Charity Shop Prices

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.

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 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!

Calm down, dear

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Indinana - a charity shop I volunteered in had a steady, much appreciated, trade in knitting patterns and needles at low prices. One day we found head office had decreed that, on Health and Safety grounds, we were to no longer sell the needles (previously kept on a high shelf behind the counter or in the back of the shop). Our hefty ring binders of patterns went too. Maybe HO thought someone might drop one and slip over on it ...
We used to sell quirky old kitchen equipment and all kinds of oddments, no longer as the shop remorselessly reinvents itself as a boutique. The target of 200 clothes items put out per day instigated a discussion as to whether a pair of shoes could count as 2!! It meant a rapid cull of clothes etc. which had been on sale a couple of weeks.

Tiggypiro - at least 10 years ago I hesitated over paying £9.99 in a London Cancer Research shop for a good condition wool and cashmere winter coat. It fit and suited me so after some thought I bought it. It's kept me warm through every cold winter, goes over and with both casual and formal clothes and when I got it out again recently felt like an old friend. No regrets!
If something is overpriced or in poor condition it may be that a mistake has been made, we all make them.
Dorsetpennt - if the sofa set and cutlery canteen are overpriced they won't sell. Do you and your friend think donated goods should be sold at rock bottom prices? The idea is to finance medical research, not, after all, someone's living room.
In a local hospice shop people who buy a number of items sometimes ask for a discount. They are politely reminded that the money is for the care of dying local people. On the other hand people with family experience of that hospice not only donate goods but sometimes deliberately overpay for purchases.
Yes, you can buy books more cheaply than in Heart shops but you're still helping a charity and recycling a book ,at less than the publisher's price. All their books are pristine. Personally I'll happily buy a book which is a in less than perfect condition if I want to read it. Perhaps because they have knowledgeable staff, Oxfam book shops sell books based on their content, not their condition. The well used treasures are found there - as they are in the shops of smaller local charities who put out almost everything they get donated. Some chains dispose of far too many saleable books because they are trying to be 'Ladies' Boutiques'. If you want to be sure your donated books will actually go on sale choose a shop with plenty of bookshelves!

We are really blessed with many charity shops in the market town we live in. Ideal place for picking up small toys & books for when the grandchildren visit.
You do have to check them over, however, as last week I picked up 2 motorised cars marked at £1.99 each. I worked - the other didn't. Very cheekily asked if I could have the dud for £1 and got them both for £3 - result. Always a pleasure to chat to the very helpful staff.
Being a "donater" and "a buyer" feels good.
The charity shops giving out free plastic donation bags is brilliant ~ they can be used for all sorts of things

I totally agree. I visit charity shops regularly and they have a large amount of stock.....if they kept their prices more sensible the turnover would be greater for them......
Shirts, for example, are sold for £5 approximately.......however, I found one store where they had rduced them to one pound..,,I bought five to deconstruct and sew with.......this meant they had money and extra space for stock....surely a win, win for them.
I know...a fiver for a shirt is a good price.....but less than that is better and could sway the sale,....

My best buy was a cashmere and wool coat last year for £9.99. It was exactly what I had been looking for and would have bought it had it been in a 'proper' shop.
Last week I saw an almost new Mama's and Papa's pram + car seat and lots of extras for £35. I just hoped that someone who needed it bought it and not to re-sell on ebay.

I went into our Age UK shop today and bought a nice Monsoon dress for £5.99!

I have noticed that some charity shops charge much higher prices than others.Locally, where I live, Oxfam is the dearest.I think of it as buying something I want and giving a donation at the same time.However, nobody will pay £6 for a well used and slightly dingy polo shirt, which I saw in there the last time I went into town.Clothes are piling up, you could hardly move in there,a sure sign that people are not buying.

It's counter-productive because people look, but don't buy. Prices don't come down because targets are raised year after year. With donations decreasing (blame the recession, e-bay sales, whatever) in quantity and quality increasing prices seems the only solution.
I saw an advert for a jumble sale the other day- first one I had seen for years!!!

Didn't Mary Portas do a TV programme/series about charity shops? She was trying to steer them away from their usual "tat" to designer type clothes with a significant price rise. She encouraged a more business like approach. I agree many items over priced but you can get some good labels reasonably priced sometimes. Used to love a good rummage at a jumble sale, haven't seen one for years!

Is it counter productive? If it was prices would have come down. They haven't.

I think one of the problems is that charity shops are run as businesses and have targets, staffing costs and overheads to cover. I have been told that the recession resulted in less high end goods being donated and that prices have increased to cover the loss of these money earners. They are I think trying to make up for a drop in sales by charging more-counter productive of course.

I agree with the fact that the items being sold have been donated is irrelevant, however I think the charity shops may be pricing themselves out of the market. Most of our local shops are charging around the £2 mark for books when I can download many of the same ones from Kobo for less and like Greenfinch have seen many cheaper end clothes priced up to more than the original cost. Whilst I would rather the money go to charities I cannot justify paying the same if not more for second hand goods.

I used to go into charity shops all the time but the prices have really gone up. I do understand that the money is going to a good course,but i'm sure more would be sold if they lower the prices. Dvd's at £3 and a set of 5 tumblers for £12 in our local charity shop window,I don't think I'll bother...

I often look through knitting or sewing patterns in charity shops. Today I was a little taken aback to find a charity shop selling knitting patterns for 25p, which had been torn from magazines, very old and out of date magazines at that .