Charity Bags not collected

[robert551069]

Where I live in Brighton,East Sussex, I regularly have a charity bag pushed through my letter box requesting donations of clothes, etc, which they can sell for charity (the latest was from The Samaritans) but they never collect them.
One charity stated that they get £50 per tonne for clothes, so it hardly seems worth while.
I shall give my unwanted things to charity shops in future or put them in a bin at the local Asda supermarket

[rockyracoon]

Round here they get collected by men in vans that don't belong to the charity, so I stopped puttng them out.

[TheOtherHalf]

Im always getting bags through the letterbox. Sometimes 3 in a week. I take my things to charity shop as I dont like leaving stuff out when Ive gone to work as you never know whos going to pick them up. They say to leave out the bag even if unused and I used to do this but they never collected them so now I use them for bin bags or keep the odd one in the bottom of my shopping bag just in case it might come in use

[waterboatman]

The bags that come through the door I use as bin liners. I have never put them out.

[daffy654]

I never put anything out. We get at least 3 bags every week, we had a warning that many of them claiming to be charities (NW Air Ambulance) are conmen/fraudsters.

[albaqwerty]

I must be one of the lucky ones. Any time I've put a bag out it's been collected by a van with the charity colours on it. I once put 2 out for different charities and the correct van collected the right bag. I've now run out out of anything to donate so use them as bin bags.

[commoner]

I counted 7 charity shops on one street in my local town all full of folk browsing (and buying from) racks of clothing...made me wonder how the "proper" clothes shops are affected....surely it must make a big hole in their turnover.........and not just clothing but furniture and all kinds of stuff. thing. Can't blame anyone for buying as cheaply as possible but it all seems to be getting out of hand..

[ojread2]

I never, ever give my clothes to door collectors
I take them into a charity shop or my neighbour who sells them on at boot fairs
She does quite well because it's mostly my daughters clothing so not old, just out grown and some of it hardly worn
She generally gives me a tenner =)

[Smowball]

I also get several of these a week. Twice i filled them with clothes and they were never collected so I just take all unwanted stuff to the local charity shop now. In fact I have never ever seen a van collect anything at all! Very odd.

[albaqwerty]

I guess it must depend on where you live.
It saddens me to read that some people have been seeing fraudsters and so on.

[ojread2]

It's possible you havent seen a van because all they do (and I've seen this for myself) is come to the top of the (my) close, take a look and if they cant see a bag they dont even drive down
I've seen a few vans, one with no brake lights and a broken front light.
I even stopped to tell him his lights weren't working and was greeted with a 'its what they gave me to collect it all in love'

[yogasun]

Not sure where alba lives but we have a similar experience here. I have put out bags (if my spare stuff hasn't gone for our own fundraising) and have seen the bona fide collectors pick them up.

[douglas9401]

Maybe, just maybe, legitimate charities got fed up with er, migrant persons, er, lifting their bags so decided it wasn't worth the hassle but forgot to tell the lads who put the bags through letterboxes.
It's the kind of thing management does.

[albaqwerty]

Yoga, just outside of Glasgow.

Douglas, a very very good point.

[yogasun]

Ah! OK alba...miles away from me in East Devon! Same experience though!

[albaqwerty]

Devon, beautiful neck of the woods. Only visited once, many years ago, would love to go back.

[missnemesis]

I'm afraid I'm with smowball on this. When this kind of thing started round here I made an effort to dig out some stuff to put in the bags but quickly found that the bags were just left sitting on the doorstep and weren't collected. None of them have EVER returned to collect unused bags.

Now I take it all to the local recycling plant which have huge charity containers for clothes, books, shoes etc.

[weecalf]

Guy pull up in a van one day with money for your old clothes printed on the side of it and came to my door .When I opened the door before he could speak I just said Im wearing them ..He said have you any old scrap iron then .Theres no answer to that .

[starone]

They do make good bin liners. I give everything away that I can, but it always surprises me how difficult it is. In spite of the recession I cannot give away my old furniture. Do people want new? When I first started out I was grateful for anything and still have a couple of old wooden chairs which someone gave me, over 60 years ago now. If nothing goes wrong, I shall be moving soon and some of my furniture will be too big for the new house. I shall have to offer it on freecycle, and if no-one wants it the wheelie bin will get it (broken in pieces of course).

[yogasun]

Starbuck, I agree. When we started off we scrounged old furniture from anywhere and only bought new if we had to and when we could afford it. Now you see almost brand new stuff dumped as people buy new. Throwaway society. Freecycle is a good way to go.

[Smowball]

If we ever replace anything in house ie furniture etc we always put it in driveway with a note on it saying "please feel free to take". Works every time and saves me many trips to the tip