Charity shops - expensive?

floss2

Reverbe wrote: »

..... the charity shop for a local hospice........

I've just remembered that when my mum was both having day-care at & an in-patient at our local hospice, she was often to be seen winding wool for those who could knit to make lap-bankets for the day patients.....and I know that some of this wool was what had been donated to the shops.......maybe this is where your wool has been sent?

THIRZAH

I work in a charity shop and wool does sell very quickly. We usually wait until we have enough to fill a large basket before putting it out.

alocin

When I volunteered in a charity shop the wool was often sent to one particular shop to go in a big basket rather than just odd small amounts going out in each shop as they received donations.

One of the volunteers used to take donations of fabric home to make into really wonderful aprons and bags as well, which were very popular and made much more money than selling the fabic "as is" would have done. Added value is a great thing!

Churchmouse

floss2 wrote: »

A bit like the dealer who bought some of my mum's furniture at auction for very little £s, and had it on Ebay for a huge amount (and sold it) shortly afterwards......we know it was ours by the combination of pieces and some identifying marks from 25 years ago! We could have put it onto Ebay ourselves, but we had a whole house of stuff to clear & no storage.......would you also condemn the "quick profit" of the person who snapped up that bargain?

N9eav has bravely owned up to something that privately I think a few posters may have done - certainly I have albeit at a lower scale - but I do think it was foolish of the shop to ticket an item of recognisable name at such a low price.

Obviously not:D If all the parties in a transaction are fully aware then that's fine. You knowingly made your choice. As you say you could have chosen to ebay it yourself. I don't quite see the relevance

My point has always been and remains that the charity shop had not realised what they were selling. I don't call that foolish, just uninformed. I expect charity shops to sell things at bargain prices, but I didn't realise people made a business of looking for such huge errors with the intention of making money for their own pockets. I would have hoped that people would wish to behave fairly to the charity ( or rather the helpless beneficiaries of the charity) It's obviously just me, so I shall bow out of this now.

emmzy

i volunterred in the british heart foundation for over a year and the cheapest your allowed to price anything is 75p the tills dont accept anything less also the colours of the tickets depend on the price a blue or red ticket is meant for anything really good quality designer or high end fashion and say a pair of jeans on a blue ticket has a minimum price of £4 where as a green ticket t shirt say primark or asda make has to be priced at atleast 1.99

there was alot of stealing from our shop and that wasnt just the public we had instances of money going missing from the tills, staff stealing from the back shop ect i was accused of taking around £70 from the till and dragged into the back kitchen to be screamed at by this old c*w of a manager who i kindly told to F*** herself and that i wasnt being paid so i didnt need to listen to that, 3 weeks later she was sacked because we got a christmas bonus (a wee old disabled/downsyndromey type thing lady spent 6 hours a day selling raffle tickets to win this prize) that was mean for our christmas party as we had done so well went missing and she was the only person with access to the safe that day i went back to volunteer after she left for a few weeks but i had my locker broken into and my housekeys stolen i got home to find my computer tv and jewlery all gone i told the police exactly who i think done it but they still havent got enough proof

i love finding bargins but not from them im afraid they are far too expensive and i donated 5 days a week to them for nothing but trouble

im sure not all their shops are like that but its totally put me off since then

silverchair

Books have gone up to 2.50 in my local charity shop which I think is pretty pricey. Its cheaper getting them from "the bookpeople"

HariboJunkie

emmzy wrote: »

i volunterred in the british heart foundation for over a year and the cheapest your allowed to price anything is 75p the tills dont accept anything less also the colours of the tickets depend on the price a blue or red ticket is meant for anything really good quality designer or high end fashion and say a pair of jeans on a blue ticket has a minimum price of £4 where as a green ticket t shirt say primark or asda make has to be priced at atleast 1.99

there was alot of stealing from our shop and that wasnt just the public we had instances of money going missing from the tills, staff stealing from the back shop ect i was accused of taking around £70 from the till and dragged into the back kitchen to be screamed at by this old c*w of a manager who i kindly told to F*** herself and that i wasnt being paid so i didnt need to listen to that, 3 weeks later she was sacked because we got a christmas bonus (a wee old disabled/downsyndromey type thing lady spent 6 hours a day selling raffle tickets to win this prize) that was mean for our christmas party as we had done so well went missing and she was the only person with access to the safe that day i went back to volunteer after she left for a few weeks but i had my locker broken into and my housekeys stolen i got home to find my computer tv and jewlery all gone i told the police exactly who i think done it but they still havent got enough proof

i love finding bargins but not from them im afraid they are far too expensive and i donated 5 days a week to them for nothing but trouble

im sure not all their shops are like that but its totally put me off since then

I found your post very hard to read as there is no punctuation in it whatsoever but the phrase I have highlighted did jump out at me. :rolleyes:

Really not sure of the ethics of selling on at a profit from a charity shop. I know that my conscience would probably stop me doing it but I also know that very few people would pay £27 for a tie in a charity shop and that selling on ebay can often inflate prices as people get carried away with auctions.

I did get fed up with one particular charity shop which was opposite the shop I used to own when they sold several identical products to us (which they had got as they were an end of line from the supplier) They were able to sell them half price because they got them for free and had no council tax, reduced rent and no staff wages to pay. We had to sell the product at a loss in the end which cost us hundreds. :rolleyes:

I know it was for charity but I want to support my local businesses too and there are precious few of them left.

kunekune

As the mother of a school aged down-syndromey kind of boy I found emmzy's post kind of offensive. Sorry.

N9eav

Churchmouse wrote: »

Well as nobody else has, I will! I'm sorry, but I find this despicable. If you had wanted it for yourself it would be bad enough, but to buy it with the intention of making a huge profit on ebay, well words almost fail me. Obviously you've missed the bit in Church about compassion and charity, or maybe your Church is very different to mine. Still please don't give a thought to the lives that could have been saved by the enormous profit you made. Hell it would only have bought 130 sachets of rehydration salts, or 5 mosquito nets, or even vaccinated 5 children against killer childhood diseases. What a shining example of a Christian, and a policeman you are.

I thought my bargain would provoke a reaction.... You see I did not buy it with the intention of making a huge profit. I bought it because at the time I was on a 6 week course and wearing a different novelty tie everyday as part of a fund raising mission (see below). This one had pandas on it. I wore it the one day and in the search for more on e-bay I discovered that Hermes ties are very collectable. So I sold it and made a whopping profit. Do I feel bad? Guilty or my concious pricked? Nope. At the time we were saving for a my wife to go to Liberia to help orphan children and the money went straight in the funds. (the flight alone was £1200). I guess we put the money to better use than the huge % that charity shops cream off for admin. They wanted 50p, they got 50p If it was £2 I would probably have left it on the shelf and someone else would have bought it

Olliebeak

Best find ever. A Hermes tie in Save the children shop 50p. Sold it for £27 on e-bay.

Now are you all going to shout at me for making a profit out of charity shops??

awwwww c'mon, N9eav - provoking a discussion is one thing, but holding back on all the information of the situation does not allow people to make a proper personal judgement .

It would have been much 'fairer all round' if you had stated the full circumstances in the first place.