British Heart Foundation - Overpriced, substandard

Invalidation

BHF is a properly constituted Business. It pays a fortune to have each shop fitted out, the managers and assistant managers are paid and the bag collectors are paid depending on how many bags they bring in.
Haggle away. Whats the worst that can happen, they say no

Sooler

jc808 wrote: »

Ive said before here, if a charity is to survive, it has to be competitively priced
If a charity shop is more expensive on similar items in other second hand stores whats the point?

Have a read about what they do ...

http://www.bhf.org.uk

See if you can see a point :think:

fluffnutter

I got my latest heart from the British Heart Foundation and found them to be competitively priced and offering good quality organs in a variety of sizes. All in all, I'm very pleased. Thumbs up!

jc808

fluffnutter wrote: »

I got my latest heart from the British Heart Foundation and found them to be competitively priced and offering good quality organs in a variety of sizes. All in all, I'm very pleased. Thumbs up!

i lol'd.........

Sooler

were they on bogof?

pippascountrykitchen

I can see both points really but there are a few issues here.

One is that Charity shops are the only ones making money at the moment.

Their labour generally is free as in the maidstone shop they have people doing community service.

They do not pay rates so can afford prime locations.

They receive 25% cash from you "the tax payer" for any item they sell of the total value.

So now we have established that they are doing good we are all happy that they are making money for their charity. We want them to do well.

But do we want them to be the only shops on the high st making money?
Do we want them to charge double the real price so they get a higher 25% gift aid from the government.
Do we agree that they should still get rebates etc when they are selling new goods and not second hand ones or when they pay only 10% of profits to the charity. What about when they charge £450 to clear an old ladies house of all her nice antiques?

There are both sides to the story here. I guess if you own a business in the high st you would be rather peed off as it is all overpriced rubbish really. But if you have a relative that was helped by them you would not care.

My advice is to give or shop at the one that suits you. I would not shop at the BHF in Maidstone as i personally think they are ripping people off. I prefer Save The Children in Union Street. Items are bargains and the charity wants you to have a bargain. Shops like BHF are becoming greedy and are trying to compete with the rest of the high street putting joe bloggs out of business/

StrongWork

If there was an 'un-thank' button I would use it on you OP.

Sorry.

juno

I had loads of problems with a bed I bought from BHF.

I paid for delivery, and on the day it arrived the man said they'd forgotten to bring the bolts (they'd dismantled it to fit it in the van - in the shop I'd seen it assembled). They also managed to bring me completely the wrong mattress - they bought a horrible thin thing when the one it had had in the shop, and that I'd been assured it came with, was a lot nicer. So the man promised to bring the mattress and the bolts that afternoon.

The mattress arrived, the bolts didn't. Man now said shop would call me the next day to sort it out, but they didn't.

A few days later I still had no call, and I couldn't call them as it was an 0845 number and I only had my mobile, so I went back to the shop to sort it out. They had no idea about any of the problem and really didn't know where the bits might be. They gave me some bolts that I knew I needed from looking at it but these were just from a pile of "spares" and not the ones that had come out of my bed and somehow gone missing.

Some of those bolts were right but some weren't and I realised I didn't have enough and was also missing other bits.

I'm fed up of typing this now and I'm sure anyone who bothered to read it is getting fed up too, but it took three further trips back to the shop before they agreed that the pieces were lost forever and that although they could probably sort out enough bolts and screws and things they had no idea where the legs were. However, they did find some very similar legs but from a chair, and they think that someone must have bought a chair and got the wrong ones but not realised; the bed legs would work on the chair, but the chair legs wouldn't work on the bed.

Eventually they agreed to take all the pieces away and let me choose another bed in exchange. However, one of the reasons I picked that bed was because it matched my other furniture, and obviously being a charity shop they didn't have others the same.

They also said that they're npow being really careful to keep the pieces together when dismantling furniture, but really I would have thought thjat would be obvious!