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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.
Savers is the same as Value Village and it’s a for-profit company that exists in three different countries. They’re not much better than Goodwill, if at all.
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.
This is a store where people GIVE away their stuff, out of the goodness of their hearts with the premise that it will be sold at a low price so that someone less fortunate can benefit. If goodwill has decided to sell the merchandise it gets for FREE at “fair market value” to the highest bidder in order to maximise profit then what’s the point of goodwill? Might as well use a consignment store and get a cut.
The exchange in “Goodwill” is that you’re donating in goodwill so your things can help others. That’s what goodwill MEANS.
Okay, you misunderstand how retail charity works. These charities sell donated goods to generate revenue to fund their charity effort.
The “charity” isn’t the cheap goods inside the store. It’s using the profit they generate to run or give to that charity. This can be running food banks, animal shelters, jobs programs, etc. The more money they make, the more they can give to their causes.
Their social good works in 3 ways: provide that charity effort, provide inexpensive or less expensive goods to people, and act as free recycling centers for the environment. Most of what these stores receive is literal trash, flat out. They process this to the actual dump at no charge while sorting out any useful items.
You can disagree with this model, but it is the model. If you have real issues with it, then sure, sell the goods and keep the money or donate directly to a charity of your choice.
Goodwill specifically markets itself as a thrift store to help the working class while also helping homeless and disabled people get retail experience to get normal jobs.
Instead we’ve found out they get their product donated, they pay less than minimum wage (sometimes 22 cents an hour), and they sell at market prices. So that was all a lie. That’s why people are mad. Changing what they say they do now isn’t going to work without a massive PR campaign to show people the out of store projects they do. And then we’re all going to ask where the money for that PR campaign came from. They are a shit company, and a shittier charity.
Can you link some of these ads you’re talking about? I don’t really see any ads for them ever.
I don’t think they hide that they sell things that are donated, since they want people to donate. They also dont sell things at market prices, especially not from what I’ve seen personally. I bought a $600 snowboarding jacket there for $85 once. It wasn’t $8.50, but 80% off for a coat in pristine condition is nowhere near “market” prices. I’ve got tons of things from years of thrifting there that were wildly under “market” prices. I still go regularly and think the prices are very solid for thrift, if occasionally bonkers.
It sounds like you have specific issues with Goodwill, which is fine, but the above is how all retail charities work. The store prices are not the charity. The charity comes from the profits from the stores, so all retail charities are incentivized to make a profit. The fact that the prices are much less than market, and that they do some great environmental things as well via recycling is the extra positive bits of retail charity like goodwill or habitat for humanity.
If you don’t care to support the model that’s fine, but that’s why they price things the way they do.
Sounds like you’re the one misunderstanding goodwill. Goodwill doesn’t donate to ANY causes. Their ONLY contribution is employing disabled people and providing jobs/training. You can read it on their own website.
Who does Goodwill help? Goodwill serves those with barriers to employment. This includes individuals with disabilities, people with limited work history, those who have experienced corporate downsizing and recipients of government support programs. Goodwill’s services are designed to meet the training and placement needs of the individual. https://www.goodwill.org/faqs/#d7
There well known for paying their disabled employees below minimum wage while paying local store CEOs hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
So don’t tell me about how the high prices I pay will support charities.
It’s actually subminimum. Goodwill gets to decide what they pay their workers thanks to a carve out in the Fair Wage act. They’ve been caught paying as little as 22 cents.
Thats pretty fucked up. According to this article in 2013, there were 69 goodwill franchises that used it.
It does look like they are moving away from using it:
As of September 1, 2024, only 10 of the 149 local Goodwills in the United States are reported on DOL’s list. Many of those organizations are in the process of transitioning away from using the certificate. GII does not hold a certificate, and we support local Goodwill leaders as they collaborate with people with disabilities, local employers and other service providers to create an array of community-based employment and other opportunities.
That would be awesome, but they need to straight up tell their franchises the game is up.
Yeah, looks like we don’t agree in most of the thread, but I’m 100% fucking with you there.
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.
Then they aren’t a thrift store and should stop deceptively marketing themselves as one. Furthermore their “programs” are shit. If they just paid their employees then they could afford the online courses without the administrative overhead.
That’s how all charity thrift stores work. That’s how they have always worked. The retail sales power the charity. Goodwill, habitat for humanity, salvation army, on and on. I have some local ones that pay for animal shelters.
They all sell donated items to make money for the charity.
And yet Habitat for Humanity manages to build houses while it’s stores are actually thrift stores.
Habitat for humanity uses the exact same model as goodwill for its retail charity stores.
Retail Revenue
Most Habitat for Humanity affiliates around the country have a ReStore, which is a resale store that receives donations of various types of home goods from people in their community and sells them for a profit. This profit goes directly toward Habitat’s mission and supports the organization’s efforts to build and repair homes.
You can disagree with Goodwill as a charity, but both are still thrift stores.
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
The goodwill near me wants $21 for a pair of jeans that are very obviously used and fairly thin. A thicker pair of jeans is $15.99 at the Walmart 3 miles down the road…
They actually sort items and send the stuff which has higher value to stores in wealthier areas.
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
Only because they legally pay them less then minimum wage.
Goodwill exists to make rich people richer. The disabled people they “exist to give jobs too” are super exploited.
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
They actively donate to anti lgbtq causes. They are explicitly the one I avoid because of this.
No, Salvation Army can get fucked. You couldn’t pay me to shop there.
Use Vinnie’s instead (what we call St Vincent de Paul in Australia)
Or a local store.
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.
Also noticed that affluent areas often have donation centers that don’t have attached stores - because they want that fucking treasure for online listings probably.
Fuck the working class if you live in a high cost of living area I guess? But that also explains why my local Goodwill turns away so many donations. They’re getting fed by other places.
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.
Free market in action.
As in “I gave it to you for free. And you overcharged everyone for it.”
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”
I wouldn’t say donating to Goodwill is convenient. It’s more convenient to just throw it away. And reduce/reuse/recycle is a good thing. The bad thing here is Goodwill is blocking the three Rs by marking up the price. Which means they will probably just throw it away eventually because no one will buy it for that. Hopefully they will at least send it to a garment recycler later so that it’s laundered and then shredded to either r make new clothing, or stuffing for pillows or boxing bags.
That’s why I said “that I’d feel bad throwing away”.
The stages for high end go like this: sent to “goodwill boutique” and/or listed online. Sent to cheaper local goodwill with markdown. Added to cheap-item-Sunday (for ones that still do that). Sent to bulk outlet (where people fill a bag and pay one price for entire bag or by the pound). Finally, recyclers
So they don’t block it so much as delay I suppose. But they’ve gotten good at regionalizing their processes
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.
I’d agree if they weren’t deceptively marketing themselves.
So what you wrote before was not what you meant. You meant because they deceptively market themselves, they aren’t a thrift store, charity, or non-profit.
I don’t know enough about Goodwill to be able to judge that. I’m only saying that charities selling goods, even donated goods, at market prices to raise money for their cause is not at odds with their status or necessarily their mission.
Sorry sometimes I do steps in my head. But yeah charity doesn’t come from a place of deception. If they said we’re selling to the middle class to raise money for the lower classes then that would be okay.
Goodwill is built on under paying it’s labor. They take advantage of laws that allow them to pay disabled people whatever they want. The laws were meant to help provide labor, get disabled people back into a productive life, and provide some extra income so they weren’t completely reliant on Social Security.
That sounds noble right? Well Goodwill has been caught paying people less than a dollar an hour. And as you see here, they aren’t giving discounts to the people who have to shop at a thrift store either.
They’re walking away with a massive upwards redistribution of wealth from the lower classes to the upper classes. Also I expect someone will be along soon to yell at me, (a disabled person), about the dignity of work and how no one else is providing it. Also in this picture, the meat packing industry which has been caught using mentally disabled people for less than minimum pay in dangerous conditions.
Hi, I’m disabled although I’m still working (at the moment, may break further). I agree with you.
The biggest issue to consider for any company hiring a significantly disabled person, whether mentally, physically, or both, is they’ll be less productive and may require much more oversight, meaning they contribute less to the company. This is the justification behind the lower pay. It makes sense if you’re a shit sack capitalist that values production above anything else.
With that being said, Goodwill is absolutely taking advantage of the disabled. They’re ostensibly a non-profit charity that exists to provide employment, leading to training and work experience, to the disabled community. They pay their disabled employees the lowest amount possible, actively working to justify low pay. Imagine if your employer was constantly looking to drop your salary so you had to constantly fight them over it. Now pretend you have a significant TBI or are developmentally disabled (just imagine your mental capacity while drunk, but without the feeling good) and still having to fight that. Welcome working for Goodwill.
Fuck Goodwill right in their “charity” hole.
I stopped going to goodwill a while ago.
Prices too high.
Also Caught them a few times taking the sale of the week items to the back storage so no one can get the $1 blue tags or whatever color of the week it was.
Also heard the manager yelling at an employee for missing one of the sale items.
I still go to all the other brands of thrift stores, there are like 30 of them in 10 miles, maybe more. And they are ALL cheaper than goodwill.
I also used to go to goodwill outlets and get stuff cheap by weight, but I no longer see hard goods or DVDs there anymore. So I stopped going.
My mom still goes there but only picks things up when it’s the right “color” if the day, for the 50% off. The fact that she won’t get things that aren’t in sale at a thrift store should be enough evidence to know it’s not really thrifty.
GoodCorprate WillThey are a for-profit company built around taking advantage of poor people.
all companies take advantage of poor people, the poors are terrible at making long term decisions because they don’t have enough capital to afford them.
While true, there are levels, just like dante’s circles of hell. Not all companies entire business models are specifically designed to take advantage of people’s good nature and/or poor people’s desperation…
Support your local thrift stores!
I used to volunteer with my local thrift store and anytime there was something donated they didn’t think they could sell it would get sent to goodwill lol
I do this too. Any junk that might be sellable but likely not goes to Goodwill so they can deal with it. The decent items go to a local thrift shop that actually helps the community.
My local goodwill turns down anything that’s not perfect because I live in a high cost of living area and they’re getting fed high quality items from across the country.
And habit for humanity
Almost everything in the Goodwill in Rochester, MN is brand new.
Weird as fuck. And we’re not talking just things like brand new clothes, we’re also talking about things like HDMI cables still in the packaging or clearly unused garden ornaments.
ROCHESTER, MN, MENTIONED RAHHH 🐺🐺🐺🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 WHAT THE FUCK IS BAD HEALTHCARE ‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🐺🐺🇺🇸🇺🇸🐺🇺🇸🇺🇸
My wife and I love thrifting in Rochester for that reason, especially with MN’s tax-free clothing.
Frequent thrift shopper, I’ve noticed prices going so high I wonder if they know what “thrift store” means anymore.
Reselling took off in the past few years and everyone thought they could get in on it. Goodwill realized that they were leaving money on the table and started jacking up prices and opened their own online auction site for the better stuff.
Dumdums who think they want to get into reselling keep buying junk for high prices there and then can’t handle the reselling game.
I understand the frustration but Goodwill sells all that stuff to support it’s job training and skills program. Here’s the mission statement . Most people see it’s value as a place to donate old stuff or to buy used clothes cheaply but the organization sees it’s purpose differently.
If they want people to keep shopping there and providing the income necessary to maintain that charitable work, they should probably try to maintain the perception that they price things cheaply enough to make it worth digging through racks of second hand goods.
They hire disabled people because they can legally pay them less then minimum wage. They aren’t the good guys.
How?
people on disability are only allowed to make a very small amount of money per month, usually 1000 or less, or they lose their benefits. I’m guessing that’s why
But they still get minimum wage I assume, just schedule fewer hours.
Yikes, that sounds terrible. And profitable.
Yeah learned about it on Reddit long time ago. It actually legal to pay them so low. Why goodwill hires disabled people.
The jobs training program where they hire people with disabilities and then pay them below minimum wage because of a loophole in the law?
Goodwill does some good work for the community. A lot of the people they help would’ve been potentially homeless. I don’t know what they pay but somehow I don’t think it is the organization you think it is.
“Friends of Goodwill, be dissatisfied with your work until every handicapped and unfortunate person in your community has an opportunity to develop to his fullest usefulness and enjoy a maximum of abundant living”
Very powerful statement, but I somehow doubt they’d be so committed to the spirit of it. Like someone else said, companies are allowed to underpay disabled employees.
So fun fact. The top story on their success story site is Google IT certification. That’s a 50 dollar a month Coursera course, which will take a dedicated person a single month. You can go to community college for 25 dollars a month and walk into actual IT certification tests. Hell you can take an online bootcamp course for programming and cyber security for 10 percent of the normal cost and pay them only if you get a job in the field.
If giving people a fucking coursera course is the limit of their job training then it’s functionally non-existent.
