Are charity shops getting expensive

[Milims]

I just bought an old knitting machine off fleabay for £22 mostly to make socks with as I'm a really slow knitter and I'm fed up with having to throw shop-bought ones away after just a few washes.

Now there's something I'd like to learn to do!

[Green Aura]

There are definitely different policies about what is expected of charity shops in the larger chains - they have targets just like ordinary supermarkets. Smaller ones just go for (hopefully) shifting lots of stuff cheaply.

Where I used to live there were 5-6 different charity shops within a couple of streets so there was a certain amount of competition to sell their stuff. But the Cancer Research shop, which had a prominent corner position with lots of big window displays were so expensive I didn't even go there when earning a full-time salary. I could never understand how they stayed in business. I can only think they prey on people who've lost loved ones or themselves survived the big C because ordinary shoppers didn't go there. Which for a charity strikes me as really horrendous.

[crowsashes]

yes defiantly it is getting more expensive to shop in charity shops .

oxfam are best to stay well away from leave them to the middle classes who like to feel their doing their bit for society.

down here - devon air ambulance - great value and looks like a charity shop too! not too shiny and you have to rummage for the bargins - just how i like it

heart foundation here is a bit hit and miss - some expensive others not so.

it all depends on what your after tbh - i paid £10 for a book second hand from a charity shop - its out of print and exchanging for around £30 on ebay/market place/ dedicated second hand book shops.

best buys i ever got though were LO moses basket with a stand £10 - a massive kingsize throw from debenhams £4 - my bedroom curtains 2 pairs £10

the bargins are there its just taking alot more footwork and best to avoid city centre charity shops especially when they try to flog you a primrk shirt for a fiver and you can get it new for £3!!!

[contadina]

I just bought an old knitting machine off fleabay for £22 mostly to make socks with as I'm a really slow knitter and I'm fed up with having to throw shop-bought ones away after just a few washes.

Now there's something I'd like to learn to do!

If you can knit, socks are not really difficult. I downloaded a pdfhttp://www.cometosilver.com/socks/printready/with instructions and watched youtube instruction for any bit I didn't understand. I'm really slow however and it to a year to knit one pair (it's supposed to take a couple of weeks). Estimates for knitting with a machine are a couple of hours

Now that really is a case of getting what you pay for. I pay exorbitant prices for top-quality hiking socks but they last for many years. Always buy several identical pairs at the same time, so you don't end up with odd ones.

I hear what you are saying gregorach but I live in sleepy southern Italy where sock choices are limited and post rarely arrives. The hiking socks I ordered for hubby at the beginning of December have got lost in transit along with the replacement ones the company sent out.

[yvette]

I think crowsashes may have something - liking charity shops to look like charity shops, not too slick, and with the possibility of a bargain hidden away at the bottom of the pile somewhere. I'm the same, and I do think that that is part of the appeal of charity shops. If they get too slick, people won't have that thrill of discovery! I like to buy textiles from charity shops to re-use/re-purpose, but have often found that I could get new fabric cheaper in the market. However, now I am trying to 'buy nothing new in 2011', I may have a problem... Freecycle beckons!

[spider8]

In Kirkwall there are five charity shops and the one I avoid is the Red Cross Shop which is way too expensive and all posh and neat. The others are much more how I like them to be, you can have a good rummage and enjoy doing so as there are bargains to be found. One shop is owned by a lady who lets it out for charities to run, for a week or sometimes two weeks at a time, so that any charity or organisation can raise some money. The shops stock is just taken over 'as is' and any donations brought in are just put out for sale. I think it's a great idea (but don't know about the shops lease or how the lady manages financially etc.,) but it keeps the items cheap and they shift a lot of it. I've got some great bargains from there and I make it my first port of call when in town.

[MuddyWitch]

My late Mum used to volunteer in her local charity shop, untill the (paid) manageress retired. The new woman, whilst very personable, just wasn't in touch with the 'real' world: she tried to charge £5 for a vase that my Mum knew had originally come from the Pound Shop! This was just one example, there were dozens of otheres.

When my Mum (& her other volunteer collegues) tried to persuade the manageress to put cheaper prices on things they were ignored.

It turned out that this woman was from a very upper middle class family, who only shop in 'up market' places, they regard M & S as 'common'!

Mum had a word with the head office of the charity (I think it was 'Age Concern', it was definatly one of the well-known charities) and was told that the pricing of second-hand, donated goods is the individual shop manager's responsibility. Mum left, as she was sick of her friends & neighbours complaining about the silly prices.

That particular branch, which had been in the top of the charities fund-raising league, has since closed.

MW

[mrsflibble]

in our town there are less and less second hand bargains, so i save my second hand hunting for the occcasional church jumble and for the charity shops on the outskirts of colchester where my mum lives.

I'm sorry mrs Scope lady of basildon town centre, a primark skirt is NEVER worth £5. not even new! Mr PDSA manager, cancer research people and hospice shops must all be pricing themselves agains Scope and the BHF to be frank becaus they're all as bad as each other now.

[Big Al]

I was in Durham recently and the oxfam shop had vinyl albums for sale in their "speciallity room" and some of them were going for £60 plus. As a record collector I'd have liked to buy a couple of them but not at £45 and £62 respectivly. But then I got to think and in thinking I wondered if I was at a record fair would I pay these prices for the same mint albums? Had I been able to have the money the answer would probably be no but I'd have haggled the price down to maybe £70 for the two so why not do that in a charity shop? Probably because it was a "charity" shop and in such by haggling I would be reducing the amount of good work the charity could do but then charity begins at home.

I posted earlier in the week that jeans were £4 a pair and on this point i'd like to think I would pay more for a pair so some little wetback in the sweat shops of asia can have a living wage but then I don't have a living wage and neither does my wife so if the likes of Asda can use their might to get me £4 jeans then so be it.

I think charity shops were seen as some place the poor went because "normal people" were able to shop at the big shops. Then it became chic to be seen in second hand clothes because you were " environmentally responsible" or Returning to the make do and mend era when times were tough like they are now so the charity shops saw this as a chance to make money out of the nuvo Riche who pander to the latest whim.

Charity shops for me became a greedy glutonous scam when they were throwing out perfectly good clothes because they were not designer labels, oxfam in my town. The British Heart Foundation has mega large shops now with houshold furniture in that have been donated but again at priced as if they were in a new retail store just because they look new. It's still second hand. If I want to pay top dollar for items I will buy new then when it is worn out I'll repair it.

Having said all that I got a full 4 piece dinner service for £3.80 two days before Christmas. The theme of dinner this year was recycled so I needed more plates etc. I felt so emabarased at it being only £3.80 I made a £5 donation and also bought a couple of small love stones for another £5 so their policy of cheap pricing got a lot more out of me that day.

In general I don't do charity shops now purely because of the pricing policies.

[Graye]

I have mixed opinions about charity shops. It incenses me that they open up flashy High Street shops selling new items and manage to get away with volunteer staff and enormous concessions on business rates etc. By doing this they doing honest retailers selling similar new items out of business (and sometimes PUTTING them out of business as they cannot compete with free staff and no rates). I also get annoyed when I see some of the prices, £3 for a paperback, £4 for a t shirt and so on. Their "pricers" have some vivid imaginations. If I buy from charity shops I tend to search out to independents, hospice shops, small animal charities, etc. In France they are few and far between, although we had a great Croix Rouge one in are local town, all things fixed price, tops €1, dresses €3, books 5 for €1. I t was only open one afternoon and one morning a week but was heaving on those days.

But then I get onto Oxfam - my major bugbear. I know they do great things abroad, even if their directors and executives are rather too well paid for my liking. BUT, as an example, my Mum is a volunteer book bank emptier, bless her. She keeps five banks in order, empties them weekly, sorts the contents, gets rid of the complete rubbish (the majorty in fact, phone directories, old catalogues, sandwiches, used syringes, even a dead cockerel in one!) sorts and sizes the rest into cardboard trays she begs herself from the local supermarket. She keeps full records of what she gets on their instructions. Then she stacks them in her garage for Oxfam to deign to collect them. Last time I went down there were over 100 of these trays completely stuffing her garage. I would say she spends six or so hours a week at this. And they had just complained that she had not been getting many high priced books. As if she controls who donates. She does this totally voluntarily, receives no payment for her petrol, stores the books for months at a time and also gets flack from them! I offered to phone up to sort out why they were leaving 100s of trays like that and Mum wouldn't let me, she enjoys doing this as it gives her something to do (and she reads quite a lot so gets a never ending procession of books to enjoy).

And now I discover that the larger charities pass a huge numbers of donated books, CDs and DVDs on to independent dealers who sell them second hand on Amazon, the deal being they wll donate a whole PENNY back to the charity for each item sold! I wonder how many doners realise that? And I daren't even mention that bit to Mum...

[yvette]

What a poor reward for a sterling job. Your mum deserves a medal.

[boboff]

Or at the very least a book on medals.

[bonniethomas06]

I have found charity shops to be much more expensive - in fact just the other day I found a used curtain pole - with wrall plugs with crumbling plaster still attached, going for £30 in my local cancer research, when they were only £22 in the orange and white DIY shop! But the totally out of touch 60 something behind the till looked at me like I was satan for pointing it out to her - I mean I would rather proceeds went to charity but am not paying 1/3 more for an inferior product which doesn't even have all of the fittings attached!

I frequently find Primarni stuff in charity shops which is cheaper to buy new from the retailer than in the charity shop.

It is such a shame - I remember years ago when you could buy outfits for under £5 - and were more likely to buy odd things on the offchance that you could cut them up and customise them on the basis that it didn't matter if you then got them home and realised they were not suitable.

[Flo]

Back to basics on this topic for a moment.

Charity shops can only sell what they are given. If they aren't getting good quality named stock donated (M&S, FatFace, Hollister, Abercrombie and Fitch, American Eagle, Gap, Ralph Lauren, Lacoste, Zara, Monsoon ...) but are getting T***o, Asda, Primark, Sainsbury's because that is what we are buying and passing on - just what do you expect? They will price what they get at what they feel they can ask in order to make money out of the donations they get. Which may mean that prices rise to become expensive in comparison to what is being offered elsewhere.

If Big Al is happy with £4 Asda jeans and doesn't want to trade up a brand for a bit more brass in the charity shop, well there are obviously plenty more like him. That's no insult to you Big Al but you are a lovely example of what I'm trying to point out (don't leave the area in a huff as you post some of my favourite reads one way and another ).

People no longer go to charity shops to bag a bargain - they go to T***o, Asda, Primark, Sainsbury's. If people aren't buying M&S, FatFace, Hollister, Abercrombie and Fitch, American Eagle, Gap, Ralph Lauren, Lacoste, Zara, Monsoon et al in your area and then trading them in for new season's wear in a couple of years, then you the charity shop hugger will not be able to buy good brands at rock bottom prices. If turnover was great because the stock was great there is less likelihood of prices rises above what we think is reasonable.

I just often discuss with myself whether I will buy a perfectly decent second hand fleece at £9.99 in a charity shop when I can nip down to Edinburgh Woollen Mill who often have decent new ones at £10 - and fleeces are one of the few things they have done consistently well for a number of years.

Maybe not to blame the charity shops but to blame us, the buying public, who have been gulled by the stack it high and sell it cheap chains. But Brits also seem to be completely convinced that they are being ripped off every time they go shopping by reading and listening to our dearly beloved media and can't see the wood for the trees.

But yes Charity Shops are expensive in comparison to T***o, Asda, Primark, Sainsbury's because they haven't caught up with modern clothes trading as yet.

[Graye]

They will price what they get at what they feel they can ask in order to make money out of the donations they get. Which may mean that prices rise to become expensive in comparison to what is being offered elsewhere.

Never done that "quote" thing before, very clever little gizmo...

However, I still believe they should have some clue about what things cost and what is a reasonable amount to charge. They "make money" from a standing start, these things are given to them and they have few overheads. They also usually do a nice line in selling new items which I think is not in the spirit of charity shops at all. They are selling used items which have no real value (try selling used clothing at boot sales or on EBay) because both the doners and the buyers feel that they are doing something good for their chosen charity. Some buyers couldn't care less about labels, they need a warm coat and have no interest in what make it is. Why should they have to pay 50% of the new price or even more? The managers need a dose of realism and common sense plus a touch of humility. I'm all for recycling but I'm afraid I draw the line at being ripped off.

Here's an example. We have nine charity shops in Whitby. They ALL charge far too much, designer, middle range or cheaper brands. No doubt they all keep an eye on each others prices and then price their own stock to match. One particular instance springs to mind - a pair of expensive (but well used) leather walking boots. Price? £48! That same day the same boots across town in the hiking shop were £49.99 in the sale, new. Those boots were given to them for nothing, why not be satisfied with £20, even then they would still be expensive in my opinion. However in Dolgellau and Machynnleth recently we found charity shops selling items at reasonable prices even though there was a scale depending on the brand name. These were national charities as well as local ones.

You could say the Welsh towns are relatively "poor". But although Whitby is a tourist town with expensive restaurants (Magpie Cafe and Trenchers take note) and has lots of visitors with money to spend in the "tat" shops there are an awful lot of unemployed living here too. To them a Primark item at a reasonable price is good enough. But to have to pay £3 for something which only cost that much in the first place is ridiculous.

Earlier this year Oxfam sold a donated book for £37200 at auction. I have no problem with that - they do good work and, assuming a large chunk of that went towards that good work I hope they get many more. But the moment charity shops start seeing themselves as businesses their whole ethos goes down the pan.