prices in charity shops

Azari

pulliptears wrote: »

I'd have let her inspect it in the car, said "Well, there's what you could have had!" and driven off to the next charity shop

You're evil.

I like that in a person.

pulliptears

Azari wrote: »

You're evil.

I like that in a person.

Why thank you

Nothing quite beats snippy old ladies who turn their noses up at your donations until they actually see that you have something they want. They are then on the bag like !!!!!! off a shovel.

Someone should teach the old dears some manners.

Azari

pulliptears wrote: »

Why thank you

Nothing quite beats snippy old ladies who turn their noses up at your donations until they actually see that you have something they want. They are then on the bag like !!!!!! off a shovel.

Someone should teach the old dears some manners.

Quite a few years ago I had some good quality clothes that I was going to get rid of. I was about to put them in the recycling when I thought about the charity shops so rewashed them all and carefully folded them.

I went into town and entered the first charity shop I came to - Red Cross as it happened.

Inside was a very smart and well spoken woman of about 45 who was having a conversation with a man. I entered, stood by them and waited patiently, holding my bag of offerings and looking straight at them - i.e. it was obvious that I was waiting for them, not just looking.

And I waited ... and waited ... and waited.

After about five minutes I silently left the shop and popped along to Oxfam to hand in the clothes.

I didn't expect her to instantly stop what she was doing but to ignore someone who is right in front of you whilst carrying on a conversation (not related to the shop or the activities of the Red Cross) when all she need to do was take the bag and say 'thank you'?

pulliptears

Azari wrote: »

Quite a few years ago I had some good quality clothes that I was going to get rid of. I was about to put them in the recycling when I thought about the charity shops so rewashed them all and carefully folded them.

I went into town and entered the first charity shop I came to - Red Cross as it happened.

Inside was a very smart and well spoken woman of about 45 who was having a conversation with a man. I entered, stood by them and waited patiently, holding my bag of offerings and looking straight at them - i.e. it was obvious that I was waiting for them, not just looking.

And I waited ... and waited ... and waited.

After about five minutes I silently left the shop and popped along to Oxfam to hand in the clothes.

I didn't expect her to instantly stop what she was doing but to ignore someone who is right in front of you whilst carrying on a conversation (not related to the shop or the activities of the Red Cross) when all she need to do was take the bag and say 'thank you'?

I worked in a toy shop in my youth, which was next door to a charity shop. As the toy shop was generally dead I would pop in to the charity shop to buy books to ease the boredom. There was one lovely old lady named Ivy and one rather nastier lady. Ivy would spend most of her day repricing the stock the other woman had put out because she was asking for silly money. It used to annoy her so much.

The other old dear only ever barked 2 sentences:

"WHATS IN IT!?"
"PUT IT OVER THERE!"

Ivy left in the end, said she'd had enough of it all, shame really as it was her who the customers loved and her who kept the shop going.

Welshdebtor

bilko1234 wrote: »

as a small business advisor in my "real job" i see a lot of help being given to so called charities.
however if you actually look at some charities you will see that little or in some cases none of the income from the shops or stalls go to actually help the cause in real time.
in other words the board (all or most paid employee,s) consultants (from £100 a day) head office staff it, admin, telephones, the you have store management, admin and costings.
most charities myton for example run the retail arm as a seperate entity and it as a whole gave 3.1% to the main myton hospice charity in 2009 (accounts available as they are a ltd charity)
another example is i helped a local scout group out with some advise after being called in to advise them on there fundraising i was horrified to find over 13k in a high interest account and there general fundraising sponsered this and cake stall etc bought in over 1k a month yet they still wanted more there outgoings where 250 a month (go figure i gave up)
so sometimes look beneath the surface of the so called charities and check what they actually do, if you want to check out one of the worst (im gonna get flamed for this) check out help for heroes the board get a bigger payment than some large business boards

Firstly you raise good points about looking into costs/salaries of charities, as the boards do get paid well you could say.But they do on the whole make less than their equivalent in a commercial business of an equal size. Figures state on average a charity CEO makes upto 20% less than the CEO in a business of the same size.

So that makes up the first part of my disagreeement with your claim against Help for Heroes. Secondly your claim they are one of the worst is far from true, their CEO (who is the highest paid) is down in the lower amounts of salaries. His is around the £80,000 mark (not sure of exact figure). There is many more charity CEO's who get paid far more even reaching figures of £130,000. Three of the highest paid charity CEO's work for Macmillian, British Red Cross and.........(ties in with this thread)...... The British Heart Foundation.

Bringing it back to the threads topic some what.

I donate alot to the various charity shops but do not buy much, mostly due to pricing.

The big names do seem to charge more than the smaller charities as well.

carrieuk

I worked in a charity shop for about a year and a half. We sold things pretty well, nothing (except the brand new items direct from the charity themselves) was overpriced as far as I was aware. Then a new area manager came in and pretty much told my manager she was awful at pricing, took it all over and basically said we weren't allowed to price anything without her approval. She put all the prices up by at least £2 and on one set of items (we had them come in from a shop and they all had rips and tears in them which was clearly displayed) She put them up by £4 to £6 and took down the sign that said damaged. We had all sorts of complaints over this. After one woman spat at me for it I decided enough was enough and quit.

I know some women in charity shops can be quite harsh but I think they have to put up with a lot more than someone would take for example in Debenhams. Give them a chance and if they really are rude then move on.

fannyadams

Outpost wrote: »

Ridiculous. Tarring goodness knows how many thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of shops across the country with the same brush. A sweeping generalisation if ever ever I heard one.

but it only takes a minority acting like this to taint your opinion of all of them...
think:
Motorcyclists - automatically branded 'Hell's Angels'

Teenagers - automatically branded 'hoodies'

Gypsies - automatically branded thieves or !!!!!!

anyone else?

and back on topic - the local Oxfam shop is the most expensive charity shop in my area, and in all the charity shops none of the staff are what you would call friendly!

trumpton

I agree that many of the charity shops have lost their way on pricing. I haven't read all this thread so I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this, but I reckon it's because in general prices have decreased for things like clothes and books, and the charity shops haven't moved with the times.

Years ago you had to pay £50 for a decent coat (say M and S), so a charity shop one was a cheap alternative. Now Primark, Asda, Tesco, all sell cheap coats, so you expect charity shops to be even cheaper. Similarly the demise of the Net Book Agreement means you can buy 3 decent paperbacks for £5 at The Works or 10 for £10 at the Book People - charity shops haven't really acknowledged this fact.

Also, I would guess that the people pricing up in charity shops are perhaps not bargain shoppers like us MSE-ers. They price up based on what they might pay in M and S or BHS, not what the cheap high street shops sell at.

hollyh

We've got 3 Charity Shops in our little town.

The biggest and cheapest is a St David's Foundation. The paperbacks there are 50p each, this is where i donate and buy the majority of my stuff. The clothes are reasonably priced too and i got a pair of boots from there for £4 last year that are still going strong. In the last few months though i've noticed the furniture in there rocket in price. I love to have a good rummage in there and often come home with bargains.

I can't remember what the smallest one is. The books are £1 for a paperback and clothes are slightly more expensive than the St Davids. This one looks bare a lot of the time with hardly any stock so i have given my last donation to them.

The BHF i'm a bit undecided on. I won't buy books at £2.99 for a paperback and mostly i won't buy the clothes. However they do appear to have higher quality clothes than the other two. I was in there last week and saw a gorgeous top from Evan's in there for £5.99 and it took me ages to decide to buy it or not. I did because it was so pretty and would have cost a lot more new. I bought a top originally from Tesco as well for £2.99 and i didn't mind paying that. I also got a lovely skirt still with it's tags on for £4.95, priced the same as the normal everyday skirts. My Sister got my Neice two Bench tops from there for about £5.00. So that one i think you have to have a good rummage and hunt out the bargains from the overpriced stuff.

User_Bob

Googlewhacker wrote: »

Surely 50p to a charity is better than you tipping it for nothing and causing more problems for the country????

Madness if you say no

no, not really. Its all about Branding / Pricing.

If all the charity want is 50p I will gladly give them 50p and satisfy their expectations.

If they dont recognise that they have the potential to raise pounds instead of pence, then there is a fundamental problem. Customers will expect to pay only that level and in the end the overall revenue stream will reduce as donors will not give decent suff, and customers wont buy anything above their perceived going rate for that shop. They will just become second-hand "pound" shops.

Believe me I live in an area where it's not unknown for the local charity shops to have Dior and Jimmy Choos, and the locals can well afford £'s rather then pence, so why shouldnt they be priced accordingly?

I quite agree it's crazy to price an Asda T-shirt at a few pounds, and its a question of drawing up some guidelines and training the staff, but just making eveything a bog-standard knock-down price will, long term, have negative results.

Also when I said "tip" I meant take to the tip and put in clothes re-cycle. Washing / Pressing etc. costs my time and money !