charity ? too fussy by anybodies standards

alec_eiffel

Has anyone else noticed better quality donations coming in this week?

My shop isn't in a great area and we generally have george, primark, florence & fred and not much else. This week virtually everything has been good stuff. We've had Whistles, Ted Baker and loads of other decent brands, plenty of Per Una and Next which always sell well. Not to mention the fact that the vast majority of it seems to have been washed and ironed, makes a big change for us. I hope it continues!

Jack's_mummy

alec_eiffel wrote: »

Has anyone else noticed better quality donations coming in this week?

My shop isn't in a great area and we generally have george, primark, florence & fred and not much else. This week virtually everything has been good stuff. We've had Whistles, Ted Baker and loads of other decent brands, plenty of Per Una and Next which always sell well. Not to mention the fact that the vast majority of it seems to have been washed and ironed, makes a big change for us. I hope it continues!

I thought on Wednesday when I worked that there were more than usual "bigger" named clothes coming in.

aloiseb

If you want to raise money, you need to have regular customers coming in to see what you've got. So you need to have new things coming in regularly, and enough competent people to sort them from the rubbish, price them appropriately and get them out on the shop floor.

Because this is the complicated part, it's usually a volunteer who is left actually in the shop, who has had little or no customer service training. In the one where I was a manager, one lady volunteer used to tell customers who were just about to buy something that they shouldn't wear that colour, it really didn't suit them!

My worst week was when a couple of people went off on leave and I had to cope with all the backroom op myself...it was next to impossible. At least nobody left me any dead animals, though!

elisebutt65

Bogof_Babe wrote: »

Thanks, missed it last week and missed the first 15 minutes tonight :rolleyes:.

I'm not keen on the way she is telling them to sell everything for much higher prices.

I totally agree that they need to sell decent items for a decent price - My mum sells my old designer stuff at the Oxfam she works at and I always let her know the retail value and she gets about 30-40% of that for it - I'd stop donating it if it was going for a few quid as I would definitely make way more on Ebay - but I don't donate money and can't afford the time so this is my way of giving something back.

Edinburghlass_2

alec_eiffel wrote: »

Has anyone else noticed better quality donations coming in this week?

My shop isn't in a great area and we generally have george, primark, florence & fred and not much else. This week virtually everything has been good stuff. We've had Whistles, Ted Baker and loads of other decent brands, plenty of Per Una and Next which always sell well. Not to mention the fact that the vast majority of it seems to have been washed and ironed, makes a big change for us. I hope it continues!

Thats really good to hear that people are now thinking about what to put to the charity shops and not just treating them as a dumping ground.

Hermia

TizzyDizzy wrote: »

I thought is was interesting that Mary was suggesting that the Charity increase their prices considering the comments on this thread to the contrary.

I thought that was interesting. I wonder what her reasoning was behind that? Obviously she just wants to make more money, but maybe she thinks people will perceive the goods as being of higher value if they are priced higher. Surely, this would only work in a wealthy area? I live in a working class area and people just will not pay high prices for secondhand goods. Plus the area is chock-full of cheap shops. We have two excellent bargain book shops so I can't see people paying a few quid for a secondhand book when they can buy lots of new ones down the street. One of the bargain book shops often has a 3 for a £5 offer on the paperbacks and they are pretty good authors. I think it is hard for a charity shop to compete with that.

Hermia

aloiseb wrote: »

In the one where I was a manager, one lady volunteer used to tell customers who were just about to buy something that they shouldn't wear that colour, it really didn't suit them!

Ha ha! We have one of those in a shop near me. I once bought a pile of books and she said, "Why do you want all of them? Don't you have better things to do with your time?". On another occasion I was buying some old jewellery and buttons (I make jewellery using recycled beads and found objects) and she said, "I didn't think anyone would buy this rubbish?". She is hilarious, but I fear she will really offend someone one day.

imajica

We had one elderly volunteer who has sadly since passed away and is very sorely misssed. However! She was quite deaf and didn't know when she was whispering or shouting and used the LEAST PC terms to describe customers i've ever heard I dreaded the moment when I'd hear her scream that "The fat lady wants this put by until tommorrow" :eek: There was a group of Zimbabwean nurses that would come in on their lunch break every day and i'd sometimes go and stand next to her ready to clamp my hand over her mouth if need be.

She also unknowingly served my mum once while I was taking care of a volunteer with severe learning difficulties having a bit of a moment. She told my mum that the big girl was funny in the head but the other one (me) "seems alright". My mum was horrified!

purplebutterfly

k2tog wrote: »

Went past my local Barnados earlier and saw big posters up saying ALL CLOTHING 99p. Was in the car and shop was shut but will investigate further. Seems some are going for the sell it cheap philosophy.

Our local Barnado's always has a 99p rail and often does 99p promotions too. The other weeks it was any book for 99p - I bought 20.

The shop is always much busier than other charity shops (there are 5 in a 2 minute walking radius!) because the stuff is cheaper, even if it isn't always as good in terms of quality.

The most annoying thing about Barnados, Oxfam and some other is the way of grouping things in colour sections rather than type of item.

Oxfam is particularly offensive as it has a "Size 16 plus" rail, clearly marked with a big hand written sign. Nothing to make you feel more like a fat lass than being directed to a special area of a shop :rolleyes:

Fuchsia_a

fiendishly wrote: »

This is very common in the shops near me, particularly with Tesco Value and Asda items. When looking for jeans for my son, I found several pairs of tesco value ones priced at £6, when they are £3 new.
I think the problem is poor training of the people who do the pricing, many of whom are out of touch, for whatever reason. Difficult to address though, due to the nature of the work.

I used to volunteer in a British Heart Foundation shop. I was told when I sugested selling t-shirts from Primark at a lower price that their price list that had been sent to them from head office, with categories for different items and the condition of the item. There wasn't any scope for varying prices based on the brand, how expensive the item would've been when it was new, or what a sensible resale value would be. I don't know if they've changed their policies now, as it was a few years ago, but it was a very daft situation.

I love digging through charity shops for books and records (not clothes, alas, because I'm large and the only clothes over a size 16 in any of them seem to be in styles you'd usually see on a pensioner) and I've pretty much stopped bothering with Oxfam and a lot of the other chains because they're so expensive, and usually spend a lot more in the local hospice charity shops that have more reasonable prices. £3-£4 for a second-hand cd is as much as some of the ones I want cost new and certainly more than I'd spend on one on a whim, but if a shop has them priced up at £1-£2 I'd be quite tempted to go on a spending spree, and get things that aren't on my albums-to-watch-out-for list.