this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2024
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Mildly Infuriating

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[–] [email protected] 111 points 1 month ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 76 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (10 children)

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.

[–] BigDaddySlim 30 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (15 children)

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.

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[–] JusticeForPorygon 18 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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

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[–] MiltownClowns 70 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago (6 children)

They’re also upfront about it: Goodwill exists to give (mainly disabled) people jobs, not to sell things as cheap as possible

[–] Fredselfish 52 points 1 month ago

Only because they legally pay them less then minimum wage.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 month ago

Goodwill exists to make rich people richer. The disabled people they "exist to give jobs too" are super exploited.

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 month ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (5 children)
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[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (10 children)

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.

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[–] Maggoty 38 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago

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.

[–] Retro_unlimited 33 points 1 month ago

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.

[–] taiyang 30 points 1 month ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 month ago

~~Good~~ Corprate Will

[–] Crashumbc 28 points 1 month ago (3 children)

They are a for-profit company built around taking advantage of poor people.

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[–] hedgehogging_the_bed 26 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Support your local thrift stores!

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[–] FlyingSquid 23 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] LovableSidekick 22 points 1 month ago

Frequent thrift shopper, I've noticed prices going so high I wonder if they know what "thrift store" means anymore.

[–] PriorityMotif 20 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

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.

[–] WhiteOakBayou 15 points 1 month ago (5 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago

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.

[–] Fredselfish 13 points 1 month ago (6 children)

They hire disabled people because they can legally pay them less then minimum wage. They aren't the good guys.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The jobs training program where they hire people with disabilities and then pay them below minimum wage because of a loophole in the law?

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[–] electric 10 points 1 month ago

"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.

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[–] kitnaht 15 points 1 month ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

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 :/

[–] Jerkingass 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The coat is clearly BLACK. The tag says BLUE.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (3 children)

There is absolutely nothing 'Good' about their will. Never has been.

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[–] Whirling_Ashandarei 10 points 1 month ago

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.

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