To think charity shops ....

[Hando]

Should actually sell what is donated to them, if it is is good condition?

I did some volunteering work in a charity shop. It's a great cause and I had a couple of weeks spare time, so worked my arse off and enjoyed it.

However, I had to leave. I was disgusted by the way they treated the items kindly donated to the shop. Firstly, this charity shop have FAR more donations than they could ever sell. They go through and pick out nicest bits. If it has a tiny mark, missing button etc, then it gets binned.

One day we were told to sort through all that days donations and only keep kids stuff or designer labels- as the shop was getting full. We were throwing away bags and bags of lovely mens and ladies clothes lots of whoch were hardly worn and some really stunning bits. There ar elots of smaller, less well known charity shops in the same street so I offered to take some of the surplus black bags (perhaps over 20 in one day) to them for them to sell. I was met with astonished gasps. We couldn't do that. The "rag man" collects them and they get about £2 for a huge black bag full of clothes ~(sometimes lovely ones) which could have been sold for much much more.

The shop manageress doesn't like certain styles or materials so anything like that has to be binned. Hmmmm.... so she decides the taste of the whole town?

AIBU to be totally dissapointed at the way they treat donations from very kind people?

I give all our old baby and children's clothes to my HV.

She told me that many families in our town simply can't afford the charity shop prices.

When I heard that, I just decided to give the stuff straight to her and she (afaik!) distributes it to the families she sees on her rounds.

What a great idea WinkyWinkola! But i guess it depends on how good your HV is?

What Lymond said. I have worked for charities that have shops, and it really isn't as straightforward as "people have donated these items in good faith, we must put them in the shop." In addition, some people, unfortunately, seem to see them as responsible for disposing of their unwanted goods, irrespective of the condition.

With childrens clothes / toys and women's clothing, it is worth ringing local police stations - two in our area collect items on behalf of women's refuges, who always need items for families who arrive with virtually nothing.

I stick clothes in clothing banks & cheerfully expect it to be shredded. To be fair I'm a scruffy git - if I'm getting rid of something, it's unlikely to be saleable!

Children's clothes I pass on to friends, or freecycle - I think this works well with decent clothing generally.

A mate of mine recently freecycled a dozen binliners of clothes: she's lost a lot of weight, her dd has had a growth spurt, & she was overdue a clear out anyway.

They were picked up within the hour by a lady who was completely open about her intention to cherry pick the good stuff for Ebay & give the rest to one of the rag 'charities' who give a couple of quid per bag to whatever cause it is...

I think it's fair enough - at least it's not ending up in landfill. & charity shops as a source of cheap clothes are going to struggle to compete with Asda etc, tbh.

Which is a fairly depressing thought for all sorts of reasons, but you can see why charity shops are reluctant to fill their expensive retail space with anything they won't sell quickly.

inthesticks - sorry the charity I volunteer with isn't big enough to have organised bag collections yet so I don't know much. I would imagine that anyone organised enough to do bag collection would also be organised enough to sort well.

stubbornstains - the thing is that a charity has a duty of care to the projects and people it fundraises for to make the most amount of money possible to continue those projects, so pricing things really low (although helpful for locals on low incomes) presents something of a conflict of interest. Having said that, we have decided to not sell on ebay at the moment, even though Oxfam have told us they got a lot more per clothing item on ebay than in the shops, because we think that charity shops in the high street are an important service to the community as well as raising our profile. We could get a lot more money for things like pushchairs, which we get a lot of, by selling them online, but the only people who buy them from a charity shop are those who really couldn't afford one otherwise, and we want to offer that service.

cat64 - you're welcome; I saw this thread and had visions of it leading to a drop off in donations. Mumsnet is powerful!

feelingoptimistic - Pricing is our perennial difficulty. We're constantly undergoing retraining. Ultimately though, things don't sell if they're over priced; we operate a strict ticketing system where things are shuttled to another shop if they haven't sold after a week, and then moved to another shop and they price dropped if they haven't sold after another week.

I've worked as a BHF shop and it was nothing like some of the stories on here. Although in our case we never had the luxury of excess stock.

Yes designer stiff is generally priced higher. Why shouldn't it be. If people are prepared to buy Armani jeans for £100 instead of tesco for £10, then why not a bit more 2nd hand.

When I worked there I estimate that only 25-30% of stuff that came in was sellable. It was amazing the amount of crap that came in. People would come in with a bin bag of what they said was good quality stuff. When we opened the bag it would be filthy or worn out or just tat so we sold it to the rag man instead and got at least some money for it. Some people send in dirty stuff thinking we'd be able to wash it, but charity shops do not have the time or money to clean what could be sellable stuff. Any stuff we didn't sell after 2-3 weeks was send on to another store and we also received stuff from other stores.

Not everything goes out straight away, winter coats, woolly jumpers etc that came in in summer would be saved (room permitting) until winter when it wasmore likely to sell. If we had an excess of certain stuff Eg childrens clothes, some would be put on one side for a few weeks until we were running low again. So if you donate and expect to see your stuff a week later it may not even had gone out yet, or if it has, it's sold quickly if it nice stuff.

Some charity aren't allowed to sell electrical stuff (H&S issues etc)but we used to save ours and pass it on to a branch that was allowed.

People talk about 'the old dears' who work there but remember most of these shops are run on the minimum amount of paid staff as possible and without these 'old dears' giving up their time and helping out for free, most of these shops wouldn't function at all, and getting volunteers of any age is an ongoing struggle.

So please don't stop giving to charity shops because they are not all run like some of ones described here

Anyone see the 'Mary charity shop' programmes on television?

I used to work for Oxfam and i didnt see anything saleable getting thrown out. Even stuff that was stained/ripped etc was sent to be recycled. We didnt sell stuff from primark/tesco or really cheap stuff though, because we couldn't afford to put it out for less than it is new in these super-cheap shops, which would have just ripped off the customer really.

Used to annoy me the amount of unsaleable crap that got donated though, broken kids toys, used hairbrushes, dirty cutlery, even dirty knickers.

I gave all my clear out stuff to the Red Cross shop when we left UK. It went straight into the shop - there the same day or next morning. definitely not binned.

I ended up buying back a teddy that had been donated by us by mistake!

The shop featured in Mary Queen of Charity Shops is near where I live. Yes, it looks good, but generally isn't the best one to go to in the area. To be blunt, the normal stock is over-priced. It does have some designer gear, but the prices that it sells for aren't the sort of prices your average charity shopper is going to be able to afford.
There are other charity shops in the area selling similar articles much more cheaply.

"No bargains because the old dear doing the pricing doesn't know that FCUK is more expensive than atmosphere."

I do sometimes like that about charity shops. Yes, I am going to hell. But then, I once bought a McQueen blazer in Help the Aged for £4.50.

A shop in Richmond was selling v.worn Debenhams jackets for £50. I know they need ot try and maximise donations and it is a wealthy area, but for that price you could buy it new.

There was an odd charity shop near where I used to live - not a big chain, but one I'd never heard of. I went in there for a pan as I needed something to dye fabric in, and they were selling burnt-out pans for £1.50 and the window was full of 1995 Antiques Roadshow guides and a penny in a presentation box with a note saying 'Sell £150 not below' taped to the lid. MrMippy took a donation in once when we were clearing out and the woman just said 'Oh' to him.

mippy, you bought a McQueen for £4.50?
a bargain hunter after my own heart!
my local BHF sells loads and loads of really awful, overpriced stuff. we have loads of charity shops all together [great fun!] and they sell really nasty things, but we have Scope which is excellent, and one which i forget the name which does nice stuff...
but our Oxfam is jaw-droppingly expensive, and our Help The Aged is full of stuff that noone would ever, ever use, in awful condition

I have a different take on charity shops. the one I volunteer for has 2 manageresses, one is conscientious and does everything by the book, the other pillages all the items that come in when she is on duty and then the items she fancies just disappear!!!! No record in the sales book or the staff book. It's an open secret in the town about what she does but management seem unable or unwilling to stop her. Scandal would be very bad for the charity.We are a small local animal charity and this needs to stop. Any suggestions?

shika- sack her? report her to the police for theft?

or make a general announcement to the staff that from now on anyone caught taking items will be reported for theft, much like in any other shop. staff can't do this in sainsbury's and charity shops should be no differnt.

thinking bout it- sack her. she's doing more harm than good for that charity.

I don't shop in half the charity shops around here now and the cancer ones do seem to be the worst offenders. Everything is just soooo overpriced, I stopped going into the cancer research one when I pointed out that they were charging more for a set of childrens books, that were in awful condition, than they cost to buy new and got a earful about how if I wanted them I had to pay the price on the label, I was just trying to be helpful I didn't want to buy them they were in such a state I would have binned them myself, I just thought they might want to know!

HB for over £4 and paperback Mills & Boons for £2.

They don't seem to realise that people shop in charoty shops for a bargain or because they can't afford to shop elsewhere. When they start charging ridiculas prices (£20 for a dress from M&S!) then people know that they won't find a bargain and that its too expensive so stop going in and at the same time stop donating as well!

My local Fara has sadly gone this way with a new manager, I used to pop in and treat myself to a new skirt or top for £1.50 or so, now everything is at least a £5 and I no longer shop there, her reason was that it would sell for that on ebay!

I felt like saying then sell it on ebay then, cause you won't get that for it around here!

Goodness. I was just about to head out with a pile of stuff to the BHF shop in the high street, but I think I'll go to the Sue Ryder one instead.

Oh and I stopped giving books to nearly all of them a while ago as I discovered the policy was that if the spine was at all discoloured as is the case of most books over 5years old, never mind what the condition of the book was in, then they go straight out to be pulped, which would be why you never ever see any older books that might be out of print in charity shops these days!

I took my donation of books back home with me and took them to the car boot for 10p each instead!

Can't bear the thought of perfectly good books being destroyed for no reason