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!

[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 .

[dilemma456]

Message withdrawn

[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

[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.

[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.

[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

[zippitippitoes]

raison d'etre

[TheSmallClanger]

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

[zippitippitoes]

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

see the article i linked to

[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.

[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...