To be shocked at the price of used clothes on the Oxfam online shop

[pigletmania]

I was browsing on the Oxfam online shop and was at the prices of the used clothes, £29 for a pair of tatty Miss Sixty jeans, and £17 for a used Miss Sixty top. Even the non branded clothes are a lot, you might as well buy them new from the shop. I used to love hunting in charity shops and finding bargains in days of yor, but now no way. I used to work with adults with LD, and this man with Autism used to like gettig cds from the charity shop, at £3 per used cd (some crappy 90's bands not recent chart music) you might as well go on Amazon and get them new. More often than not he could not afford it on is daily allowance at the day centre.

I agree PlanetEarth that the primary function of charity shops is to raise money for their charities but I do think that providing affordable kit for those on low incomes has become a secondary (but important) function. It is also one of the reasons people like to donate to them, imo.

Their pricing was often a bit odd - you'd have really quite desirable items selling for pennies, alongside tat selling for the same price. I think that was something Mary Portas picked up on, and she was right to.

Now it's even odder, as clothing has become so inexpensive (in relative terms). I don't think they've taken this into account.

Their pricing was always a bit odd, I should have said.

as new clothing has become so inexpensive.
FFS!

I don't walk into Jigsaw, LK bennett, John Lewis etc and expect to get a financial bargain but I do expect a shop assistant to find me a different size or suggest a belt then put my purchase in a nice bag with a smile.

The Primark shoping experience may be cheaper on the pocket but it's harder work and although clean with lots of choice not a luxury experience.

Round here the Charity Shops are poorly stocked, the shop fittings are dirty, the changing room curtain is too narrow for privacy and it's not significantly cheaper to compensate for the limited choice. A friend who is still addicted to bargains buys far more then she ever wears, gets stuff home, justifys it with it was only £4 but never wears it. Thats no bargain.

Me, I'm too poor to wear cheap shoes and my kids have not very much but good quality and pretty much wear it out.

I agree and disagree

It depends on the remit of the charity shop.

If it's the sort of organisation that is generally viewed as providing a service to the community then you could argue that part their function is to offer bargains to the more skint in the community. People who donate items for sale to these charity shops know this and consider that they're giving to the community as well as the cause. If I have something that I want to give away for this purpose, I'll take it to this sort of shop, or Freecycle/Freegle it.

But if it's an organisation that has a specific remit (to raise money for medical research, for example) then I'm afraid it is their duty to raise money as much money as they can for this cause. Put it this way. People who donate items for sale to these places specifically want the proceeds to go to that cause. It is a donation in kind. If I want to give a tenner to a particular charity and don't have a tenner to spare, but I do have some good-quality clothing that I don't wear, I'll give that to the charity shop. If they could get a fiver for it, I'd be miffed if they flogged it for two quid.

When I volunteered at a charity bookshop, my manager pointed out that a person who donated a book worth, say, twenty quid (something valuable and collectible) would be upset to see their donation discounted. Sometimes the prices the volunteers put on books would be off, but the manager would correct them. And interestingly, most of the people who argued about the prices of the books were rather well-heeled with plummy voices

Oh yes, and we thought that Oxfam's prices were off :D

And just to play devil's advocate: I know one or two (rather irritating) people who will buy things from Oxfam because they view it as more posh than other charity shops. They can't bring themselves to admit that they're charity-shopping because they're skint. So they'll bang on about the unique and fabulous finds. Perhaps there is an element of catering to this market (albeit not one I personally agree with).

By the way, most of my stuff comes from cheap and cheerful charity shops or from eBay

And I'd rather give direct to a charity in the hope that more of the money gets used.

Anyone know how much of a £1 in the till of a charity shop actually makes it thru to doing some good?

Oh I agree.
My two fave charity shops are incredibly cheap compared to eveywhere else tho, so I refuse to pay more! Handbags for £1, that sort of thing.

Googled it only 18p in every pound makes it to actually raising money.
www.intelligentgiving.com/the_buzz/the_blog/is_giving_to_charity_shops_intelligent_giving

Not read all this thread but saw it and wanted to comment.

My local charity shops, in Surrey, charge about £1 for a peice of childrens clothing - t-shirt, babygro, jeans.

When I recently visited DH's hometown in Cumbria, the same types of items were going for £3-4 - next jeans for £3.75 that have a retail price of about £6/7!

I couldn't understand it at all when the average wage in Surrey must be about double that of Cumbria (not meaning to sound snobby but I am just guessing - if house prices are anything to go by!)??

I dont know. My local high street has, I think, 7/8 different charity shops. In addition to that for clothes shops we also have Dorothy Perkins, New Look, D2 and M&Co. We dont have a vast amount of choice, but our charity shops are brilliant. They could charge crazy prices because of our lack of choice, but they dont, its all very reasonable. The only downside is that each shop is quite small and doesnt do much by way of babies clothes, but I use ebay for that.

I guess it depends where you are...

bloody nora - just looked at their online prices - what a bloody cheek!

I've not looked online but whenever I go in there I'm always amazed at how overpriced some of their tat clothes are. You can buy brand new in Primark et al for the same money. It's ill advised IMO, as it puts people off. Better to sell cheaply than not sell at all, esp. as they get their stock for nothing.

I want to know where all these charity shops selling lovely clothes are because it isn't here! The Salvos in town has a great bargain bin for the children though, 5 items for a pound, I'm always in there!

I recently spotted a top I'd donated to Oxfam on sale for more than I'd paid for it new. I have to admit I tend to give stuff to them so I can get the M&S vouchers (£5 off a £35 spend if you donate something from M&S).

Our Oxfam bookshop's had a revamp too, haven't noticed the prices too much, but it just feels like a bland discount bookstore now. I go to charity/second hand shops for interesting finds, now they seem scared of any books that actually look second hand.

I've noticed this too since moving to an area with few local high street shops but a wealth of charity shops. What irks me most, as another poster pointed out, are the bobbly, tatty, misshapen, out-of-fashion Primark t-shirts languishing limply on hangers on for twice the price they would have been new. One of my local shops has a fantastic £1 rail which has a really high turnover and I often find fantastic things there, and another I have kitted out my kitchen from with cheap and modern teapots, mugs, pots, and trays. But at the same time, I've seen things like faded old bottles of slightly used M&S moisturiser for £2 which were only £1 brand new. It's quite insane.

I think it's because they are staffed by old ladies who haven't got much of a clue about what will sell and what won't, and what is a fair price to expect someone to pay for a bit of tired polyester from BHS circa 1998.

Re. what bobdog said about not getting nice service in charity shops - sadly, I agree. I volunteered in Oxfam for a while and I did try to smile and be nice, and especially when people asked why it was so expensive, I tried to explain politely that there was a pricing policy and that the particular Oxfam shop we were in was trying to go posh and there was an ordinary one in the next town.

My manager, on the other hand, was incredibly rude to anyone who asked him anything. People would come in, say something like 'Why is this necklace £50, is it special or something' (reasonable question imo) and he would give them a filthy glare and make a sarcastic comment about them not knowing good stuff when they saw it.

I cringed every time a customer came up to him because you could tell he was going to be really rude and condescending. Gives charity shops a bad name.

Oxfam is a complete rip off, I don't even bother going in now. I saw a an old black fleece priced at £19.99; I would have paid maybe £9.99 new for it.

chocorange I'm in Cumbria . It depends where you are. There are pockets( in the lakes) of 'money' but in general Cumbria is a poor county.

we have loads of charity shops where i live and tbh ithink they are ok - getting pricier but ok. you do find a tesco tshirt for 4.50 but then you may well find a boden tshirt next to it for the same. its all about the rummaging - for the most part none of ours seem to really distinguish between labels.

most of my wardrobe is charity shops - think most i have paid is £30 for monsoon ballgown from bridal section.

Totally agree. I try to buy as many of my books as possible from charity shops, but I mostly avoid Oxfam as I'd be better off getting them on Amazon.

Oxfam where I live is a shop for people with good incomes who want to support Oxfam by shopping there. That's fair enough, but many people don't have the luxury of 'donation shopping' and are looking for a genuine bargain.

I also think that many charity shops are totally ill informed about how much stuff costs when new. They seem to think that anything from Next for example, is 'designer clothing' and they price it at about the same as new in the sale no matter how worn it is.

Anything with an actual aspirational label will be wildly marked up no matter how old, hideous or worn it is.

Oxfam do a very good job and I don't grudge them their right to sell as they please, but I think most people will walk on by and shop elsewhere, leaving the minority (like my parents) to go in and pay over the odds for no other reason than that they support the charity.

Oh gosh Oxfam have a website?? I used to live just off westbourne grove in w.london and the oxfam there was obscenely expensive- the occasional designer jacket/shoes etc but none of it was nice, just priced up to the local market and the labels. It's sad because I think it goes against the grain of what a charity shop is all about, and most of the money goes on overheads so it's all ridiculous, but if people are willing to pay those prices and walk out feeling that they've got a bargain or have done their bit for charity then the shops will continue to charge such high prices, just because they can

Now it depends......we have a lot of charity shops where we live. I always let the kids go in and see what's there (and donate it back in a few weeks when they have got tired of it.)

Our favourite one was a children's hospice chain. We've donated a lot to them - in fact they wrote to tell us we'd gone over £1000 sales - they have to tell you if they claim gift aid on your donations. Anyway, suddenly, they tripled all their prices . Yes tripled.

I asked them why and they said 'we are trying to compete with Oxfam'. Now being ambitious is great - but this is a teeny tiny rural charity. It's not going to happen.

TBH it completely put me off them. I still support what they do but think they've gone a bit tonto and won't be donating anymore (there is a competing charity down the road which does children and adult hospice care which hasn't put all it's prices up and is unsurprisingly always busy - they can have all our stuff now).

Having said I was looking for some fabric to upholster window seats today and backed some very heavy, very large curtains for £10 from Age/shoot the aged/whatever they are called this week.

But I do think freecycle has a lot of impact. And other methods. People are becoming quite disillusioned with the whole commercialisation of charities. There are other options for getting rid of your stuff and getting new stuff.

I agree with the OP our local Oxfam charges around £3-4 for second hand paperbacks which cost £6.99 new, or usually less in Tescos.

As a result I buy nothing there, but spend a lot in the Hospice shop where they are more reasonably priced at £1.25.

Freecycle is popular round here along with car boots and the freeads. It's a small community and word gets round of the waste involved with charity shops along with the erratic but generally high prices. The local vintage/clothing exchange is doing well for all our posh cast-offs.

I think that more people are begining to associate charity shops with high prices rather then 'bargains'. They are going to have to decide whether they are a great place to find quirky vintage pieces with great customer service or bargain basement.