite 🙄

I work at a CS. We are dirt cheap. Tops £1, skirts & trs £2, dresses £3. Nothing used to stay on the rails for long. However, we are receiving more and more Shein/Boohoo/Missguided etc. and I really don't want to be ungrateful but it is horrible, cheap crap. Nobody wants it and I don't blame them. A lot of it ends up on the 50p rail. Having said that, it all puts food in the cat's bowls.

Same - Oxfam enable rapists. I don't know how anyone can shop there or volunteer there in good conscience.

Shame as the Oxfam near me was great but I've cancelled my donations to them now.

I looked at Vinted to buy clothes and it just looked similar to eBay, I never sell on these places so maybe its probably easier to sell but you still have to take photos, wrap it and post it surely and hope nothing goes wrong or it gets returned. I looked at Seasalt clothes to buy but they didn't look that cheap or that good condition, I often use the Seasalt Outlet on eBay.

There's a certain inverse snobbery in the "charity shops are for poor people". Like it or not, all sorts of people shop in charity shops. Students, people on benefits, people earning huge amounts of money. Everyone will have a different reason for doing so - for many it's about reducing waste, being sustainable, getting something which nobody else has.

When we're on the till we are not asking people for proof of income before we sell to them and can you imagine the outrage if we did. It may be that charity shopping and buying second hand in general has become more mainstream and that's a GOOD THING! There are too many clothes on this planet already.

And again - it's not just clothes is it? We sell so many other things too. One of the things I buy most is jigsaws which are ridiculously expensive to buy new (£12 - £20) and I can get for £3.99 for a 1000 piece one for my mum. Also I spend far too much on yarn and other things from the craft corner.

So in short - if you're seeing tat, it's because that's mostly what we're given. Prices are really not too high as the sector is performing well. And nobody's forcing you into a charity shop if you'd rather be in Primark.

Surbiton's used to be amazing and are still worth a visit but several have shut down and I find it objectively expensive because I now live in a much much cheaper area of the country.

@GulesMeansRed Vinted does jigsaws, toys, ornaments etc and if you're looking for something a bit specific (for example, not just a child's toy, but a Spider-Man one) it really does beat rummaging through every charity shop in town. Want to get someone a nice present? Filter for "new with tags" and search for something they'd like!

Of course you don't have to need to get things cheap in order to do so. But charity shops and car boots used to be how people who needed to save money did so. Not so much now.

@GulesMeansRed I volunteer in a charity shop in a very mixed area. We’re on a main public transport route, and our customers would hit most demographics. We get some great donations, also some seriously disgusting items. I feel for the paid staff who sort!

I like how our shop operates, some volunteers do a variety of jobs, some are mainly front of house/till, and we have a few ‘specialists’ who deal with music, jewellery, toys, collectibles. Some high end items go on sale, if they don’t sell they go to Ebay. Like you I buy jigsaws, I like 1000 piece ones too. Especially those that actually have all of the pieces!

Our shop does well, the manager and team are very focussed on having a nicely set out shop, we advertise for donations of local school uniforms, we sell steamed, clean monogrammed blazers for £5. Those go quickly. We make money for our charity, thats the objective. But its also a good opportunity to get experience of working, I know the the DofE students who volunteer would agree. Also great for retirees like me. I would recommend it to anyone who is at a loss as to how to fill their time.

Vinted just looks like eBay to me but mainly private sellers.

No bidding, so no waiting for an auction to finish (I know eBay does have BIN & BO as well).
Can offer on an item or just buy at the listed price if it suits.
I find it a lot more user friendly than eBay.

Good charity shops are hard to find, but they do exist.
I generally avoid the chains- they have a lot of paid staff and very inflexible on pricing.My local indie shop is staffed 100% by volunteers. The shop is in a small town with a good smount of social housing, but also many affluent areas too.
The shop is always busy, packed full of items to sell, and gets tons of donations too. There is usually a small queue at the till.
I visit once a week at least, often twice and each time I go it is a whole new set of goods on the racks and shelves. Stock turnover is vey high, because prices are very low.
Like other shops they sell kitchen equipment, crockery and glasswear, books, clothes, baby things, decorative and seasonal items, craft stuff, wool, jewelry, linen, basket wear, small garden equipment, tools, pots, and random things like fishng tackle, ice skates, LPs, mirrors, pictures, small pieces of furniture, suitcases and bags, old magazines, camping stuff.
Clothes are all priced at £1 except t shirts and smaller items which are 50p. Good quality clothes like a silk dress, woolen suit or cashmere coat will be priced at £3, but all staff are authorised to cut the price for defects like stains or missing buttons.
Last year the shop raised £450,000 in profits which were donated to local charities.

YABU - Oxfam did that, almost single-handedly.

Charity shops are their own worst enemy. I think when people see how much charity shops charge for simple items, they think hang on I can make that money for myself. £10 for a Primark top when it is cheaper to buy it new. £25 for a very faded Per Una top. Let's face it even if people make a quarter of those prices on Vinted it is still worth it. Charity begins at home afterall, and the greedy directors of the charity shops benefit from these prices no one else.

I think there is a big difference to what the person donating is thinking vs what a charity shop is thinking.
Person donating thinks "oh this top isn't great but someone might want it for £1" and chuck it in the charity bag thinking they are helping.
Charity shop recieves the top and thinks either "other tops the same sell for £10 or noones going to buy this it's going to have to be ragged/binned"
It's a catch 22 situation.

I was in a charity shop yesterday and they had an ASDA coat for £18
My sister has this coat bought new and it was £28
This was well worn and though not scruffy, definitely not new.
Likewise men's tshirts from asda with different graphics on. These are new in ASDA for about £8 and they had them for £6 after being worn and washed and worn and washed.
I tend to look for independent charity shops now in small towns. They are often treasure troves, and as PPs say have a bigger and quicker turnover than the big chain charities

I don’t think anyone benefits from those prices as the items will not sell. I also find it hard to believe that any charity shop prices faded per una tops at £25.

Of course they won't sell. Because customers are not daft. And despite what many posters on here seem to think, neither are most volunteers.

There seems to be this weird idea that charity shops are deliberately overpricing stock so that it doesn't sell. Which is ridiculous, because all stores are monitored on performance and if they are not covering their costs and bringing in a decent sum of money, the charity will cut their losses and close the shop down. There also seems to be this weird idea that charity shops must be either dirt cheap everything £1 type places, or the "bobbled Primark for more than it cost new" places. No middle ground, despite those of us who price clothes week in, week out explaining that actually, we do price at a reasonable level, and in our shop a very washed out top wouldn't even get on the rails in the first place.

I do agree with @Mydpisgrumpierthanyours in that people have perhaps a twisted idea of "worth" when it comes to their old stuff - someone will get use out of it. Well they might, but people are discerning. They do not want your old, stretched and washed out t-shirt, however much you want to believe that they do. People also feel very guilty about chucking stuff into landfill so kid themselves on that of COURSE there's a market for chipped mugs, empty DVD cases, broken electricals and books with pages missing so pass them on to us to dispose of so they can keep thinking they have done a good thing.

I think the problem is not the charity shop or Vinted but the general assumption that clothes should be as cheap as they are. Fast fashion is exploitative of the countries in which is manufactured and hugely polluting in those in which it is worn a few times and discarded.

If we all had fewer, better clothes and valued the role of good quality second hand clothing in the manufacturing cycle then charity shops could charge more for less but better good stuff and everyone would benefit in the long run.

I saw a top in a charity shop with a hole in the front going for £5, I mean who would buy it. I wouldn't have give 50p for it.

And did you point it out to the volunteers? Until recently when we had a refurb and they changed the lights, the lighting in our sorting room was so poor that often stuff would be priced and go out with big stains as we hadn't spotted them in the gloomy artificial light.

Stuff with holes will not ever sell, would be straight in the rag bag. Unless it's something like a designer frock with a split seam which is very easily repaired. We would also put out things with a missing button if it was easily replaced, especially on something like a winter coat.

The job of charity shops isn't 'to help anyone in poverty' it's to raise as much money as possible for the charity.

ITA. There’s an expectation gap. It’s in the charity’s objectives, set out in a legal document as to what the charity is meant to be doing, such as funding cancer research or providing support to people with cancer. If the charity has a trading subsidiary, the directors have a duty to work in the best interests of the charity.

The poor, who cannot afford clothes, need to find a charity that supplies clothes to the poor.

I'd rather donate to a shop that sold clothes for reasonable prices to people who need them in that case. I think a lot of people who donate do so because they want their item to have a new lease of life, especially with children's toys etc. Perhaps there is a gap for places to provide that and places to charge over inflated prices and of which only a % will make it to the charity itself.