Charity shops....

[Thefearlessfreak]

To expect charity shops to take your donations when you struggle in the door with them?

Even if they have loads of stuff it just seems rude to be told to take it all away!

And: is it unreasonable to expect that they charge charity style prices? e.g Often, Primark clothes are for sale in charity shops for the same price as when new.

You still have to think twice about a purchase because it is no longer a bargain to buy second hand!

[wobbegong]

I love charity shops and trawl them all the time. I think some of the posts here miss the point, that they exist to make money- as much as possible for charity. So that's why they might not always be stuffed full of 50p bargains for us! Also for some things I would much rather recycle than buy something new, especially if it's baby clothes or toys or books.

It's sad thought that many of the ones round here don't take or sell childrens or baby's clothes. That just seems madness. One store manager told me it was "elf and safety", oh fgs.

I have three times recently been in a charity shop when the volunteer has either given me something for free or knocked down the price, always (obviously) without me asking. A while ago I was in admiring a gorgeous handmade baby blanket and telling a volunteer that I wouldn't take it as I didn't really need it and didn't want to spend the cash, and she said to me furtively, "take it, just take it, put it in your bag. they'll only throw it away, they throw everything away here, it makes me so upset, you must take it..." etc. etc. while literally pushing it into my bag.

I did take it, which is stealing probably. And I feel suitably terrible every time I look at it. I can only assume that the volunteers and their friends do this all the time. What goes on behind the curtain, eh...

[elkiedee]

Years ago I volunteered in a Save the Children shop for a while and I'd have to say there are reasons why they can't accept some donations, though I think we always explained quite politely.

Given that it was a children's charity, donated toys had to have a CE label demonstrating that it was made to some kind of safety standard. Electrical items are also presumably going to be an isue on safety grounds.

And I'm actually more likely to buy, or to look long enough to find something I'd want to, in shops with books I might actually want and in reasonable condition on the shelves, for example. And where goods for sale are organised. If everything I can see looks like rubbish, I may not look much further.

I like bargains but I do find the best charity shops are the ones which are properly run, and that the prices are accordingly higher.

My difficulty is getting things to charity shops - don't have a car and on a previous occasion when I asked my mum to take stuff to charity shops she found it very difficult to find one she could park close to.

[zippitippitoes]

interestingly tho they are taking more money so it does actually work

see the article i linked to

[TheSmallClanger]

They are pricing themselves out of the market if their stock is the same price as new stuff, though.

[zippitippitoes]

raison d'etre

[zippitippitoes]

but charity shops raison d'etere is to make as much money as possible for their cause such as the relief of poverty

and that costs a lot of money

[TheSmallClanger]

Oxfam bookshops are awful. One of the best things about a good charity shop is the weird and wonderful selection of 50p paperbacks, which sometimes include some classics, like a Penguin copy of Nancy Mitford's Noblesse Oblige I snapped up for a friend.
There are some good charity shops not far from us which fall into the "posh area" category. Quite a lot of nice stuff to choose from and run by lovely dotty old dears. Scope shops, I find, are often very good.

[bogwobbit]

Fircone, my dd worked in a charity shop and she wasn't given first dibs on any of the stuff that came in although other shops are obviously different as your experience shows. Imo charity shops are only as good as their volunteers / managers and no doubt with volunteers being hard to come by, they just have to take who they can get.

[zippitippitoes]

british heart foundation managers have profit related pay and can choose their own stock

so the mnore money they make for the store the mnore they can earn

the basic pay is about 12k which isnt a lot for a full time job manging a shop mand vlunteers there is quoite a lot to it

[dilemma456]

Message withdrawn

[CaptainUnderpants]

if you want to buy books cheap , say for holiday etc , then go to your local library . In Surrey they sell books 10p 20p . I picked up a few for holiday reading , great bargain !

In some charity shops I went into they were asking £2 for a paperback !

The money is still going to a good cause, plus I left the books at the ' book exchange ' at our campsite .

[ranting]

I agree with the OP and I do all my clothes shopping in them but there are still some excellent charity shops around, especially the independant ones.

We have an excellent animal charity one here that flogs a lot of stuff for 50p and they will take anything. When I mentioned to the chap there that it was a joy to shop there and what a bargain it was. He said that they price stuff to sell, so if something doesn't shift for a pound within a week they put it on the 50p rail and it goes.

The Sally Army ones seem to be reasonably priced but I avoid Oxfam (way too overpriced) and Cancer Research which sells too many branded goods and is also overpriced. Our local Age concern is not too bad, you can still pick up reasonable pieces for a reasonable price, but some of the bigger ones seem to think that because you are buying second hand you will pay a premium for it. I personally think they should be shown the responses here and get wise to the realities of the world.

[fircone]

I know the people who work in charity shops are volunteers, but I think that having first dibs on the stuff really impacts on what is available for sale to the general public.

I took a load of dh's (posh work) shirts into one shop and then a few days later took some more things in. Not seeing dh's shirts hanging up, I asked if they had any decent work shirts (they didn't recognise me). "oh, no" they said. Hmmmmm.

Another time I took in some things, including a new diary (just after Christmas). As I was leaving I saw the two old helpers rummaging through my bag and one said, "I'll have this" about the diary.

[ahfeckit]

I'm sorry for OP having a bad experience. I had a bag of books I handed into a charity shop this morning and the woman was nothing but polite to me.
I did notice how they now sell brand new stock, as well as used, which I honestly didn't think they did (shows how long since I last stepped into a charity shop!!!). I've really changed my opinions of charity shops and will visit them more frequently in the future.

[casbie]

i was shocked when i went into an Oxfam shop and they wanted £7.99 for a white shirt!

it's second-hand, and one of the supermarket brands...

ridiculous.

also, in one Oxfam shop in truro they priced a nice warm jacket for £40!!! yes, it was brand-name, but for people like me, buying jackets in charity-shops is a life-line. shame it wasn't my colour. next time i went in it was still there, price changed to £20 and they still hadn't managed to shift it!

[Ashantai]

Cant be arsed with dragging bags of clothes to charity shops. Luckily our recycle lorry also takes clothes and i was able to get rid of 5 black bags full of clothes the other day

[LittleDorrit]

I love browing in charity shops, and over the years have bought some nice things, but like others, I get pretty annoyed when I see things that are really over priced. Particularly that sometimes you see old people, who obviously have little money and little idea of what things should cost, buying stuff that they could get a lot cheaper somewhere else. Agree that Oxfam is particularly bad in that regard. E.g. horrible plates priced at £2 each when you could get much nicer ones new somewhere else.

[expatinscotland]

the local hospice runs a shop in our village, but no clothes, just really great bric a brac.

it's where i find all the decanters for my homemade orange liqueur, which i give out as Xmas gifts, throughout the year.

[noonki]

Bean - carboots can be a great place to get cheap goodish clothes, as are the rare jumble sales I find,

but at charity shops they exist to make money for their charity, and can have large overheads so need to charge more money

[noonki]

but why would that be fair, when in the rest of the market designer clothes cost much more-

it would only be fair if the prices between primark and prada were fair in the first place (ie primark paid it's workers more and prada made less of a profit)

[Thefearlessfreak]

I totally agree with that point Littlebella - that they should be affordable for people who can't afford to be choosy. The designer stuff that they get now...or vintage stuff too; they should still just be sold at a cheap & realistic price. Perhaps they could just be FAIR - and charge equally for primark or prada; then I wouldn't mind so much.

[Themasterandmargaritas]

If you don't feel like giving to charity shops or can't, if you find some of the massive 'clothes bins' in recycling points a great deal of these clothes get sent to Africa. Second hand clothing is big business here and companies ship out massive bundles of used clothes which are bought by market stall traders who then wash them and sell them on to the locals and many folk like me. New clothes in the shops are ridiculously expensive even for foreigners like me, so many of us go to the market and rummage around for a bargain or two. For example yesterday I found a Boden girl's party dress from last year's catalogue in perfect condition apart from the face it was dirty. So please send your clothes my way!

[LittleBella]

I think they've lost the old notion that it was a double charity, first to raise money for the charity, second to the people who were buying the clothes, who might not be able to afford new ones. The second idea has been completely jettisoned in the rush towards capturing the young, hip, rich market.

Oxfam bookshops are having a disastrous effect on traditional second hand booksellers as well. They don't have to pay for their stock, they get 80% reduction on rates and they don't have to pay their workers. Hardly fair trade in my book.