On Mon, 18 Jul 2005 19:14:00 GMT, PaPaPeng wrote:

On Sun, 17 Jul 2005 13:07:22 -0400, Andy Cuffe
wrote:

Even that is becoming a thing of the past. Church rummage sales are
quickly disappearing. I asked one local church why they stopped
having the huge rummage sale every year and they said it just wasn't
worth the effort any more. They make a lot more money for less work
selling crafts, pies and raffling things off instead of having the
rummage sale. Apparently people just don't buy used things any more
and they got stuck having to dispose of a lot of stuff. Most thrift
stores around me won't take broken electronics any more. They also
won't take console TVs, console stereos, or computers even if they
work. Instead of selling broken electronics they just dumpster it.
Andy Cuffe


I used to love going through Goodwill for bargains, for interesting
articles not available in the stores, though very rarely for
electronics stuff. But even Goodwill has gone downhill. This is
because they raised their prices until much of their stuff cost as
much if not more than the new items. The rationale for the price
raise was because their HQ executive voted themselves million dollar
salaries "because they are executives running a multi million dollar
business." And I thought Goodwill is a non-profit organization. The
other problem is that their workers have first pick at the good stuff
that they go on to resell on eBay! Goodwill will deteriorate into a
used clothing store or go out of busineess too.

Yeah, we had a Goodwill open up in our locale back about 5 years ago
or so and it went downhill in no time as well.
You'd see the store staff loading up all the good stuff in the trunks
of their cars in the side parking lot at all hours, then fending all
the broken crap electronics off on the customers at high prices.
It got so bad that the regional office had to send in a "watchdog" to
run the store. Someone from management level to oversee the deliveries
and price all the donations and ensure they get out on the sales
floor.
Since then it's not been to bad a place to pick up a bargain.(I just
picked up a Dell PIII 500mghz tower for 9.99 and a brand new set of
Koss TD/60 reference headphones for 1.99.)

One clue that they're not a real non-profit organization is that
they're required to collect sales tax. Something most religious
non-profit organizations aren't required to do.