Charity shop prices

[Worryworms]

Went to a local charity shop today and the prices were ridiculous. £16 for a jacket that wasn’t in good condition, £8 for a worn bobbly primark jumper, £6 for a kids jumper that was very worn. Kids white school polos that were discoloured, £3 each. I recently bought a pack of 2 brand new ones for £3 at a supermarket. has any one else noticed this in their local charity shops?

Unfortunately they are given a lot of poor quality donations in this world of mass produced, crap clothing. I still like a rummage and frequently find stuff I like.

I recently found a Massimo Dutti satin shirt which was priced at £20 which seemed steep for a charity shop. However I liked it, it was pristine and if I’d seen it in the original shop at that price I’d have snapped it up. So I took it to the till to pay and was told, no, it’s not that price. It’s been here for over a month so it’s actually £10. Obviously their policy but seemed a bit bonkers when the charity could have gained that extra £10.

Sadly I’m not quite nice enough to insist on paying it anyway 😊

A beast quest bookset, maybe 5 books, was in a small charity shop at weekend for £15 that went straight back on the shelf.
Yet got a practically new mountain warehouse fleece for £2.50
No consistency in pricing puts me off
I always give my donations to the blue Cross shop we have in our town they make it really easy to drop off and prices are reasonable

Use your loaf! 😆 The stuff is OK/in working order/acceptable quality, I just take it to the charity shop to save waste and landfill. Did you really think I was taking broken crap that is useless to anyone to the charity shops? LMFAO! 😂 Get a clue!

@PurpleButterflyWings lots of people do. Ask any volunteer and they'll have stories about stuff which was only fit for the bin - chipped plates/mugs, empty DVD boxes, coloured in colouring in books, ripped clothing, broken toys etc etc etc.

@PurpleButterflyWings
people do it all the time. We could not take any more donations last Thursday as our rubbish had not been picked up and our storage area was full of mouldy books, rusty baking trays, clothes only fit for the bin and bags that had been left overnight outside the shop.

I don't know why I keep engaging with this threads .. same old arguments with no facts .
I don't deny that some charity shops are badly run, and mistakes are made ... just like in any other retail outlet.
But the clear facts and sales figures show that most charity shops will be producing profit figures otherwise they will be closed down. The charity I work for is actually expanding its shop portfolio so clearly something is working.
I do agree though that the quality of donations is dropping ... no one wants to buy cast off Primark and Shein.

Our local Oxfam sells reasonably priced goods. The one I find is sometimes very overpriced is the local hospice one. I get the impression that the recent trend for buying used clothing, rather than buying new, has been taken by the manager to mean that people will pay £25 for something well worn and of poor quality.

I've been into the shop a couple of times recently and note that the same items are still on the rails. It all starts to look pretty tatty which is a shame.

Saw a jumper for 18 pounds with obvious stains on in shelter today

🤮

I don't even wanna know what it was..... !!!!!!!! 🤮

Was it BHF? They are actually taking the mick with their prices,

I agree OP. Vinted is your friend.

A friend of mine donated a lot of baby stuff to a charity shop, she went back in a week later and told them off for how ridiculous the prices were. The manager said they use eBay to price things.

she went back in a week later and told them off

How rude.

She told them off? Seriously? I’m embarrassed for her.

If she thinks she could do so much better maybe she should have sold them herself on Vinted/eBay/FB and donated the money to the charity?

We have 8 charity shops on my local high street and they’re really varied. Some do seem to set their prices quite high but others have good bargains.

I find the charity shop bashing on here really irritating to be honest, if people care so much then I’m sure the charity shops would welcome extra volunteers who would go in and do things “right”.

Also I feel that they can’t win, some people seem to think they should be pricing everything dirt cheap and others think they should be getting the highest price they can for their donations to raise more for the charity.

The shop was barnardos which is a shame as I used always to support this charity. They used to be in a small shop but since they moved into a bigger shop they have become more upmarket and more expensive. I agree about BHF though as our local one is very expensive too. Most of the adult clothing in there is at the £8 mark. I would say the local hospice shop and the Salvation Army shop are the only charity shop with reasonable prices now

There is another Barnardos in the next town that I went in and they only sell children’s clothing and toys and that used to be very reasonable but now it’s like £4 for a children’s top that has stains or is very faded

I'm finding very little to buy in charity shops at the moment either. My local town is full of them but I had a mooch around this week and after visiting 6 had bought absolutely nothing.

BHF etc was full of brand new tat and stock that has been there ages. In others there was little I wanted and nothing at the price I was prepared to pay. I've now arranged a shopping trip next week with a friend (who is also a CS buyer usually) to the local outlet centre.

What's with all the recent threads bashing charity shops lately? Seems to have been a bunch of them over the past month.

I donate a lot of very high quality stuff to charity shops and I absolutely want both the charity and the person buying to benefit. Hence I only donate to charity shops that I know price fairly.
BHF is so overpriced now that they offer a student discount and it's deeply ironic that we had a charity shop worker earlier in the thread loving their Seasalt bargain when later we have someone protesting that workers never get first dibs! Make your minds up!

Look at the Charity Commission for England and Wales. OSCR for Scotland and CCNI for Northern Ireland.

Charity staff are paid. They deserve to earn a wage. Otherwise we return to the Victorian concept of those who are wealthier than others doing good for the deserving needy. Not very diverse eh?

Charity staff also don't earn massive wages. If they moved to the private sector their salary would jump considerably. If they moved to the public sector their pension would improve massively

Some big charities have bigger earners yes that's true, but they need to attract good quality employees. These charities have multi million turnovers, hundreds or thousands of staff, regulations and standards that private businesses don't have to adhere to.

Why don't people get pissy at shareholders earning money for doing nothing? Nope it's the charity staff who get it.

Charity staff deserve to earn a wage and a wage commensurate with their responsibilities.

Those that decry charity wages probably don't know enough about it and would be surprised if you did some proper research.

Having worked in the charity sector, albeit not retail, I've seen from bitter experience that sometimes, free or cheap staff can end up being extremely expensive.

It's nothing new @Lionoso . About the only thing which hasn't been said is that there is no good stuff in the shops because the volunteers steal it all.

I found this years ago, bobby Primark items priced for the same, or higher than new. Lots of charity shops have shut down now in our town but two of the best ones are the Air Ambulance, where everything is £1, and the Salvation Army, which is always busy.

Another dedicated charity shop shopper here. I get pretty much all my clothes and shoes from one in particular in my (small, middle England) town, and find their prices are very reasonable - supermarket and cheaper brands are very good - jumpers for £2.50, T shirts for £2.00 etc, and "designer", higher end stuff very affordable. There are a couple of others in the town which are slightly more pricy, but still very reasonable, and they are all busy when I go in, with a good turn over of stock. I love to bargain hunt, and, of course, you do have to dig to find the best bits.

The staff tell me that they keep their prices as low as possible to encourage foot fall into the shop, and that overcharging would be counter productive because it would put people off coming in. It seems they're right reading some of the comments on here.

A few recent examples from "my" shop would be a beautiful, pure cashmere overcoat for £6; a lovely Jasper Conran jacket for £5.50: a lovely, band new with labels Monsoon dress for £3.50 and a Karen Millen blouse for £3.00 (also BNWT).