Exactly. The Salvation Army store is almost literally 100% crap PCwise, while the Goodwill occasionally has some decent PC buys. I’ve been involved with refurbing PCs long enough to know people typically get rid of old PC stuff every 3-4 years or so. If a store is filled with almost nothing CPU wise but circa 1985-1995 equipment someone’s skimming off the nice stuff and it ceases to be of interest.
What kind of puzzles me is what the inside guy is doing with all that equipment. How many PCs do you need?
At least in one of the stores in my experience, the inside guy who was setting aside computers (and other nice things) and selling them on eBay for his own profit, using the Goodwill’s own computer and on-line service – he was doing so much business that he managed to get a UPS delivery/pick up franchise established at that Goodwill…the main office discovered this, and he was sacked and banned from working at any other branches.
One of the other managers at that shop told me that it’s Goodwill’s policy that no employees can sell on eBay as long as they work for Goodwill – I don’t have an official cite for that, though, just what she told me (she said she used to sell quite a bit on eBay, and part of the interview for GW was she was asked if she did, and told she would have to stop if she were hired.)
Who said she never paid for it? What if she had some burly guys load it into her minivan while she wrote a check? I don’t see anything wrong with this, as long as she paid for it. Who cares, as long as the business/charity/whatever gets the cash?
Well, I’ve already made the argument that it is possible the charities won’t get as much money because not as much of the marginal merchandise will be sold. But as well, I think places like Goodwill serve another purpose, to allow people with low incomes the ability to purchase some quality goods. Otherwise, why not just have Goodwill sell everything on ebay directly? They must certainly know they can get higher prices for some of their stuff. Cherry-pickers are depriving some low income folks of this chance. (Of course some of those working at Goodwill can also fall in the low-income category).
This is fairly common at regular commercial retail stores, too.
For example, the really cheap advertised deals at large electronics stores. Often there is a very small number (like 10) available at each store, and it’s common that all those are snapped up by the employees as soon as the store opens in the morning. (But they always have a large supply of a similar but more expensive item on had to sell to the customers.) I’ve even had friends who work in one of these stores have to call a friend in another store to get one of these advertised deals, because all the ones in their store were gone already.
I like the idea that thrift store employees have to be off in order to purchase new items; there’s no difference between an employee who is off snatching up a cool new item or a regular customer who comes in all the time.
But if the item never even hits the floor, I don’t think that’s fair. It’s the same thing as advertising a clearance item and going to the store only to find that the employees have already purchased (or stock-piled for later purchase) the available clearance items. I’ve worked retail and we were not allowed to “shop” until we we were off the clock; we were especially not allowed to put anything aside for later purchase.
It’s like a friend of mine who worked at a bank as a teller; a customer brought in a bag of what was obviously old coins (I’m assuming they came from Grandma or Grandpa or something) and deposited them in his account at face value. Being pre-1963, they were worth more than their $300 total face value.
So my friend then “bought” them with his own money and took them home.
He took them to a coin shop and ended up making almost $800 off them.
Now, you could argue that the customer got what they were worth, and it’s not my friend’s job to be a “coin collector” who informs customers about the value of any old money they may bring in…
But I still think it’s unethical; my friend profited from his position at the expense of his customer.
Same thing with thrift-store employee cherry-picking, IMHO.
A friend of mine worked at a toy store and her manager would often but up huge amounts of in-demand or rare toys, hoard them, then sell them on e-bay for profit when their availability became nonexistant. Personally I find this rather unethical- he was artificially driving up the value of the toys by mucking up the supply.
When I worked at Kmart, employees always got first crack at movie displays (I have one from Titanic and one from Star Wars and tons of promotional buttons).
ONce though, a customer complained about it, and the Obi-Wan stand that was supposed to be mine was CRUSHED in the box crusher! sob
And the employees don’t take EVERYTHING. As my sister showed us, you can find some good deals at thrift stores if you take the time to LOOK on the shelves. Not just flip through-you need to devote time to it. I found a really kickass old pair of tap shoes.
In our area, the Salvation Army shop is better than the Goodwill. But the SA is going out of business here because the complex where they’re located upped the rent again and is trying to drive them out-and succeeded. That’s about the third time they’ve done that and it totally sucks.
Isn’t that called a bait-and-switch? Wouldn’t the store then have to offer rainchecks to the customers to get the product at the cheap price? Bait-and-switch is illegal.
Well, in theory. However, all the store has to prove is that they had a reasonable supply of the item at opening. If the employees all then buy 3 of them, I think the store is still off the hook.
Also, the newspaper ads usually have a disclaimer (usually at the bottom, in tiny print) saying “limited supply available” or something like that. I guess that this lets them off the hook, legally.
Who said she never paid for it? What if she had some burly guys load it into her minivan while she wrote a check? I don’t see anything wrong with this, as long as she paid for it. Who cares, as long as the business/charity/whatever gets the cash?