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.
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
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
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.
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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.
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 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.
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...
Sounds like they are out of control
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.
I loved the wildlife zoo there when I visited Rochester on a whim a few years ago!
Frequent thrift shopper, I've noticed prices going so high I wonder if they know what "thrift store" means anymore.
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.
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.
I don't think I've ever actually seen a price that high at my local Goodwill. Coats only go up to like $16 here.
What's really annoying is originally my town had three chains of thrift stores. Savers, St. Vincent's DePaul and Goodwill. Savers had multiple locations and was generally considered the go-to. St Vinnies was a bit more boutique-y depending on which you went to and Goodwill was always digging through dumpsters.
Savers left town, St Vinnies became much more boutique and expensive and goodwill, while still a dumpster, also became a lot more expensive.
It's annoying :/
The coat is clearly BLACK. The tag says BLUE.
Forgive me if I didn't detect the sarcasm. But the color is goodwills discount system. On any given day the red tags might be discounted, or the blue. It is a way to clear out stuff more consistently.
There is absolutely nothing 'Good' about their will. Never has been.
Why all the hate towards Goodwill ? They are a non-religious, pro-labor, vocational organization that gives everyone a chance at employment through donations and sales of donated goods programs that fund other vocational services as a non-profit.
people treat them like a dumpster. but they are not a dumpster. and they work towards the good with people in difficult situations.
There was a big expose in them in the early 90's about how much the top got paid, that 80% of income went to paying staff, and rampant nepotism.
Fuck Good Will
What makes you say "never has been"? This is obviously shitty but I remember that maybe 10 years ago they had more affordable pricing for the less fortunate who couldn't buy new clothes.
Idk if that's out of control or not anymore, what's a dollar worth? But I've avoided goodwill for Habitat for a while because there were various stories over the years about shady things. Now, they're big and basically all franchises so some of this was always gonna happen; lawsuits w/ racist/sexist/otherwise discriminatory managers will eventually happen once a company gets large enough, and franchises have a lot of independent control which leads to a lot of variance, good and bad, at different locations.
But they're also pretty shit at the corporate level: https://www.cracked.com/article_33357_15-impressively-evil-things-goodwill-has-done.html
So overall, on the astronomically low bar of regular evil corporate behavior, they're middling, but you should probably donate/shop elsewhere if you want to do the most good.
Badwill
Who made the jacket?
That's what I was thinking too. If it's expensive brand that might explain the high price.
My wife goes regularly to goodwill and those prices are for premium brands and most of the time they still have tags attached or at least look like they've never been worn. In her experience they keep that price for a few weeks and if it isn't sold they discount them deeply
Value Village around here is notorious for selling shit from the dollar store that has printed-on-the-package price tags of $1-2 for $3, it's ridiculous.
The CEO of the Goodwill has a private jet.
Charging as much as they can get is very consistent with their mission. It’s not their mission to provide a low-cost store where poor people can buy things. It’s to create jobs. The people working at Goodwill are what the entire thing is about. And if they make more money they can add more jobs. It’s not a goal to have low prices.
Charging as much as they can get is very consistent with their mission. It’s not their mission to provide a low-cost store where poor people can buy things. It’s to create jobs. The people working at Goodwill are what the entire thing is about. And if they make more money they can add more jobs. It’s not a goal to have low prices.
They don't add jobs for shit. Half the staff is there on court order and the rest are underpaid as fuck. Fuck goodwill
That sounds a little harsh for what they do. So these jobs are not competitive or we could even say they are lousy. But the people getting them would otherwise be in jail or otherwise unemployable. Organizations like this are a half step toward normal life for a lot of people coming from a dark place. It’s not a place to make a career.
It’s also based on religious kookiness which I always think is a bad foundation for any organization.
But I’m not going to say “Fuck Goodwill.” I swear there are people on the internet who think literally everything is borderline slavery.
No providing products to the working class was very much part of their mission. It obviously isn't anymore.
Edit: community is pretty dead, I've had other focuses. Anyone want to mod?
The “good” will in the name stands for the “blue” in the garment
Someone please correct me if im wrong because I'm too lazy to look it up, but I was told goodwill is for profit.
Hi, you’re wrong. Goodwill Industries is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
Goodwill's good will is teaching people English and helping them get jobs, not selling 2nd hand items to the needy. It's just too bad they destroyed all the cool Mom and Pop thrift stores.
Thank you for purchasing all these donated goods that we paid nothing to buy. Your purchase makes our job programme possible.
Do you want to round up to the nearest dollar on your purchase of donated goods, in order to donate to our job programme that you've already donated to?
... um... ... No?...
Edit: jokes aside, goodwill does do good for the community. I'm sure they've raised their prices in line with other price hikes, but I don't think that negates the good they still do. $35 US for a used coat they received as a free donation, IMO, is a bit excessive, but I can't blame them for trying to squeeze more out of their stock, since they do turn around and pour most of that back into the community.
Oh poor baby
Seriously though you should look at the price of that thing when it was new. Some of those coats go for hundreds of dollars. Goodwill is raising money for the people they support. They also have a lot of overhead costs do to there large size. If you want to see the numbers you can pull up there tax records. No one is forcing you to go to goodwill.
