WTF is up with Goodwill stores?

[Orrex]

:rant:

They sell dusty, cast-off crap at 110% of original retail, and if you have the nerve to double-check the price, they come off with some kind of fucked up high-and-mighty tone that makes you feel like you're asking about a Faberge Egg instead of a $3.00 candle holder.

I've seen items on Goodwill's shelves identical to retail merchandise sold right next door, but Goodwill charges $5.99 while the real store charges $3.99. Who the hell is their target audience? Anyone in a position not to care about what they're spending probably isn't shopping at Goodwill in the first place.

This isn't a matter of my feeling superior to anyone, because that's the last thing I feel--believe me. But I do feel pretty confident that I can do a better job of pricing second hand garbage than the wrung-out homecoming queen who just copped a major attitude and thereby talked me out of buying that overpriced chalkboard easel for my kids.

[Lars39]

1. And now all the really good stuff winds up on their website.

[Phx_Dem]

3. not really

most of the good stuff ends up in the homes of the employees.

[Orrex]

29. For real

If you help yourself to an item from the donation drop-off site, that's stealing.

But apparently if you help yourself to that same item in the store's receiving area, that's just fine.

[Phx_Dem]

2. they usually will negotiate prices

You should know that the people doing the pricing are minimum wage employees. If you have a Savers in your area check them out, they are a much better run thrift chain. Savers partners with non-profits, so what you purchase will help non-profits in your community.

[Iggo]

8. Savers is a thrift store?

Got one right around the corner and never knew.

[NMDemDist2]

15. totally! they get all the donations from Boys & Girls clubs and other

(excuse the term) community organizations

[Orrex]

19. Of course they're minimum wage.

In the interest of disclosure I have worked more than my share of minimum wage jobs, so I sympathize. Still, that doesn't mean that they need to be assholes about it--a simple "no" without accompanying attitude would have been more than sufficient.

[Phx_Dem]

33. That is not what I was getting at

sorry I should not have assumed anything. Goodwill of Central Arizona (the one I am familiar with) pays it's floor and production staff very low wages, in the 6-7hr range. Even though most are full time employees they receive almost no benefits, including no health insurance. Not only is this morally wrong, it leads to very high turnover and low morale. Savers by contrast understands the value of it's employees, the production staff can make upwards of 14 per hour with full benefits. So over time the production staff (and mgmt) at Savers develop very good pricing skills and make very few mistakes.

Goodwill of Central Arizona does offer benefits to all the office staff however, and huge 6 figure salaries to the upper mgmt.

[Orrex]

41. Ah!

First--no worries. I didn't infer any commentary from your post, but I thought that I should cover my own ass so as not to seem like one of those "minimum wage workers are lazy assholes" assholes!

I'd never ever heard of a "Savers" before this thread, but their wage policy sounds pretty smart (and nicely progressive) to me!

[panhead1961]

4. They have stuff besides Halloween Clothes?

We keep moving from climate to climate so we shop for a lot of seasonal clothes there. There are some deals but not without a lot of looking through all the crap.

[Orrex]

16. I guess it could all be Halloween clothes, depending on your costume

For instance, if I wanted to be a tall Leprechaun from the late 70's, they had the perfect costume on the rack today.

[TZ]

5. Maybe its just the store where you live...

I know my sister makes a habit of going to Good Will on a regular basis and she has found some good bargains, but you have to dig through a lot of crap to find them.

By the way, have you ever tried freecycle? You can find some decent stuff people have no need for anymore...

[madrchsod]

7. they are all like that ..salvation army is a lot cheaper

[Orrex]

14. Never tried Freecyle, but I've heard good things about it

And all of the Goodwill stores I've encountered (which, admittedly, isn't all that many) have been pretty much the same, policy-wise and price-wise.

[madrchsod]

6. our local charity store used to give their overage to goodwill

they realized that goodwill was marking up the free clothes twice the amount that the charity shop was charging. their stuff is 6 times of what my local charges..

[Orrex]

13. Sounds about right

My wife refers to the store as Ill-Will for much the same reason.

[GreenPartyVoter]

9. We went school shopping there. Most of the clothes were $2. We paid $5 for a few

things but they were official NFL NHL jerseys that cost a heckuva lot more than that retail.

[Orrex]

12. The problem here, though

Is that the school district has a dress code, so that every store within 30 miles has been picked clean of everything that meets the requirements, Goodwill included.

And although men's clothes are usually pretty reasonably priced, women's clothing is less so. $2.99 for a pair of men's good-quality dress pants vs. $5.99 for a pair of off-the-rack jeans for a woman. Go figure.

[GreenPartyVoter]

20. Yeah. we don't have a strict dress code so that hasn't affected us. No surprise

on the difference in men and women's clothing. I've seen that happen in other stores too.

[Orrex]

24. What kills me lately...

Is that any given department store (or even Target or (gasp) Wal*Mart) will have about 10,000 square feet devoted to children's clothing, about 9,990 of which is for girls' apparel, with a similarly large area set aside for shoes, intimates, and accessories. And the other 10 feet of the children's section is for all of the boys' stuff: clothes, socks, underwear, belts, and a big Miley Cyrus poster with an arrow pointing the way to the girls' section.

[GreenPartyVoter]

27. Yes! I have two boys and the selection for them is pitiful no matter where we go.

[crimsonblue]

10. This is why I case houses during the day

and steal the good shit. The 80 yr old woman with cats down the street doesn't really need her "insulin pump", does she?

[Orrex]

11. I'm with you.

I figured that she didn't need her walker, either.

[crimsonblue]

45. Fuck, I'm waiting for the old bat to die

so I can dig her up and take her fake hip. You never know when a fake hip will come in handy.

[NMDemDist2]

17. depends on the store and their 'pricer'

some stores pricers are on serious mind altering substances.

[Orrex]

22. That reminds me of another incident

In their "electronics" department, I spotted a new-in-the-box CD-Rom marked @ $69.99. WTF?!? Now, it's completely understandable that the average worker might not be savvy re: electronic esoterica--goodness knows that I wouldn't know how to price, say, sporting equipment--but in this case the box still had the Best Buy sticker on it: $29.99.

When I pointed this out to the worker, she said "I can't mark it down for you." "For you," as if I were trying to haggle a good deal on an outdated piece of hardware.

So I left it on the shelf for the listed price, and woe to the ill-informed purchaser who wound up buying it.


They also had some archaic piece of office equipment that looked to me like a small adding machine, but not quite. It was institutional green, from maybe the 50's or 60's, and it had a series of toothed-wheels arranged side by side with numbers appearing near the top of the device. There was no receipt or tape output of any kind, but turning a handle on the left side made the number display change in a way that made no sense to me.

I guarantee that no one who works there has any idea of what it is, but they saw fit to mark it @ $12.99. On what basis?!?

[Left Is Write]

18. I don't care much for our local Goodwill.

The Idaho Youth Ranch and Deseret Industries thrift stores have better items (cleaned and repaired when necessary) and better prices. I use them fairly frequently to buy toys, books, and movies for the gym daycare.

[Orrex]

23. Slim pickings, locally

There's another thrift store downtown, but it's stocked almost entirely with women's clothes. Specifically, full-figured women from the late 70's through the mid 80's.

Not quite my cup of tea, though I don't presume to disparage any who might wish to experiment with such fashion choices...

[graywarrior]

21. I. HATE. GOODWILL. WITH. A. PASSION.

[Orrex]

25. Do tell!

Don't leave me hanging!

[graywarrior]

34. I worked for them in Florida

They hire uneducated people, pay them the lowest wages they can get away with, harrass their management, take the good stuff for themselves, pay their CEO's outrageous salaries, fire people without reason. They just suck. The GW I worked for paid their CEO over a million a year, his wife and kid worked there making slightly less. They hire their friends at top salaries. They form other businesses in which to sell their donated products.

They should be investigated.

[KayLaw]

26. It's most thrift stores.

I actually read a book about it: Thrift Store Score. The people who do the pricing really don't know what the hell they're doing. They just guess.

[Orrex]

28. I'm just amazed that they can stay afloat at all

Who says "A 20-year-old particle board entertainment center with a cracked main shelf and missing a door--for just $75? How can I afford not to buy it?"

[Phx_Dem]

38. Not hard to show a profit when your COGS = 0

The Goodwill I ran made 50-80K per month NET.

And yet the company could not find the money to offer health insurance to the store staff.

Fucking assholes.

[Orrex]

39. That's pretty galling

I had always assumed, as I suspect a lot of people assume, that Goodwill is a not-for-profit, or at least a not-for-too-much-profit. It's kind of disheartening to learn otherwise. It's not good will after all; it's good for the bottom line.

[Phx_Dem]

35. pricing is always somewhat imprecise

but Savers at least uses a formal pricing methodology. Production employees also receive a great deal of training and mentoring. They consider things like seasonality, brand, condition, supply etc. The pricers are specialized as well, one (or more) for clothes, shoes, books, misc hard goods, furn/electronics, jewelry and linens.

[Hayabusa]

30. I've had nothing but good experiences

mainly with books, of course. I've been able to get them for really cheap. Their digital media's kinda bad, though. MVP Baseball 2005 for the PC (which I want for the MVP 2008 mod) was so scratched that when the cashier saw the condition after I pointed it out she threw it in the trash. And the worst insult to me: some MS program inside the case for Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter. *cries*

Thank goodness I was able to find it at an antique mall/flea market weeks earlier for a buck.

[Orrex]

31. Yeah--I'll give them credit for their books

I've scored some really unlikely stuff there, and at not too bad prices. $2.00 for hardcover, and I've walked out with textbooks that sold for $50 or more.

I also buy there when, for purposes of critique and analysis, I want to acquire a copy of some Fundie or Rightie screed but sure as hell don't want my money to go, even indirectly, to the asshole who wrote it in the first place.

[Hayabusa]

32. In my area

it's only a buck for a hardcover and $0.75 for a softcover. Found a SW hardcover there are one store, and about 6 good fantasy paperbacks at another.

[KG]

36. gave up years ago. was looking for a sofa and everybody said 'go to goodwill'.

so i did.

every piece was filthy, nasty, smelly. no attempt to clean it, just bring it in and stick it out on the sales floor. and every piece was over a hundred bucks. serious waste of time.

[Orrex]

40. Ugh! I would never buy a textile-based piece of furniture from them

Unless it happened to be in the original factory wrapping, in which case they'd charge 200% of original retail anyway.
:puke:

I'd be more comfortable buying piece of wooden or metal furniture, which has a reasonable chance to be cleaned before use...

[Schema Thing]

37. IMO, Goodwill is good, great even, for clothes

but it's hit or miss on other stuff wrt finding good deals.


And I'm sure it varies from store to store as well, depending on the personality of the local head price-setter.

[last_texas_dem]

42. I think how good/bad the prices are can have a lot to do with the location of the store

I go into Goodwill stores fairly often to look through the books and records, and have noticed that the prices can vary quite a bit depending on the city that you are in. For example, at the one in my hometown of Orange, TX, the paperback books are all 39-cents each. In Austin, they are priced individually and go for more like $2.99, $3.99 each- probably due to the Austin stores competing with all of the other used book stores in town. I'm sorry that the one you went to is bad about the price-inflating; sounds like it wouldn't even be worth buying things at that inflated rate.

[Orrex]

43. I was in love with Half-Price Books when I lived in Austin

At that time, the store was basically a big warehouse with orange crates full of books, and stacked hardbacks on every horizonal surface. Heaven!

Of course, that was many years ago, so I suppose that they might have invested in shelving since then...

[Hayabusa]

46. Wish we had one up here in central Missouri

I hear all these stories of people finding RPG sourcebooks there for cheap and it makes me mad.

[Orrex]

47. Yes indeed!

In fact, I was pretty heavy into AD&D at the time, and I scored close to a dozen rulebooks (hardbacks) for well under $100 all together.

[crim son]

44. We have a really great Goodwill here in town.

Guess we're lucky. :shrug: