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What’s up with goodwill?


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I wonder how much price increases in retail/charity/thrift and shops like goodwill is due to improved and improving business analytics?

Well if anything I've ever noticed and on occasion going into a few long enough dared to inquire about I have picked up a few nuggets. Officially those signs on the wall you see in many still where it has a generalized break down for tapes/vhs, cds/dvds, games, clothes, etc are still the rule of thumb to go by. But the company does not regulate what each individual store or district/territory manager wants. This allows for crazy swings to be occurring at every level. Some stores will take anything they think maybe worth something and use an employee or some super/mgr on shift at the time to price stuff out ebay searching sold or posted values. Others won't want to waste the time, and they'll box it up and just use the online site and let people pay as high as they like on it and split the profit between the site and themselves to keep it going. Locally since I got back here I've seen a mix of pre 2011/12 pricing on some stuff where you can get a bundle of goodies for $20 and games at the wall posted 2.25 a piece level, and then on the opposite I'll find something dumb like $40 for a PS1 with just the original controller and hookups which sits for weeks (until they pull stuff for the crusher out back.)

 

Since being back here it has been so rare more like a 2-3x a year average thing but I've found a small stack of games to a console bundle under the pre-asinine ebay influence era of valuing things. I got an entire dreamcast setup with 4 controllers (1 3rd party), 3 vmus, 2 ext cords, and a loose baseball game for $6 or a N64 with 10 games and 4 controllers w/4MB exp for $20. Other times that PS1 I saw, or a common NES game for like $15 like WWF Wrestlemania and it just sits until crushed. Thankfully my area manager doesn't allow for shop goodwill, but they don't stop local pricers from going nuts or keeping it old school. I only regular the things anymore as it's a route to pick my kid up from school so I hit 2 of them every day basically. I know fairly well what to expect and I can go a week or 3 months finding nothing (and that's not just games, but much of anything interesting.)

 

I don't think it's a business analytic improvement, it's just hit and miss tactics of who decides to price what and how. The problem is now it's hitting the stores entirely outside of clothing, costume jewelry, and second hand appliances as I keep seeing a mix of sane and nutty values that aren't going to help poor and needy types get things they need for much or any savings at all by going there instead of like Target.

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On the other hand, Goowill and Value Village are non-profit with the money going to charities. No point for them to sell you something for $2.00 when they know a big bunch of people just list those items on ebay for profit once they get home, profit that may have benifited someone in need.

 

Actually Goodwill is for profit. The only "Goodwill" they show is hiring people to work in their stores.

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I have, and it's a true point about the disabled. Goodwill ages ago figured out this quirk in the federal law where mentallty (partially) disabled types who are in specialized housing if I remember right can be hired to work X hours a week as way to empower them to feel more independent, but that quirk involves not allowing them to earn over X dollars in a year so basically Goodwill gets pennies to the dollar hiring them so they don't go over that amount. They bring in a few people with issues instead of the usual people with other problems and teens as they can pay them almost nothing compared.

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I don't think I've ever even seen anyone with disabilities working at any of our stores. Walmart seems to do a much better job at that than the Goodwills around here.

It's possible they're working in the back, or in off-peak hours. I'm not a fan of them, but don't get me started on Salvation Army

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All games and stuff like that go straight up to the auction site. Haven't seen a game around other than a random computer one for at least 3-4 years. Our local one no longer has DVDs even. Just beat up books and crappy CDs no one wants.

 

There was one of the those computer works shops downtown (that is the name of Goodwill's computer store). You could find gaming things there once. That is where one of my 5200s came from. Now I hear it has drastically scaled back and no more games.

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