Charity shops and their prices

I assume that this was one of the well known charities? If yes, it's a business now, not a charity. I don't buy from any of the big names ( unless I can't resist the item)
We have a very good animal charity near us and I know for a fact that nobody is paid for their work, unlike the big charities.
This is a subject I fee very strongly about.

It was an electrical item so it would have been tested. Less than a third of the price new sounds alright to me. Either you wanted it or you didn't.

Yes, I think a third of the retail price is okay. I bought an as new breadmaker recently for £12 and its retail price is £39. I was glad to get a bargain (fingers crossed in case I jinx the thing). It had been tested and even a charity shop buy has to be fit for purpose.

I'm not sure you can call a charity shop greedy. They are not making money for themselves.

And, yes, you can take something back if it doesn't do what it's supposed to do.

Charity shops round here won't take any electrical items.

I still think they were asking too much. If it had been £45 I might have considered it, but the £50 asking price put me off.

I'm sure someone else will buy it

The Heart Foundation takes electrical goods.

The Charity I am manager for takes electrical donations and we test every item and will give a short term gaurentee we have to have the test done by a qualified tester who undergoes a short course which the Charity pays for.
I don't feel £50.00 is expensive for a top end item,would you not have thought to have made them an offer I'm sure it would have been considered I know I would have considered it if a customer had asked me the question.

At that price I would have tried it. It sounds very reasonable to me. £50 for a product that was £175 sounds like very good value.

If the charities are trying to make money to support their work then they should not sell good quality gifted goods too cheaply. Our very old non flat screen Panasonic television was sold for £25 and gift aided in our local heart foundation shop.
It was in full working order. We had been offered a flat screen model.

Nelliemoser How good it is to see you gift aided your TV that would give another £5.25 to the Charity you support and very worth while doing,I try to enroll as many customers as I can for Gift Aid it certainly boosts the income to the Charity.

The charity shops are there to make money for their charities not to help shoppers save money

I volunteer I a charity shop and only the manager and assistant get paid. If you think something is too expensive you can always offer a lower price, might get accepted might not. We have guidelines from head office on pricing. Also, some charity shops won't accept electrical items as they have to be tested, and this is an extra expense. Luckily the shop I work for have a furniture and electrical store.

I regularly donate to charity shops and we love to spend a morning trawling them for books, toys, Pyrex dishes but please bear in mind that a lot of what they make goes on rent and salaries for the managers, not everyone is a volunteer.
My pet peeve is when I go in and a volunteer is showing her friends items from the back room to give them first dibs.

I have seen clothing items in charity shops that were being sold at the same price, or higher, than the original 'new' price. When I've mentioned it to the staff, they've taken the item off the rail for repricing. They may well have been wondering why no-one was buying the items!

£50 sounds good value to me. Getting the item tested and ready for sale will have cost the Charity money.

I have quite a large BHF shop near me and I'm always surprised at the cleanliness and quality of the items. You can get everything in there, including electrical items.

Nonetheless people moan about the prices. They do free collection and delivery too, on most things.

I suspect you probably didn't really want , need, or have room for it, Nonnie1. If you had said can I give you £45 for this I'm sure they would have accepted it. With gift aid it would have brought them over that price anyway. I have bought some lovely "new" bargains from charity shops but likewise given them great goods too, including this year a stainless steel fridge freezer which looked spanking brand new when it was emptied and cleaned. I always receive a lovely letter telling me how much the goods have made for the charity too so feel well pleased with giving. I would never say charities charge too much. If you feel the price is too high...negotiate!

My local charity shop I feel sells items too cheaply, including books but they state that they want (and get) a good turn around. It is very handy for me to donate there. It would not be my first choice choice because it is part of a church and I would prefer to donate to an animal charity but the nearest is impossible to park near.

Just a few weeks ago,my local charity shop had several boxes of high end wallpaper,left from a hotel refit.They were being sold for 50p.I pointed out that they retail between £50 and £100 + a roll,but the answer was that no one would want to pay more than 50p !!! I am sure that some wise soul would have bought the lot,put them on Ebay for a fiver and made several hundred pounds.
My previous local shop were on the ball and anything named or vintage would be compared to on-line sellers and priced for the market.
A local retro shop used to buy from them and price the items up for their retro market.
Clothes are often over priced.
I buy very large sizes which are often cheaper and use the fabric to make myself something else.

Any item is only worth what somebody is prepared to pay for it.I would not buy an electrical item for £50 from a charity shop.

My niece is manageress in a local branch of a well known charity shop, and apparently they are given distinct guidelines on how much to charge for items. That is after they have removed certain items to be sold in their ebay shop if they think they will get more for them that way.
Personally I think £50 is too much to charge in a charity shop when you are not sure what the item will be like until you try it at home.
I think charity shop prices have shot up in the last few years, I have also seen clothes priced higher than in the shops. I assume the people pricing them don't shop in places like Primark and don't realise how cheap they are in this type of shop.

I think it's sad that people don't like the idea of people getting paid just because they work for a charity. What with workfare and pseudo apprenticeships and all the other unpleasant schemes now in place we seem to be going away from the idea of a person being worth the value of their hire. Creating jobs is a good thing and the more of that charities do the better so far as I am concerned.
It is obviously a different thing when directors get inflated salaries, but this is about people at the bottom of the tree.
I have a shop run by St.Luke Hospice which sells electrical goods and they give a guarantee for a short time and everything is tested by an electrician.

Round here they don't charge high prices - it's what the local market will stand. They don't have the space to keep stuff on the shelves are higher prices if it won't sell. Good luck to charity shops I say, the better ones do a great job. I always take to Oxfam because they have an efficient Gift Aid system and are well run. They also send you nice emails - the latest one telling me the amount my recent donations had sold for - plus Gift Aid of £51.
Oxfam also have big warehouses where they sell vintage items antiques etc online.
I visited a total shocker once in the course of my work - a small animal charity with a huge basement, with several rooms, stacked to the ceilings with damp mouldering donations. That convinced me to only use the best run charity shops.

I have no objection to people on the shop floor being paid- I do object to some of the obscene salaries paid to those at a much higher level.

During the winter, I went into a local charity shop which was cosy inside but had its door wide open. I complained that they should not be allowing the heat to escape. It was the manager's idea but the person on the shop floor agreed with me and in fairness closed it, but he would not have been allowed to do it without a complaint from me.

I have worked in 3 Hospices shops now (due to house moves) yes they are expensive BUT it is 'buy one get one free' buy a cardie for £3.25 and get a free Hospice.