Charity Shop Prices

I agree with BHF having high prices, several times I have been in and found the original new price on the item and it was much lower. However I got a lovely fur lined coat at £10.00 last winter and I assumed it had been much more expensive, it was vey new looking so I had a bargain there.
Please bring jumble sales back I loved them, my friend only went at the time of almost closing to buy vastly reduced items such as raggy cardigans for 10p etc, she would recycle them and use the buttons. Her kids always had bright home knit jumpers when they were small.

When I was a single mum to two growing boys I used to buy as much as possible from charity shops because they were cheap, and it was a real help to making an inadequate budget go further. I remember one rather snooty nosed individual telling me, as prices started to go up "it's for a good cause dear". Dressing my kids want a good cause, was it!

Amazon sent me daily offers of free and cheap reads, so why would I go to the Oxfam bookshop where they are hideously overpriced? E-books don't clutter up my sitting room, so win-win on that one.

Wouldn't it be nice if the charity shops had two purposes - to raise money for the charity they support of course, and to provide more affordable goods for people who are hard up? Is that such an impossible combination?

I feel rather sad about this thread. If you don't want to buy you don't have to but surely the charities are doing the best they can for a very good cause. It is possible mistakes are made by the volunteers who price the goods but presumably if they don't sell at that price they eventually get reduced.

I don't think they are overstocked, we often see posters in the windows asking for stock.

We were having a large party and didn't have enough champagne flutes so I bought more in various charity shops at perhaps the price they would have been in a supermarket and then re-donated them after the party. I didn't think about it costing me the same but about the charity getting them twice. I wouldn't pay more but would pay the same.

This week I saw a small tray in a charity shop window which I though DiL would like so bought it for £2.50. It is new so I don't think overpriced.

A couple of years ago we were in a very touristy part of the Cotswolds and went into a charity shop and everything was expensive but maybe of better quality. Presumably thy just charge what the market will bear.

I agree with Nonnie, the shops have to make as much profit as they can to support their charitable work. If the goods didn't sell at the prices put on, the shops wouldn't stay in business.

The British Heart Foundation is a charity organisation in the UK that funds research, education, care and awareness campaigns to prevent heart diseases in humans. Every year I in 45 babies born in the UK are born with a congenital heart defect. According to google.
If you are so selfish as to just want a bargain for yourself with no thought about who your charitable purchase will benefit, then shop somewhere else.

Don't imagine that if something is over priced the price will be reduced and then it will be sold. Clothes are only allowed on the shop floor for a set period and then they are bagged up and sold as rags. It may be reduced, but it may not, time matters. Of course the charity gets money for the rags, but perhaps not as much as it might have if it had charged a lower price.
Criticizing charity shops isn't just carping, it is possible that we care about how they are run and want them to make as much money as possible. This isn't always achieved by charging higher prices for the goods.

Carus - it's not necessarily selfishness that makes people seek cheaper produces, they may be genuinely hard up themselves. Charity?

Calm down, dear

I love charity shops but agree their prices are often too high. The small independent shops are much cheaper. I buy most of my yarn from charity shops. Sometimes they overcharge. Yesterday I saw 25g balls at £1 each. I can find 100g gram balls in the likes of Poundstretcher or B&M for not much more. I blame Mary Portas! She did that series about charity shops and tried to turn them all into designer boutiques. For me the appeal of a charity shop is the quirky things that remind me of times gone by. I have just read Eirel's post and see that I am agreeing with her! I wrote this before I read hers!

My sister bought a glass TV table for £15 in a charity shop yesterday, they even delivered it for another £10. I have the same table bought for £299 last year.

I like to browse in charity shops. Sometimes buy. It can be quiet addictive looking round them. Yes, I agree some items can be bought in Primark cheaper than what they charge. The charity shops are getting greedy.

The charity shops remit is to raise funds - you can't expect them to offer that sofa for £20 if they think they can get hundreds. If they sell it at jumble sale prices someone will buy and re-sell on Ebay and the charity will lose out.

I can't imagine many items are priced at £450.

I've met with such a wide range of experiences. Designer labels for 50p in small local charity shops where the elderly ladies pricing up didn't have an idea.

I've picked up brand new items for a couple of quid in shops where the strategy is to charge no more than a few pounds for an item, regardless.

I've also put items back on the rail in other shops, in the knowledge that they cost less at the X Catalogue Shop or Primark when they were brand new.

I have donated hundreds -thousands - of pounds worth of goods to shops over the years. It's a good way of keeping items out of landfill. I'm pleased that we can now donate electrical items, as getting rid of unwanted items that still worked well was always a dilemma.

If I have recently published books to give away that are in excellent condition, I often offer them to the local library first.
Cutbacks mean they have much less to spend on books and they are grateful.

I agree with tiggypiro on the extortionate price of second hand books sold in national charity shops. This annoys me because I have gifted hundreds of good books to charities but when I want to buy one some are priced at up to a half of the retail price.

On the other hand I bought a few very cheap second hand books at a car boot sale and intending to read them later on, I placed them on my bookshelf in the hallway. However when we went out and came back to the house my wife remarked on a musty damp small in the hall. Unfortunately the bargain books bought at the carboot were pitted with damp spots and hand to go into recycling.

Having worked as a chariity shop manager,I would like to point out the overheads a charity has-premises, shop staff(usually 2 paid at basic wage),regional and admin staff,energy costs,etc..Volunteers are greatly appreciated.They also have the problem of people leaving bags outside overnight,usually unusable items.This is fly-tipping and causes a lot of unnecessary work.Sorting through donations can be a time consuming and sometimes unsavoury job-clothes only fit for rags,smelly,unwashed clothes and general household rubbish.One manager I know even found a dead dog in one bag.Many customers expected to be able to bargain with staff to knock the price down.Furniture has to be collected-more costs,petrol,van,etc.
We priced our clothes accordingly-cheaper for unbranded and a scale for the high end brands.Each shop had a chart to show them which brands were most expensive.Only good clothes were sold-we had to check for holes,missing buttons,etc.The same went for books,toys and bric-a-brac-all checked for quality safety,etc.
I loved the job but I would just ask people to remember that it has its unpleasant side and charity shop staff work hard for minimum wages-my choice because I believed in the charity.
All that said,charity shops still serve a useful purpose and are a large source of income for a charity.I agree that some of them are a little over-priced but the majority still offer bargains and could not function on the miniscule prices that some people seem to think is their "right."

Good post oznan!

While I know that the British Heart Foundation does excellent work in research and education, I don't use their shops because they insist on keeping the doors open ("head office say we must"). I don't want to have any money I pay for things being wasted in heating the street, quite apart from my wish for there still to be a planet for all our DGC to live on when they are our age. If they are so concerned that nobody can open their doors (I know, I know, with a buggy or a wheelchair one would need help), they would probably be cheaper in the long run to get automatic doors. Barnardo's seems to have the same attitude, but Cancer Research has not gone out of business by keeping their doors closed.

My problem with charity shops is not really the prices they charge because as somebody else said you don't have to buy , but the amount of them there are. Since the recession they have virtually taken over our small town . Because of the discounted rents they enjoy, most of our little independent shops have been priced out as they have to pay exorbitant rates. Our card shop was forced to close as the charity shops were selling cards that the whole sellers let them have at much lower cost than the normal trader had to pay. This can't be right.

I understand that charities are there to raise money for their specific cause, but the fact that quite a lot of people actually shop in these shops because they can't afford to buy new seems to be being overlooked now. Personally, while I am lucky enough to be able to buy brand new clothes (though not very frequently, and from the cheaper shops, or when drastically reduced in price), I do look in the charity shops when wanting or needing other items that I want rather than need, and really do feel that some charity shops are now being very opportunistic.
Perhaps I am wrong, but there was a time when it seemed that charity shops knowingly benefited two groups of people, both those who were represented by the specific charity, and customers who could not afford to buy brand new goods. This seems to have changed, which IMHO is a great shame.

Our local charity shop, Prospect Foundation, sell donated items for a while, then those that aren't sold are moved to another shop, the stock thus keeps circulating until it's sold.

I remember seeing a TV programme some time in the last year where it showed what happened to the vast quantities of clothes that weren't wanted by the charity shops, or that didn't sell quickly enough: they were exported to, I think, India, where they where auctioned off and became part of a huge business revolving around the selling of second-hand clothes.
I couldn't help wondering at the time how the donors would have felt about their cast-offs becoming part of such a lucrative (for some) business.

I'm sure our local BHF shop doesn't keep the doors open! Our high street in Tonbridge has a high proportion of charity shops, but as OH and I love browsing in them, we don't mind. Have recently bought a nearly-new Westbeach ski-type jacket in our local Mind shop. It was priced at £15 which was considerably more than I had planned to pay, but as it was a perfect fit and exactly what I wanted, I bought it. Best buy ever. They are about £80 new. Also snapped up a floaty dress for £2 which I wore to a summer wedding and was complemented on it. I don't think most charity shops are over-priced - they are just keeping up with the times.

There is a flourishing market for second hand clothes in a number of countries in Africa and Asia. I heard an interview once with someone from Oxfam who explained that the reason they sold the clothes to dealers and didn't give them away was because the second hand clothes industry in these countries provided employment for many thousands of people, from the dealers that bought the clothes wholesale and sorted them through to the network of people that got these clothes to markets all over, what are frequently, large countries with poor transport networks. To give the clothes away free would disrupt these networks and would result in many of people involved in the industry being made unemployed, plunging them and their families into destitution.

If you give clothes to charity what difference does it make whether the clothes are sold to a buyer in this country or a dealer overseas. You give the clothes to the charity so that they can raise money by selling them - and that is exactly what they are doing. As well as that the overseas sales keep many people in work in the countries they are sold in.

I didn't realise that charity shops exported their unsold clothing. Several years ago we went to a market in Sicily where there were several second hand clothes stalls stocking items with English charity shop labels. At the time we assumed that they had been sent for textile recycling and been fraudulently diverted. Mystery explained

^ there was a time when it seemed that charity shops knowingly benefited two groups of people, both those who were represented by the specific charity, and customers who could not afford to buy brand new goods.^

Another reason Charities do not offer bargains to benefit those in need is that for a few years ago now the Charity Commission (CC) told charities that they had to limit their charitable actions very narrowly to the purposes stated in the registration document filed at the CC and nothing else.

At that time I was involved with a local charity that hired a meeting room from another local charity that owned a building with several large rooms which it would rent out at a favourable rate to other charities. One year we were told that this was no longer possible. The reason was that the CC had told them that supporting other local charities by granting them preferential room rates was not in their constitution, so all room hirers would have to pay the full commercial rate. As the building was a beautiful period building overlooking the river Thames, the commercial hire rate was way out of our price bracket so we had to go elsewhere. So if a charity running a shop does not have benefiting its customers in its registration document, any price it charges must reflect the market value of its goods.

I was until recently one of the trustees of a charity and remain a committee member. The CC demands on charities to show that they are making the best use of their assets to attain the aims in their registration document and also making sure they declare in detail exactly the activities they are undertaking to meet their charitable aims gets more and more onerous every year.

Wheniwasyourage- the open door HO diktat is spreading. Another chain was told doors must be open all the year around 'to be welcoming', a bit daft on a perishing cold day with a shivering manager standing under the overhead heater.
CC have given charitable status to some dodgy organisations in the past and need to look closely at what¡ they are doing.
Some of the clothes banks (not, I would think, the Salvation Army ones!) which first send the clothes to Ireland make a great deal of money for someone.