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Tag: Goodwill

Goodwill Hunting Uncovers Bad Will Greed

Back in March, when I ventured into my local Goodwill store, I was astonished to see a crappy, framed reproduction of some lesser Impressionist painter on very cheap, warped cardboard for $199.99. What made this even more egregious is that the back of this monstrosity still bore the $4.00 garage sale price tag – and even at that price, nobody wanted this piece of junk. This prompted the following letter sent to Goodwill Corporate. The name of the store manager has been removed to protect the innocent – but not sure if that is her or me! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  3/22/13 Letter My mouth is still agape from my visit today to this retail store: Goodwill Store & Donation Center 900 W. Algonquin Road Arlington Heights, IL 60005 (847) 870-7897 I have been frequenting this store since it opened and have noticed that the prices are going up constantly. The prices now are higher than at any antique store for pieces that aren’t worth more than a few dollars. I saw a cheap reproduction of a painting on crappy cardboard (framed) for $199.99. When I brought this to the attention of the floor manager, I mentioned that I have expertise in antiques and collectibles and they could sure use somebody with my expertise to price things more accurately. She said we don’t hire people with expertise to price items and my manager thought this was real. I replied, ” Well I understand you don’t hire people specifically to do that, but wouldn’t it be helpful to have somebody on board with that knowledge?” The fake painting was SO obviously cheaply printed on inexpensive paper and the garage sale price of $4.00 was still marked in very large letters on the back – $199.99 – good grief!!!!! Yes, I agree that Goodwill is…

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Des Plaines Goodwill Grand Opening – the Coming of the Messiah or Tim Tebow?

I have never seen such fervent shoppers in my entire life as this morning at the Goodwill store grand opening in Des Plaines. I could barely get in the door – when I succeeded, I was pushed and shoved and within 30 seconds a rude woman slammed several heavy wood serving trays into my side. I couldn’t figure out why there was such an enormous crowd – the checkout line snaked all the way around the store. I stopped counting at 80 people waiting to buy used merchandise! Many of these shoppers had items piled high in their carts and were bound to be waiting for at least an hour for the privilege of buying these irresistible goods.

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Goodwill Stores Get My Vote, My Coat … and Sometimes My Goat

Since losing my job, I have patronized resale and thrift shops with more frequency – not for clothes for myself but for new housewares or vintage items to resell on eBay. I have also been on a mission to purge our house of unworn clothing and bric-a-brac purchased on a whim or left over from my days as an antique mall merchant. If we ever want to move, this activity is essential. Goodwill has been my thrift store charity of choice over the last six months. Goodwill has a good mission and their prices are generally reasonable, although some of their Chicagoland stores suffer from the same illogical pricing as other thrift stores we have blogged about. The store in Carpentersville near Woodman’s has deteriorated – both in cleanliness and prices, while the two stores in Arlington Heights and the West Loop are for the most part reasonable.

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Thrift Shops: Goodwill

There’s a lot we have to say about thrift and resale shops. A few years ago they used to provide real bargains. Today most of them are run like corporations. We often are bewildered by the high prices that are nearly at retail levels. It seems the people who set prices are either ignorant of an item’s real value or outright greedy. A new Goodwill store recently opened near us and we have donated many bags of stuff as we attempt to divest ourselves of years of accumulated things we don’t need. After we dropped off some stuff yesterday we went in to browse. I could cite example after example of confusing prices (and as a matter of fact will do so in the future). There were two things that stood out at this visit. Betsy found a nice piece of Lusterware priced at $1.99 which she estimated would sell for around $10 at an antique store. At the same time just down the aisle I found a pair of plain wooden chopsticks similar to what you would get at a restaurant for .99 cents. The Lusterware certainly would be a good bargain, but who in their right mind would buy the pair of chopsticks?

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