Charity shops, I apologise

[thedevilinablackdress]

I've loved charity shopping for over 30 years, but like many I've long mixed it with online second hand shopping.
The stories in this Guardian article are not new to those of us who've read threads on here, work in the shops or know people who do.
I never sell online myself and am a very mindful donatter, but my own eBay addiction and Vinted dabbling is contributing to this in a way.
Shops won't want to discourage donations, but it seems more push back on the mountains of crap is needed.

www.theguardian.com/fashion/2026/oct/13/people-sell-their-best-stuff-on-vinted-how-charity-shops-became-a-dumping-ground-for-unsellable-clothes

Thanks for this article. I've been a charity shopper for as long as I can remember and they've always had their ups and downs, but the drop in quality these last few years is unlike anything I've seen previously.

I've said this before but I don't judge anyone for buying cheap clothing as I don't know anyone's circumstances. But I do judge them when they dump their cheap clothes on charity shops, leaving someone else with the job of getting rid, when they must surely know they're unsellable.

As for me, I held out against Vinted for a long time but I gave in a year ago (buying, not selling) so now I'm part of the problem.

I try to sell stuff on Vinted now because every charity shop near me has a sign up saying NO DONATIONS

And you can see why in the article, they're wading through mountains of unsellable waste.

As a frequent charity shopper (most days on the way home from work but purely for personal shopping/browsing!) I think the issue is two fold. You have the low quality donations, as referred to in the article, but you also have an influx of resellers visiting daily so that any 'good' stuff is snatched up quite quickly. As resellers shop for all shapes and sizes they could wipe out the 'good stuff' in one swoop. When visting the charity shops I always see the same resellers day in day out.

Then it’s no longer viable. They should close the shops and hire people to sell things on Vinted etc

I don't know about Vinted but many charity shops already employ staff to sell high end donations Ebay. But I think this misses the point that one of the main reasons they're struggling is because they're being overwhelmed by donations that are in such poor condition, no reasonable person would think they were sellable on any platform.

Charity shops no longer have the monopoly they once had. I used to have the enthusiasm to pop into a charity shop and wade through the rails of stuff but now I don't bother so much. Why waste time when the pickings are so rubbish and overpriced?

Some charity shops have closed down in my local high street and now just an empty shop remains. It's sad to see that they have closed but Vinted etc. offer better choice.

I agree that there's more choice on Vinted, which I regret but it's still true. But that still ignores the problem of people dumping their unsellable clothes on charity shops rather than process them themselves.

Exactly this.

It’s a good article and there are some useful links at the bottom.

Quality has definitely gone downhill in recent years. It’s now quite rare to see anything in natural fibres or from a mid-market brand. On another note charity shops sometimes don’t help themselves. I took a blouse into my local one recently. It was M&S linen, great condition, in season, ironed and on a hanger. It was perfect and could have had a price label attached and been put on the rail. The volunteer thanked me, took the blouse, threw away the hanger and then crumpled the blouse into a sack! I then saw the blouse again in the shop two weeks later, no doubt having been freshly re-ironed by some volunteer…

Having been involved in a charity that had a volunteer-run shop all of the issues in the article were very apparent, however the volunteers were also a law unto themselves. Quite a lot of items never made it out on sale and went straight to rag or waste simply because the volunteers didn’t like them and ‘didn’t think they would sell’…But they were volunteers so, hey ho!

It’s not a perfect world and I am not sure that trying to shame donors is the best way forward, with the obvious exception of those who donate hazardous, unhygienic items or flytip stuff outside.

I see the problem as twofold, our charity shops try to sell at silly prices, and one in particular (looking at you Barnardos) has far more new stuff that I’m sure is legally allowed . They will only take clothes, no Knick knacks.

By process them themselves do you mean throwing them in the bin? I have several local charity shops they survive by selling everything cheap the ones that are struggling are putting high prices on trash/decent stock alike and expecting people to pay they wont pay it never would pay it so stop doing it

I think the recent focus on natural fibres/ avoiding microplastics has been a factor. As a hot menopausal woman, I’m trying to buy cotton and wool only and charity shops just look like a sea of shiny polyester to me now, sadly.

I don't think there's any legal requirement on charities to sell any given percentage of second had stuff (as opposed to e.g. cards and gifts from their own range) - but am interested to know if I am wrong.

The real problem is people buying low end blended fabric clothing in copious amounts because its cheap. They wear once or twice and then donate it, so the charity ships are mostly a reflection of what people are buying new.

Clothing is dirt cheap. In the 60s/70s we didn't have many clothes because they were relatively expensive. I bought from jumble sales a lot!

Thanks for sharing the article - it’s really interesting. I’ve always been a big charity shop shopper, and also a big user of eBay and Vinted. TBH I think I’ve always been a bit smug about rarely buying new, but I’m coming to realise that buying too many clothes is still a problem - even when those clothes are second hand. I do think the underlying problem is as a society we’ve become a bit too addicted to having new clothes - partly because so many things are badly made from low quality materials, and partly because of how fast we cycle through trends in a social media age.

There are some suggestions at the end of the article.

The thing is though that some of our donations will almost certainly end up in the bin and maybe if we were forced to do this ourselves instead of dumping them on a charity shop volunteer, it would make us more mindful. I include myself here by the way, I’m certainly no angel.

Even family members that used to dump their children’s old clothes on you no longer do that and sell on Vinted too.

Caitlinmariebren on TikTok is a charity shop manager from Bristol who does 'donation of the day' videos. If you are on TikTok watch some of those honestly 😮

Yes I think you make good points here. Ideally we would all have less clothes but what we had would be really good quality and would last many years. Unfortunately that's a hard (and very expensive) idea to achieve thanks to availability and prices.

I recently met someone who told her the charity shop saves her the designer labelled goods and sells them to her cheaply in bulk so she can go sell them on Vinted and make a profit. I'm not so sure how common that is, but surely that seems wrong.

Why is it wrong? If the charity shop has a guaranteed purchaser at a price which is fair to them, then it gets stock out of the door and money in the till for the charity and for the shop overheads.

I darent give my best stuff to charity shops because I know a lot of them just don't have the time or storage to deal with the volume of stuff so send lots of unopened bags to the rag van.

I have some very expensive stuff that's barely worn and plenty of new with tags things that missed the mark, I don't want them shredded. I stick them on vinted at a price that sells immediately or advertised as a bundle for free on Facebook where presumably someone else sells them.

Is there any charity where I could be sure they'd be reused? I care more about waste than raising money.

As an aside, do the charity shops make significant money? The one in my village must pay a lot of rent, I assumed they just covered their costs and gave people something to do with their time .

My freind volunteers in a charity shop, the staff buy the good stuff immediately so no one gets a look in and then resell it to make money for themselves, on vinted or eBay, or for fbeir personal use,

The thing with Vinted, as a buyer, is that you can search for a specific thing you need and find it within seconds, rather than spending hours across several days, across weeks, traipsing round charity shops without ever finding the thing you need.