Charity shops and their prices

I think a lot of people buy from charity shops to sell. I browse ebay because there are no charity shops as such in France, but I can tell from the muliple listings (of wildly differing sizes) on some sellers sites that these clothes have been bought in .... from somewhere else. And how many times do you see someone on Flog It, who bought a piece of Moorcroft for a fiver in their local charity shop and sold it for 50 quid at auction?
I don't like the morals behind it, so it would seem the only way to clamp down on it is to sell second-hand quality goods at a quality price.
Also, quite often, by the time you have got involved in an online bidding war, and paid the postage you are paying too much for an EBay item anyway...... and you can't see the quality or the wear. I would much prefer to wander round a charity shop, so as I'll be spending the summer in the UK you can guess what I'll be doing in my spare time.

I agree, Nonnie. I used to visit our local charity shop with 8yr old who loved to buy a book with her £1 pocket money. Now prices have been hiked to £2 for a used paperback. Perhaps they don't realise that you can buy new ones delivered for less than that. Now we go to the public library for a book and she saves her money. It's only a small amount but overall charity loses!

As I stated in my first post I always pay over the odds for items I buy because those shops are there for raising money for extremely good causes but that is my choice to do so - so no argument there.

The point I was making was that if they ask a little too much the item will be passed by, by a potential buyer.

The food mixer I saw was an 'Andrew James' which is not as good as some others, and I have now priced this particular food mixer up and there are various prices on line. The most expensive being £101.00 so indeed this was too much to ask IMHO

Someone else will buy it I am positive of that, so no harm done.

As for those who say charity shops are there for the charities, I am sure everyone here is in no doubt of that

Like many others I am keen to pass on unwanted but decent items for charity. I always have a current bag in my garage with items in.

I am not saying we don't need charity shops as they are the life blood of the charities they support. What I am saying is sometimes they ask too much and people walk on by.

I think £50 sounds reasonable, a pity you let the chance go buy.

I work in a charity shop as a volunteer, when people donate to us they expect us to get as much as we can for the charity. Someone donating a Radley handbag they bought for £120 would not expect us to sell it for a fiver. As it is many of our customers are buying things to resell on Ebay & these are the customers who complain about the prices because there is no profit margin for them! I give my time to make money so people can have end of life care in their own home.

I tried on a summer jacket in British Heart Foundation this week. It was £13.99 which I thought was too expensive for second hand. Bon Marche next door had similar jackets for a few pounds more. They also charge too much for yarn, which has no label and no complete balls. Again you can get cheaper across the road in B&M Bargains. Charity shops will price themselves out of the competition if they're not careful.

Nonnie1 Why not join your local Freegle group and post a 'wanted' request for a food processor? Someone will have one, unused, at the back of a cupboard and would be glad to get rid. You might be lucky ? It wouldn't be PAT tested though so you need to accept that. If you get as far as collection and it's obviously ancient, you don't have to accept it! Freegle is a free giving, re-use organisation. No money or payment in kind is allowed. It's a great way to get rid of unwanted stuff. www.ilovefreegle.org

I agree with the comments that clothes are too expensive in charity shops especially t-shirts.
I have the gift aid cards and when I hand stuff in I get it scanned.
I have had some good bargains right enough, last year I had a dress for my daughters wedding that I received for free and then went and bought all my accessories in different charity shops. Hat, shoes, bag, shawl, necklace all for change out of £40.not bad as mother of the bride

I guess it is always a problem for them that new clothes are so cheap these days. One has to think about their prices as a donation as well.

the charity shop where my daughter is assistant manager takes electrical goods and they're pat tested before they're put on to the shop floor.
if you think a price is rather more than you want to pay you are welcome to ask if they'll accept a bit less than the tag price. you probably would have got the food mixer at the price you wanted to pay.
yes, charity shops are a business now and why not? they do a good job in raising money for their respective organisations.
i, for one, was surprised to learn how things are run in charity shops these days - they don't just put things on the shop floor but take things off if they haven't been sold in a certain time and replace them with fresh donations.
all clothes are clean and in good condition, all books, cds and bric a brac are also "whole" and in a good condition and electrical goods are, as i said, pat tested, complete and in working order.
your food mixer would have been a good bargain even at the price they were asking, nonnie1, and it would have worked when you got it home.

Yes it is the buyers choice to buy or not, but it seems it is forgotten charity shops are there for the public to help the charities not the charity shop to help the shopper

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

£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 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!

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 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.

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