this is actually A Thing according to my dedicated thrifter wife
They realized they can make more money by pricing what professional resellers would charge, and have starting sloughing off more high end stuff to sell online, and adjusting pricing to be inline with the rest of the 2nd hand fashion reselling market.
Yeah, everyone has a phone now, including goodwill employees. They aren’t going to put a Northface coat out for $12.99 when it goes for $129 online used.
Our local thrift stores price according to the real world too, and generally, I bet $35 is still a deal for this coat. Its just not the $3.50 that people want to see.
I went to a Savers (local thrift store chain) about a month ago and they had a boxed Wii console in the glass case. It was used, not sealed, and they wanted $350 for it. I asked the guy if that was a mistake and he told me it was indeed the listed price. “I know for a fact this will never sell at this price because it’s been here for over a year.”
Some of these employees are just putting crazy prices.
100% also happening. I bet they found a boxed Wii online listed for $350 and did not check the “sold” prices.
Then again, “vintage” gaming is having a revival right now, so it’s fully possible it sold for $350 online, but the local customers aren’t the same as the global customers.
I found dollarama products listed for $5+ at the local goodwill. Let’s not just make the blanket assumption that exploited goodwill workers are professional appraisers and that the customer is the problem.
Well, they deal with literally any object any store has ever sold in the history of time or space, likely for minimum wage. So yeah, I expect they don’t get them all right. Having to accurately price 1930’s glokenspiels and 2017 high fashion would be challenging for anyone, anywhere.
Still, it makes sense that they have some processes in place to get it right some of the time, and maybe even most of the time.
If you go rural enough and you find the mom and pop Christian own thrift stores you can still get those kind of deals.
Just recently I went to such a place and I got five stainless steel large (4qt) spice jars and a bunch of silverware for like $7 total.same things woulda been like $15 each at goodwill
You mean it’s not the 3.50 that the working mom of 3 needs it to be in order to buy it.
More like its $35 that Goodwill can use to help an actual working mom of 3 when re-sellers pay to get a coat they can sell online for $130.
Retail charities view their store as the source of funds for the charity, not as the charity itself. They also know people are reselling high end items, so they can mark them higher to make more money for the charity.
I wanna say this has been going on for a while, but it really feels like they’ve cranked it up just recently. I was in a goodwill probably just a month or so ago and it felt like everything there was the same price you’d have gotten it new. It’s insane.
Stick to your local thrifters, people, chances are they have better shit anyway.
My friend frequents goodwill and one time, he came home super excited to show me the Husky mini socket set he bought. He excitedly told me “oh it was only $35!”, assuming he had gotten a great deal… that same socket set was also $35 brand new at Home Depot. It’s almost predatory because people just assume goodwill has better prices. That said… my friend should’ve been smart enough to double check that before buying it, lol
I worked at Goodwill sorting donations 20 years ago. This is nothing new. They price according to what they think they can get for it. And if we got in designer stuff that we thought we could make money off of, there was a Goodwill website we sold it on. This is the way it’s always been.
They’re also upfront about it: Goodwill exists to give (mainly disabled) people jobs, not to sell things as cheap as possible
Don’t make me laugh. They get their product donated, they get their labor at subminimum, and they sell at market price. That’s not a non profit that exists to help the people working there. It’s exploiting them and extracting money from them and the shoppers who are deceived into thinking it’s a thrift store.
Then why does anyone donate shit to Goodwill. I thought they purposely sold things cheap so that people that needed it could afford it.
This is a common misconception with “charity shops” in the UK and “opportunity (op) shops” in Australia.
The assumption is that the charity/opportunity is for people doing it tough to be able to buy cheap clothes and home goods.
But the “charity” is because many shops like this are partner retailers of larger charity organisations, eg: the “profit” from Salvos stores helps indirectly fund Salvation Army Housing and food relief programs.
The opportunity comes from who they hire, if you’re disabled or elderly, these shops are more likely to hire you than other retail providers.
But of course, a large number of charity and op shops abuse their staff as much as Amazon and Walmart do. Wage theft and unethical labour practices galore
That’s been their marketing for decades. It’s been coming unraveled recently though. There are actual thrift shops that charge enough to keep the doors open and do their other projects. There’s also homeless and near homeless donation places that will take your stuff in and use it to furnish a place given to a homeless person.
Really we should have all been very sus of a “thrift store” with Goodwill’s marketing budget.
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I’ve put far too much thought into this but realistically everyone should use Salvation Army. I personally hate that it’s religious but it’s also non-profit. For that alone it is better than Goodwill or Value Village.
realistically everyone should use Salvation Army.
No.
They’re a bunch of queerphobic bigots. They claim to be inclusive. It’s a lie.
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/12/16/21003560/salvation-army-anti-lgbtq-controversies-donations
And there are other reasons.
https://libcom.org/article/starvation-army-twelve-reasons-reject-salvation-army
Goodwill has started doing regional pricing. They will actually sort high value items out of donations and send them to higher income areas to target middle class “thrifters” who are not as price sensitive. These stores are basically like TJ Maxx in terms of pricing.
I hate Goodwill out here. They have the least selection of crap, and charge absurdly high prices like this. I go to another local chain of thrift stores called The Hope Chest. There’s like 4 of them around here and they rock. Usually go there for pants because I can find good quality materials and spend like $5 for 6 pairs.
But let’s also be fair, as in “I gave it to them for free out of convenience while getting rid of the stuff that I’d feel bad just throwing away”
If they’re free market then they aren’t a thrift store, charity, or a non profit.
They’re non-profit because the profit isn’t their focus - they have a specific mission. They’re a charity because they use the money they raise for a social cause. It’s free market because they set prices based on the buying behavior of the public. When they price too high, more of the public decides not to buy or buys elsewhere.
It can be all three.
