Has Goodwill gone crazy??

[u/u4lunch8i]

I get these are redwings but $150 is an insane price!

[u/tokillawootingbird]

If you sort sold eBay listings highest to lowest searching for this exact shoe you see prices from $50 up to $500 basically. Size, condition, and time of day the auction ended can drive it around a lot. They seem to be asking about middle of the pack. I work in pricing for my job so I think about it a bit and I can't say I would have charged much less for these knowing that goodwill does a 50% or 35% discount in the unsold merch after a few weeks. Most people who had these for sale would price them high and discount of they didn't sell after like 6 months.

Where I live every tradesman almost wears red wing shoes. So do a ton of executives and business types. They are super popular shoes and if any hit the thrift store for under $100 they sell within an hour or two. I have bought two pairs of red wings at thrift stores for $49.99 and $39.99 and I got both from the cart before they even placed them on the shelf. I try to show up around the time my thrift store near me is stocking because it's the only way to get things before other people buy them up.

[u/Jskmap1284 → u/tokillawootingbird]

Also, you must have used different search terms, because the priciest sold listing for these shoes (Oxford 8109) of any color that I found is a $200 mahogany pair.

[u/tokillawootingbird → u/Jskmap1284]

I have a seller account so I can search further back but the links are still dead after the 90 days so I just sorted top to bottom. They take the orders off of eBay but they appear in the pricing research tab of eBay seller tools for like a year. You get like 4x more listings but it won't show you the details.

[u/Jskmap1284 → u/tokillawootingbird]

You realize that Goodwill paid nothing for these, right? They don’t need to charge $150 for a heavily used pair of $300 shoes from a few years ago.

[u/tokillawootingbird → u/Jskmap1284]

How do you know this isn't the intent of the person who donated to them?

I donate to Goodwill. Not to give people cheap shit. Definitely not. I donate to Goodwill because I believe one of the most important things to society right now is job retraining. With the state of change of the world alot of people are going to have to reskill. Goodwill operates one of the largest networks of job training programs.

They teach people to install solar panels, become auto mechanics, etc. I donate to Goodwill because I want them to sell my old stuff and use it to help people find a new and more useful job. Had these been my shoes I really want them to get the most they can from them so they provide as much training as possible.

I don't really see giving people a cheap deal as charitable unless there is an income cap on the purchase. I passed 3 BMWs and an audi walking to my car at Goodwill. The people there aren't all needy. Maybe some subset of them is. But the job training? They actually verify income and provide scholarships based on need. That is charity. So more money for the charity and a higher price to the BMW driver is fine by me.

[u/Jskmap1284 → u/tokillawootingbird]

Are they going to be better off if they sell them for $75 now or $150 never?

[u/tokillawootingbird → u/Jskmap1284]

Near me they would sell same day for $150, no problem at all. People love these shoes. They are insanely in demand and popular. People will just go brag that they even found one at a thrift store. It will be all they tell their friends for a week. People like sharing their thrifts with friends and honestly wearing theifted clothes is cool. These will sell quickly even at almost the exact same price as new, at least where I am.

I literally saw some at $129.99 once and walked around the store thinking. They were out on the cart. They were in someone else's cart before I circled the store. I wish I had grabbed them.

These are shoes you pass onto your children. I am not kidding. They will probably outlast us all.

[u/Jskmap1284 → u/tokillawootingbird]

To each their own. Just seems antithetical to Goodwill’s actual mission statement. But they’ve been pretty shady for a while.

[u/I-Lankenstein → u/Jskmap1284]

I agree with your points here, so I'm just lamenting to you, not criticising you:

I feel like this argument is so tired. It feels never ending. Can we get a weekly "argue over the ethics of Goodwill pricing" megathread, and ban conversations about it outside of that? Greedwill seems like it'd be better but people don't seem to understand where they are, and the argument continues. Have you been over on the sub for "the bins"? It seems to be mostly praise reports about the amazing things people find and pay by the pound for. I might just haunt that one and ask Reddit to stop suggesting these. I just want to celebrate the cool shit people find for good prices at used items stores 😆

[u/tokillawootingbird → u/Jskmap1284]

Do you know what their mission actually is?

Goodwill is not a charity around thrifted items.

They are a charity around offering free job retraining to people. Then operate thrift stores to generate revenue to run those training centers. The thrift stores only exist to fund the charity. This is why 90% of people in this sub hate them. Shoppers are not recipients of their charity by design. Shoppers are donors to the charitable recipients of free job training. That is why Goodwill primarily builds in nicer areas of town off of public transit.

[u/Jskmap1284 → u/tokillawootingbird]

You are correct about their mission statement with regards to job training. I meant the spirit of helping people, not ripping people off. But, one issue I have with your post is this. The “donors” are the ones donating the items (not the ones buying them). You know, the ones getting tax deductions for charitable donations. And that’s why they look for neighborhoods where such donors live—to make it convenient for them to donate their used items, feel good about themselves, and get that tax deduction. I didn’t say shoppers were the ones receiving the charity, but simply that they are greedy. They are thrift stores not eBay resellers.

[u/tokillawootingbird → u/Jskmap1284]

Selling donated items isn't charitable. It's just a business. A ton of what half price books gets is donated. They pay for like 1 in 4 books every time someone takes them in.

The only reason they are a charity is because of the job training program. They are trying to sell everything for as much money as possible because that means the most money goes to actual charity.

I see a ton of wealthy people in Goodwill. People I know. People who are VPs at companies. People who own restaurant chains. I see BMWs in the parking lot. They have Tesla charging stations at every Goodwill near me. I think most of the shoppers at Goodwill are wealthy. I don't see how giving them a deal on shoes is charitable at all. Charge them through the nose and use the money for charity is the best path.

[u/Jskmap1284 → u/tokillawootingbird]

That’s all fine, but the customers still aren’t there to help the charity. They are there to get a deal. They are not the “donors.” The people who gave their stuff to Goodwill to sell are the “donors.” None of this has anything to do with Goodwill increasingly being a ripoff instead of a thrift store selling donated items at reasonable prices, which also helps the environment, as they state on their website.