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Has anyone checked it out? What a hot mess. Missing photos, misspellings, hardly any key words, prices all over the place. I saw some great items for cheap but those were all sold already. Based on the pricing and description differences I’m thinking it’s a lot of different people posting. Still they had some fun vintage stuff like giant ship wheels.
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you mean this site? https://shopgoodwill.com/home
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I saw this article today about Goodwill Finds: https://apnews.com/article/business-1579e1de95a97f903816465c6c98bcda
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Ah, here is the direct link to the website so its easier for others to browse it: https://www.goodwillfinds.com/
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This is absolutely crazy.
- Sega Genesis (Untested/Parts & Repair/Unit Only/Covered in Dirt): $86.98. eBay prices for tested and working units w/ cables: $42.99
- Fuji Instax Mini 8 (Untested/Parts & Repair): $73. eBay prices for tested and working units: $17.99
- Sealed copy of The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time 3D for the NDS: $99. eBay prices for sealed copies: $24.99
Dude, what are they doing?
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Same as any other online thrift shop. I was looking for a secondhand copy of “Marks On Chinese Ceramics”. New, from the author, 70 with free p&p. Secondhand, from Oxfam, 250 plus 9 p&p. They actually had an online form where you could tell them whether it was cheap or expensive. I told ’em I’d give 50 for it- they took the listing down.
This Goodwill website had a link to the Vince Lombardi sweater story- “click for more information”. I did, but it took me to some other page.
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<p style=”text-align: left;”>I checked the site out and now I’m really confused. The two goodwill chains near me both used to have lots of listings on that site. Now neither do.
….yet they still don’t put out the good stuff.</p>
so… where are they selling the good stuff? They tried and massively failed eBay years ago. The negative feedback pushed them off the platform. -
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Ok for fun I purchased two items: a $12.99 queen size handmade quilt from Colorado and a small $24 oil painting from Wisconsin. Shipping to me in California was $6! for the quilt and $8 for the painting.
People are having interesting conversations on the Facebook groups about the crazy pricing.
Someone at Goodwill finds listed a Lululemon tank top for $224. No refunds unless your item doesn’t show up. -
Recently I overheard one of the employees at my goodwill say they have to send certain items to their regional goodwill office to be sold on the website. Musical instruments was one such category. I’m pretty sure they are scanning all books before they put them out because the once overflowing bookshelves have been pretty sparse the last year or two. Maybe this is what they have to do to stay in business – who knows. But between them cherry picking the good stuff to send online and their crazy new pricing in the stores – it was enough to convince me to no longer donate items to them. Now 100% of my donated items go to the local charity thrift.
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All goodwill chains financial data is public knowledge – the IRS form 990. Here is the data for one of the chains near me:
http://www.goodwillhunting.org/annual-reports-2018/
The Executive has a salarty of 100k, but there are several hundred thousand dollars of “other” salary, benefit, travel, and expenses for management. In reality I think the executive with bonuses and perks makes over $250k.
I looked at the data for this chain back around 2017/2018 and they massively increased their income from sales when they changed their pricing to be the “gucci” goodwill with the premium pricing around that time. Basically doubled their store sales income. Their store sales income has been fairly flat the last few years.
This local chain has been scanning books for a few years. They have a computer in the back in between two pallet boxes. They scan every book and their software gives them a “go/no go”. Anything with significant value gets sent out. They also have a “amazon hot list” shelf where they put any popular titles with a huge markup – sometimes as high as you can buy the book at the book store.
I sold books on amazon FBA for a while before they started scanning (and before Amazon started pushing out small time FBA sellers). Seeing their scanning setup and talking to an employee about it was the final nail in the coffin for my FBA business.
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The site has some good stuff, it seems largely dependent on what kind of research Goodwill is able to do on resale prices. I have found it to be glitchy as heck though. Maybe there are still a bunch of bugs. I tried to buy something and eventually gave up because the order wouldn’t load.
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@workhorse I had this problem today as well. It won’t process my card.
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I had that problem yesterday Sunday. I tried again this morning it worked.
I picked up a Trifari crystal set necklace bracelet and earrings for $60.
Hoping to double that. It’s very nice. But I agree their prices are all over the place.
Some good and bad pricing.
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Thanks for posting about this & about the site itself. @plight very pretty set! I hope you get a nice price for that!
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I got my order yesterday from both locations. So it took 11 days and came Fed Ex Ground. Packing was great. Considering the price I paid with the incredibly cheap shipping, I’m pretty happy. There were some defects that were not disclosed – both of these just really had photos only, which is very hard to see flaws on your phone and the pictures weren’t great. The quilt smells very clean. I think it created some wear when they or the donor washed it so they listed it at $12. There are some other marks, but overall it’s a great price for the item, which I will keep and repair. The painting has some looseness to the canvas.
I’ve been hawking Goodwill Finds but anything I’d buy at a really cheap price is taken before I arrive. You can sort by new listings. Scavengers are on it. Someone got an awesome Murano glass bull for $10. Some locations are more sophisticated and putting things up higher now for sure. But, still fun to look around. I’m watching a few items to see if will lower the price later. It’s also interesting to see what they know about – all the stuff I hear about on Youtube is showing up and it makes me hope that all of the locations don’t have a master list of goodies.
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FYI GW Duplicate Charge
I ordered the Trifari set and a couple pairs of earrings. The day before the order kept telling me it did not go through. Just checked my bank account. I was charged twice for the Trifari one on each day.
The only way to contact them is via their email page online.
I sent an email with screen shots of the charges. Last time I contacted them I didn’t hear back for 2 weeks.
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I decided to try them out and have been disappointed. My order arrived with broken items. They shipped via Fedex Home and the items were not packed well enough. There was no damage to the outside of the carton.
I have made several attempts to contact them via their web form and email but no replies yet.
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50% off sale items today. I’ve been keeping a favorites list since their prices went sharply up following the grand opening.
I bought three items for $50. Two were very good deals and one was an Arabia Finland piece that I paid up for a bit. It’s a little bit of a gamble since the condition notes are vague but it brought some of their ridiculous prices down quite a bit. I’ve bought 3 items before this and they were all well packed.
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So I’m having a kid sick weekend at home. Had forgotten about it for a while, but went into Goodwillfinds.com this morning. A lot of my favorited items had sold. It was interesting to see what those went for. A few were heavily marked down. They are doing a lot of clearance at $9.99.
I bought two items, one started out way way too high, now cheap enough for me to flip. The other was a newly listed item with a typo and title mistakes I should be able to get a 66% profit. The description was “it’s vintage it’s good”. LOL. I passed on a painting of our local mission – the description was laughable. Would have been easy to find with a Google lens search. The first picture is the back of the painting, which I have seen a lot.
I believe there is money to be made on here. If it wasn’t for keeping and watching favorites it would not be worth the time probably but it’s kind of an education to look on there as well. There are definitely cool items. I was hoping once the publicity cooled off, buyers would forget to shop there but evidently they are doing well. https://www.forbes.com/sites/joanverdon/2023/03/29/goodwillfinds-the-online-thrift-store-expands-to-meet-strong-demand-for-resale/?sh=184f1a757d26
Still good opportunities because of the poor listing and lack of minimal research by the employees, especially at certain locations. Fab stuff getting pulled out of the Pacific Northwest stores and listing quality is still variable. You can tell a few listers do get it.
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