Standard of Charity shop clothing

[FANTINE2]

I like to shop in charity shops, and over the years I’ve found some great stuff.
In the past week, however, I have had to return 3 items due to them having holes in them.
First a Whistles top . I discovered at least two holes as I was putting it in the bag. The assistant refunded me immediately.
Secondly a Hobbs jumper, wool with some cashmere. Really happy with it until I got it home and discovered two holes.
Finally today a Sweatty Betty sweatshirt with quite a high price tag. Again, got it home to find a hole!
Altogether I spent approximately £25 on these items. I know I will be refunded, but this seems to be happening more snd more in charity shops. It’s like as if they see an ok label and slap a high price on without checking to see the quality of the garment.
Do they really think that people are going to pay £10 for a jumper with holes in it? It’s really frustrating. I understand that they are trying to make money for the charity, but I think they are beginning to take people for mugs.

Has anyone else had a similar experience?

If the light is bad I ask if I can take an item to the doorway so I can see it in daylight, and offer them my coat or bag as security.

My daughter loves them but you have to try on and inspect the items. Frankly if you can't see the holes or issues when doing this how can you expect staff to when they have much less time and are trying to process stuff quicker?
I do agree the prices do seem on the high side which affects turnover.
But she wears the clothes - yesterday she had in a velvet blazer, wool skirt and shoes all bought recently from a charity shop and looked amazing. The skirt needed hemming as it was frayed but a minor fix. Another blazer will need the sleeve length adjusted but the quality warrants it. This is what one expects, surely?

So difficult for you but not difficult for the staff. Ok. And for those who don’t return, it’s for charity. So assume they are happy to donate.

Genuine question … why does the charity shop have to pay to send stuff for rags?

I ask because in the local shop that we donate to (Sense) the manager specifically requests to giver her everything, but pre-sort it into rags and saleable.

Before that request I would take non-saleable to textile recycling at the recycling centre, but the shop manager says that her rag-bag pickup is a good stream of income for them.

I don't know, I wasn't the manager.

As others have said, it is the volunteers who price and check clothes. How could the manager possibly check every item on the shelf?

They refund if you find a fault - check in the shop, and point it out to them if you do.

As for an army of menders - if you cost out someone’s time, even at minimum wage, there are very few repairs that would pay for themselves in proceeds from the garment.

Far more cost effective to mark “defect - hole in sleeve” and price adjust,.

The manager doesn't have time to check garments that others are supposed to. They have a raft of paperwork to handle, sales targets, admin, etc.

Like another poster said I'd expect to remove some pilling from second hand knitwear, but would not expect to have to do lots of mending or find large holes in items.

I think some people do see the label and slap a higher price on, certainly that seems to be the case in some of my local ones.

One of my local ones went through a phase of writing the shop brand on the price label for anything that isn't low high street, online super fast fashion or supermarket. Another took items at random to make a "boutique" rail, which tended to mean they'd slap an extra £5/10 on per item. I'd understand if it was a good quality Hobbs/Boden/Cos/Arket in good condition, but an extra £5 on a well worn fat face jersey dress doesn't work for me.

Now I've got a set of charity shops that I go to more often that price well, have good stock and are pleasant to shop in.

@zigzag716746zigzag they don't, they get paid per kilo for rags.
Unless it's stuff they can't rag in which case they'd have to dispose of it which might cost - eg tip runs / petrol costs.

I’m a volunteer at a charity shop. To answer your question:-
We don’t have enough volunteers so only have about 2 seconds per garment to check condition.
The average age of our volunteers is 76, so a lot don’t have perfect eyesight. Coupled with the badly lit, run down shop it’s hard to see faults.
With eBay and vinted people now sell their unwanted good quality clothes rather than donate to charity. This means we get mountains of cheap bad quality fast fashion to sort and try and sell.

Would you like to come and volunteer op?

You really think people are beating down the door to buy a jumper with a hole in the sleeve?

Some defects are very easily fixed. A missing button on a coat, where there's a spare attached to a label inside. Or a split seam which needs just a few quick stitches. I would price those sorts of items accordingly and note the fault. But there are SO MANY second hand clothes that people are just not interested in anything with a more serious fault, a flaw in a very obvious spot, or something which needs more extensive sewing skills.

Mistakes get made, our shop does not have a paid manager at all, it's purely volutneers. The other place I volunteered had a 35 hour a week manager and the shop was open 53 hours a week. Things do get missed occasionally though.

Our shops take clean rags to sell, I assume you mean they have to pay to have rubbish taken away, filthy and broken things, fire risk fabrics etc.

I ask first if they want rags, they always say yes.

@Zone2NorthLondon

These aren't high street basic items though, they are all expensive labels, they would have been £££ new.

Things do slip through with holes at our shop occasionally but we do try to check them or indicate the issue if repairs are possible. The bigger issue is the huge quantity of poor quality, damaged and dirty items that are donated (and not marked as rags only) some bags, many bags in fact have nothing worth selling in. Marked rags are fine as these are sold to a dealer for a few pence by the kg and usually sent overseas or recycled.

The people who collect our rags pay us to take them away. Not just clothing - also things like shoes, bags, soft toys, cushions, bedding. But it's very low, like 25p a kilo. We could get more by taking the rags to the recycling plant ourselves but as they come and collect they factor that into the price they give us. Processing rags is not a good money maker for charity shops.

We pay commercial rates for disposal of "rubbish" - all the non-textile junk people give us like chipped mugs, broken plastic toys/games, crusty frying pans, etc. The place I used to volunteer filled a dumpster full of rubbish every week.

We just don't have time for that.

There are however lots of other repair cafes and centres all over the UK, run as charity, volunteers pitch up and help people mend everything from a toaster to their coat.

@CoatOfArms my post was linked to the post I made above it: it is not cost effective to have an army of menders. Hence it would be quicker to label the items with defects than to mend them. I take your point that it is quicker still to put them to rags if they won’t sell.

My primary point is caveat emptor - the OP should check the clothing, in particular as she has had a couple of issues already.

@LolaSmiles of course we charge more for certain labels as standard retails does. Writing the brand across the label is to do with some of our customers switching labels and stealing from us. If a customer brings me a Boden item priced at £3 I will query it eg is it damaged, reduced or has the price tag been switched?

@SheilaFentiman
we sell damaged items sold as seen eg stained regatta coat which would Be ideal for gardening - definitely worth a couple of quid rather than going to land fill

I know at least one volunteer who specialises in mending. She's a skilled sewer / crafter who can't work on the shop floor for health reasons. Everyone wins. I realise it's not commonplace but I think some of the derision for the idea is unfounded. Volunteers have many different talents and a canny charity shop uses them.

That’s a fab idea, I’d buy stuff for DH work clothes. Better than buying cheap primark.

Ah yes - a sold as seen rail would definitely be better than writing up a label for each @ShanghaiDiva

LolaSmiles of course we charge more for certain labels as standard retails does. Writing the brand across the label is to do with some of our customers switching labels and stealing from us. If a customer brings me a Boden item priced at £3 I will query it eg is it damaged, reduced or has the price tag been switched?
Of course charging more for some labels makes sense, when the garment is in good condition. It makes less sense when the person pricing sees a certain label and whacks £5/10 onto a bobbled or faded item purely because the label says White Stuff, Boden, Fat Face, Joules etc. A well worn item of clothing is a well worn item of clothing that will look well worn, faded and bobbly.

I don't mind paying a premium for decent quality garments, and one of my favourite charity shops is more expensive than the rest but I go there because they reliably have decent stock, the store is well set out, and it's enjoyable to shop there. They consider the condition of the garments, not just the label.

Writing the brand across the label is to do with some of our customers switching labels and stealing from us
came here to say exactly this @ShanghaiDiva
most people have no idea of the amount of shit that gets donated

Agree with others that writing the brand across the tag isn't marketing, or saying "look! this is Reiss/Hobbs" or whatever. At the last place I volunteered we had a real issue with people buying a more expensive top/dress from us, say for £12, then coming back into the shop with another very cheap dress from the supermarket or Shein, saying the tag had "fallen off" and could they have a refund please? Or going into the changing room with a £6 Primark coat and a £20 pure wool coat from Jigsaw or somewhere and swapping the labels to get the expensive coat cheap.

Not as bad as the people who come in wearing their falling to bits old clothes, take some nice things off the rails, change in the changing room, put their old clothes on the hangers and walk out wearing our stock mind you.