To think a charity shop is taking the piss asking these prices?

[FrasierReboot]

Went into a charity shop today. Yes, I get that the charity needs to make money etc etc but....

£40 for worn bobbly Primark and George at Asda coats. Would probably have been half that price brand new

£7 for worn jeans with holes in the bum and or/crotch or seams, again brands such as Primark or George.

AIBU to think this is mad?

I do seem some ambitious pricing in other shops eg £23 for a jaegar jumper, yes it was pure wool, good brand but bobbly so not worth £23. Mistakes also get made where I volunteer but not often and the manager is happy to adjust prices eg stain that has been missed we will charge a nominal £1 or ask for a donation

Where I volunteer sales are increasing year on year and we are a very busy shop in a town with probably 15 charity shops. We get good quality donations, steam all clothing, merchandise well and customers seem happy to pay £15 for a nice quality sea salt dress when a new dress would retail at £60 +
That sounds like one of the charity shops I enjoy shopping in.

I don't expect dirt cheap bargains from charity shops, but do decide which ones I shop in based on the store experience, stock, and prices.

A nice shop with good stock in decent condition and reasonable prices will get my custom even if they're higher. I think that's fair because it's better stock.

A shop that's a little more chaotic, stock is varied quality but the prices are lower will also get my custom.

The shops that don't get my custom are ones that have lower quality stock (primarily supermarket, fast fashion and online ultra fast fashion with signs of wear) but price high, like £4 for a t shirt that was probably £5/6 new. The other ones I won't shop in are the ones liberally presenting things as vintage with associated mark ups.

@LifeofBrienne , books, CDs and DVDs don't sell very well and take up space so 5 for £1 will probably shift them.
Coats don't sell very well either. They are heavy to carry home and often need dry cleaning so I'd need to factor in that cost. Average dry cleaning cost for a coat is £15.

Agree coats don't sell particularly well, especially at this time of year. By the end of December, you've got a winter coat that you've bought in September or the beginning of October. Many of us carry a small foldaway bag which you could put a top or dress into, or a couple of books, but not a bulky coat. Lighter weight jackets are easier to sell. Jackets are also difficult to store as they take up so much space in the sorting room.

Are the charity shops with high prices in affluent areas? My nearest large town is not known for its affluence so you never see stuff priced at £40. It also means that you never see high end brands either.

The local hospice now just has a warehouse hub instead of shops in order to cut its overheads, and it is brilliant.

@RampantIvy , I live in a roughish town but some of the neighbouring towns are affluent.
The shops in the more well-off areas are generally better, better presented and far more expensive.

It sort of balances out, but I think harder about my purchases if they cost more.
If something is £1 or £2, I'll re-donate if it's a dud, but if it was £15 or more I'd return it or sell it.

I love charity shops, and really want them to succeed. A couple of observations after reading some comments here. Firstly, the comment about resellers buying and selling on at a profit shows that charity shops are undervaluing their stock. No. A reseller is using their time and their knowledge of brands/products, selling channels and their target audience to hand pick items, photograph them, research them and promote them to make that profit. It’s not easy money, it is hard work. If charities chose to do so - and many actually do - they could also be maximising their better items in this way. But it takes time and expertise. The charity has to weigh this up with a quicker physical sale at a lower price against finding someone with the time and experience to do this for them, and perhaps wait a little longer to get the higher price.

Secondly, as someone has said, the pricing needs to be at a happy medium. It’s all about the audience. Many people (myself included!) are happy to pay the higher costs of second hand items for sale in dress agencies. However, these are genuine designer or higher end high street stores, which have been meticulously checked by the shop owner, and who usually has a personal relationship with the seller. I used to use one regularly in a very affluent suburb of Birmingham, and I happened to be the same dress size (then!) as one of their most prolific sellers, who was a WAG. The shop owner used to call me when a new load had dropped. It had never been worn and was all top brands - Gucci, D&G, Chanel. But from the beautiful window display, interior decoration, personal shopper-style experience, and the ability to go through hundreds of top brands in fabulous condition, you expect to pay, and do. So charity shops expecting you to grub through racks of Primark, Boohoo and Shein in order to find something good, and then charging a dress agency price, isn’t going to cut it. People go into charity shops expecting a bargain, and are going to be confused and put off by being charged dress agency prices. Ask a decent price for decent stock, by all means, but charge what the audience thinks is a reasonable price and you won’t have stock sitting around for months, earning the charity £0.

I guess from my point of view you either want/need a new coat or you don't. It's not just carrying it home, it takes up space in your wardrobe, so if I wouldn't buy it for £10 then I wouldn't buy it for £1!
Books - I'm used to the Oxfam bookshop near us where the standard price used to be £2 for a book, probably £2.50 now but I guess they have a much bigger turnover as a specialist shop.

@LifeofBrienne , I posted earlier in the thread about buying a designer wool coat that fitted nicely for £10. I hadn't needed it but it was too good to leave. I'd have paid £20 for it. i can get rid of something else to make space for it

I stopped volunteering in Oxfam about 9 months ago but we were charging at that point £2.99 for a paperback novel. More for hardback specialist books. And they sold very well because they were curated and only the best went out, no rips or tears. No 100 copies of the Da Vinci Code or 50 Shades of Grey. Sorted by genre and the alphabetically within genre. Nicely displayed. Yes the Barnardos across the road sold their books at 50p or £1 but their books were all slung in crates with no checking as to quality, not sorted in any way.

In the area where the shop is, people are happy to pay a bit extra.

That's madness. You can a new buy coat in Primark for £35-£40. Or less.

Most of the women's clothes start off at £5-7 I my local charity shops. Unless I find a rare lovely coat or teapot I just enjoy looking. I buy off Vinted.

Occasionally I find a White Stuff coat for £12 but it's rare.

I volunteered at a kids charity shop and prices was 50p up to £4 for a proper designer coat like Ralph Laren (sp?)

Cheeky fuckers.

What? Charity shops are there to make money for their charity-NOT sell things so cheap they are practically giving them away! The fact that there are people on here openly admitting to being 're-sellers' tells me that there are plenty of unscrupulous people looking to make profits for themselves from items given in good faith to charity shops. IMO folk who trawl charity shops looking for bargains they can sell on for profit are about as low as it gets.

I fully understand charity shops are there for profit, but who buys second hands clothes for over 50% of full retail price? I don't even Normally brand new if not on sale unless its Primark

The number of people on this thread openly admitting to being 're-sellers' from Charity Shops is pretty sickening tbh. When I donate items I WANT the Charity to get the best price for them-not feed some greedy person's F-book marketplace/Eby/Gumtre habit. And those buyers who expect to buy good brands for next to nothing need to give themselves a long hard look. Nobody makes anyone buy from a charity shop, or any other shop for that matter. If you dont like the prices, go somewhere else!

As a volunteer I don't have a problem with resellers. When I price something, I price it for what I think it will sell for, now, in our shop. We do have an Ebay account but tend not to use it for clothes, but for jewellery and bric a brac.

If someone comes in and sees a Hobbs dress I have priced for £10, and thinks they can get £15 for it on Vinted or Ebay, I'm OK with that. Because for that extra fiver they have to photograph it, write a description, deal with questions, pay whatever fees the platform charges, package it, send it in the post, deal with complaints and returns. We could do all that but it's not a good use of limited volunteer time for a small extra return. My time is better spent sorting through more bags of donations or arranging the shop.

@Thistlewoman , I resell things quite often. They will be niche items that won't necessarily sell unless someone has a need for it.

An example might be a branded pair of jeans with a very large waist size.
Someone would look on ebay or vinted for them, but wouldn't think 'oh I'll pop down to a charity shop in Dullsville 120 miles away on the off-chance they'll have some'. The shop sells a tricky item, I make a few quid, buyer gets a great pair of jeans.

Totally this. I've been horrified by some of the responses on this thread by people complaining that they can't 'pick up bargains' at chaity shops as if thats why Charity Shops exist! As for those people openly admitting they are re-sellers from Charity shops-well words fail me about that. So many people expecting something for next to nothing... Grrrr. Am going to leave this thread now as I am beginning to despair about grasping, greedy, entitled humans, and thats not a good place to be at this time of year!

I wonder do they just look on ebay to get an idea of price? If so the prices there are more what people want for an item rather than what its worth. I saw a Cath Kidston bag in my local charity shop window and enquired as to price. It was 30.00. It was worn on the bottom and grubby inside. It may well be a brand that was originally expensive. It wasn't worth 30.00. I also see people on vinted asking for high prices for originally nice things that are nearing the end of their life. They get carried away.

The difference is you are making money on those items for yourself, not donating it to charity. I'm afraid that sits very badly for me. When I've seen the odd item at a local charity shop which I know is worth more I've either a) gone to the manager & pointed that out and/or b) sold it FOR them on eb*y and given the Charity the full proceeds of that sale. I just cant abide private individuals profiting from items which ultimately were donated free in order to raise money FOR THAT CHARITY. Re-sellers arent 'providing a service' as you seem to suggest, they are profiteering on the back of free donations. Yuck.

@Thistlewoman , I don't give a shiny shite that it sits badly with you. I buy a lot from them as do plenty of others. I donate regularly although usually to the shop I go into least often. I've helped them out when they've been rushed off their feet.

Those complaining about resellers: resellers are providing a service and rightly expect to get paid for that. Same way as people are welcome not to buy from charity shops if they don’t like the price, online buyers are also welcome to comb charity shops, fairs and antique markets for hours and hours and spend countless more polishing, waxing, cleaning and repairing, to get that item for less if they wish. The buyers are paying extra because someone has done all that leg work for them. What difference does it actually make to the charity shop if they sell something for 50p and the buyer keeps it, or the buyer sells it on for a profit? None. The charity shop still receives 50p. Or are you suggesting that resellers walk around all day, telling the volunteers that they are doing an awful job because this is actually worth X and you could get Y for that?

Do you also agree that all these people on Antiques Roadshow, Bargain Hunt etc. who buy items which are worth more should track down the original sellers and hand over their profits? Give over. It’s called capitalism. Charity shops, as retail outlets, still have to work within the general principles of capitalism. They already have andvantages available to them that other retail units don’t - free stock, volunteer staff, reduced rates and rent.

Oh, and I actually buy far, far more from other dealers than charity shops. It’s how the trade generally works.

Oooh. Defensive, much?? That says it all to me.

Oooh-defensive much? Touched a nerve I think. You reaction tells me everything about the 'reseller' motivation.

@BlackCountryWench2 yes I often wonder how people think antique dealers/vintage clothes shops/secondhand book shops etc source their stock 😂
I very briefly tried secondhand book selling. I travelled from charity shop to charity shop (and car boot sales) sourcing stock. Stuff I identified as good sellers, stuff people might want to collect etc.
I sold a whole pile of Goosebumps books to one (very excited grown up) person. They would have come from different places but I sourced them - which took my time - just like a job 😂