charity shops that turn away/dump donations

zztopgirl

Mainly a rant but am badly losing the will to shop in and donate to charity shops anymore, have started going to the local recycling areas and frequently find a lot of items dumped by charity shops, still with price labels attached (that have the shop name printed on them) also a local charity that gets furniture donations, then goes there and dumps most of it even though its good quality. Its not an issue about nowhere to store it or anything. It really gets my back up when we go down and see this, or really tatty items that have a huge price tag on.

I donated a lot of items to one of these charity shops in jan, I left my phone number as they were worth a lot of money and I wanted them to go to a good cause instead of selling them and wished to know how much they had made for charity from my donation. They 'lost' most of the items. I took one of the items back and it went to a really good home, which made me feel so much better than donating it to this charity.

I tried donating to another charity shop recently (of a charity that has helped me in the past), a certain designer handbag and matching purse, worth a lot of money, which I had proof that they were not fake, a week later I had a call saying they no longer wanted them as they were casual items and not good enough for sale in their shop. Yet tatty handbags and shoes are ok.

tazandtommy

I did the same I packed up all my sons old toys and clothes,all in beautful condition.
I dropped one bag off of my clothes again in good condition to a shop that was out of my way but that charity and helpped my father. She told my to just "dump the bag on the floor" while I was looking round the shop her and a colleague opened my bag and said to each how they "could noway sell them" as they were creased.

My mother used to run a charity shop and we had a stemmer to get the lines out of the clothes.I know not every shop can do this or is that ungreatful but do they have to be rude.

kazzah60

I think this is very sad- one possible solution ( but it IS time consuimg) might be to sell the items on e bay or similar and donate the money directly to the charity- there are a number of excellent charities already regsitered on e bay that you can nominate as your chosen charity and the money goes straight to them or make your listing a charity one for a charity of your own choice
our charity has many members who do this ona regular basis and we get a quite a bit of money from them

lillykins27

i totally agree as an ex manager of a charity shop we used to get hundreds of donations of clothes and furniture, and while yes it does take up space and time to go through it all, we used to chuck out no end of bric a brac that was in good condition, but because we had to keep the turnover of stock going we had to just chuck it out. wasteful yes but higher managment wouldnt' allow us to pack it up and send to another shop or just reduce to a silly price so it would sell. persoanlly if the money is going in the till does it really matter.

luxor4t

After the volunteer sales lady refused to accept my assurances that there were no hangers or children's clothes in my bag of clean good quality clothing & threw the carefully packed contents around the floor while she 'just checked', I now donate to a shop where the volunteer staff have the manners to say 'thank you'.

Unsold clothes are reduced and then sold to a ragman: not ideal but at least nothing is dumped.

mrs.maverick

I recently donated a lot of books and clothes to various charity shops, and barely go a 'thank you' from any of them. I think the problem is that they do get a lot of rubbish such as used nappies (yes, really!) so they are a bit blase when they get anything.

meg72

I think its a really sad situation that so many people are having bad experiences with the Charity shops. I no longer donate or buy from these. I buy from carboots and there is are usually a few small charity stalls, local animal rescue etc. If I have anything to donate I give it one of them.

brightonman123

they obviously need to be told about freecycle etc.. the local press need to know about this roo- people giving stuff away that just gets dumped is an outrage!

vazzavazza

I used to work in Oxfam, and all clothes that aren't sold go to Wastesaver, a massive textile recycling place. Also, any designer items/antiques were sold on ebay to make the most money for the charity.

It did used to annoy me a lot when people donated broken/unusable items though, as each bag of rubbish we had to throw out cost the shop £12.50 to be disposed of by the council. Thongs? Used hairbrushes? dirty cutlery? We had to practically wear biohazard suits to go through donations sometimes.

Charity shops are competing with Primark and Asda etc now in a price war, and the only way to combat it is to stock a higher quality of goods.

No excuse for being rude, though. also emptying out donations onto the floor of a shop contravenes Health and Safety beyond a joke.

Mayday

brightonman123 wrote: »

they obviously need to be told about freecycle etc.. the local press need to know about this roo- people giving stuff away that just gets dumped is an outrage!

I use Freecycle now instead of donating to charity shops. A lot of our stuff went to young needy families on tight budgets, and everything was appreciated and grateful thanks given.

PlutoinCapricorn

I saw an article recently, possibly in Third Sector, which said that there is a crisis for charity shops as they are not getting enough donations and are now trying to sell items and clothes that would previously have been thrown away or sold as rags.

So they might now be wanting everything that they can get.