Stoopid Goodwill! (A Rant)

[joshnickerson]

My local Goodwill used to be a prime place to pick up some cheap classic gameage, but in the past couple of years, it's been going downhill. First they raised the price of cartridge based games from $1.01 to $3.03, then they started applying the price tags directly on top of the cart label. Now in the past couple of months, they've gone an extra step, and actually put packing tape over the price tag and cart label! I was just in there tonight, and I spotted a boxed copy of Tetris in the jewelry case, but upon closer inspection, they had it completely wrapped in more damn packing tape! And it wasn't even out on the floor, it was IN THE DAMN GLASS CASE! What are they thinking? I can see that some people wouldn't care too much about the condition of the game, or if there was a price tag perminately affixed to the cart label, but as a collection, it brings my piss to a boil.

Has anyone else had this experience with Goodwill?

[BetaWolf47]

At least that can be removed, unlike my local ones which write their prices directly on the games in sharpie markers.

[Ryaan1234]

My local Goodwill used to be a prime place to pick up some cheap classic gameage, but in the past couple of years, it's been going downhill. First they raised the price of cartridge based games from $1.01 to $3.03, then they started applying the price tags directly on top of the cart label. Now in the past couple of months, they've gone an extra step, and actually put packing tape over the price tag and cart label! I was just in there tonight, and I spotted a boxed copy of Tetris in the jewelry case, but upon closer inspection, they had it completely wrapped in more damn packing tape! And it wasn't even out on the floor, it was IN THE DAMN GLASS CASE! What are they thinking? I can see that some people wouldn't care too much about the condition of the game, or if there was a price tag perminately affixed to the cart label, but as a collection, it brings my piss to a boil.

Has anyone else had this experience with Goodwill?

I haven't had this specific experience with Goodwill, but the one which used to be my Goodwill of choice has gone downhill. They used to have NES games for $1.99 and sometimes $0.99. Now it's impossible to see any game for less than $3.99. Another thing that bothers me is that they don't take off any previous prices from the game/CD/DVD in question. A lot of stuff that goes to Goodwill are rejects from garage sales, you see, and it really gets to me when I see a $7.99 price tag on a game that didn't even sale for $1 at a garage sale.

I remember years ago when this Goodwill used to hold on to games for my dad. He got on one occasion a box of 70+ Atari games including Qbert's Cubes and the Stella Gets a New Brain CD for $19.99. Now it seems that anything of interest is sent to "headquarters" (as they say, but that's probably code for "we put it up on eBay")

[bigred5687]

Now they also have a web site where they sell any thing good and it is just like ebay.
here is the web site.
http://www.shopgoodwill.com

[Tupin]

I just laugh at the date on the $25 bare Genesis that has been there for three months. And then it will go into the garbage when no one buys it at that price, they never lower prices.

Blame the recession, people who never used to shop at Goodwill are now, so they are raising prices.

[Baloo]

yeah, but you can actually get some really good deals on Shopgoodwill, it's not very eBayish at all, I've seen Sega CDs go for less than $20 on there, although stuff is in very limited quantity.

[Steve W]

Blame the recession, people who never used to shop at Goodwill are now, so they are raising prices.

That's the thing I've noticed, a bunch of Goodwill stores I've been to in the last year have had a whole lot more customers than I've seen in the past. The other day, I had a hard time getting a parking space, all of them were filled and people were randomly parking in any spot they could. It's mainly Goodwill stores I've seen this at, and not the little independent stores as of yet. I think it's because people who have never ventured inside a thrift store before will probably only hit the ones they know are going to be clean and decent inside.

[Dr. Dib]

Hey, just be happy your Goodwills get anything at all. The one by me seems to never have any games when I go. Usually they just have a few games they got from a store that could not sell them. The coolest thing I ever got was Mario Teaches Typing 2, which was all sticky so that's saying something.

[Therealqtip]

Goodwill: Your one stop shop for Madden '95 for $10!

[exit]

I went to the new Goodwill in my area the other day and I grabbed 3 Dreamcast controllers. Funny thing is two of them were green and so the girl charged me for only one, I'm assuming it was because she thought it was a set. The other one had a UMV in it and of course I didn't say a thing, so I scored thanks to the idiocy of their employees.

[skaar]

"OMG THE CHARITY IS TRYING TO MAKE MONEY."

Goodwills don't exist to feed your need for cheap games, they raise money for needy causes. Good on them for catching on they could raise more money and do more good rather than you getting $0.99 games you can flip for $40 on ebay - why SHOULDN'T they pay attention to what comes in?

I see your complaint about writing on the games directly - sure that's valid. Just don't bitch them out for trying to make a buck when they've been getting the shaft for so many years.

Jeez.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodwill_Industries

[jb143]

At least that can be removed, unlike my local ones which write their prices directly on the games in sharpie markers.

That'll come right off with alcohol and maybe something a bit scrubby...like the back of many kitchen sponges.

The goodwills around there price almost every cart game at $4.00 regardless of what it is. Usually for the ones I pick up it's a decent deal. Sometimes a Gameboy game might be $2.00 and I usually snatch them up. A few weeks ago though I found a Game Gear game with a $2.00 sticker on it but at the register they told me it was $4 and that was a garage sale sticker and asked if I still wanted it. I pretty much told them that I barely wanted to pay $2 for it so why would I pay twice as much for a garage sale reject.

[Ryaan1234]

"OMG THE CHARITY IS TRYING TO MAKE MONEY."

Goodwills don't exist to feed your need for cheap games, they raise money for needy causes. Good on them for catching on they could raise more money and do more good rather than you getting $0.99 games you can flip for $40 on ebay - why SHOULDN'T they pay attention to what comes in?

I see your complaint about writing on the games directly - sure that's valid. Just don't bitch them out for trying to make a buck when they've been getting the shaft for so many years.

Jeez.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodwill_Industries

Originally the main purpose of Goodwill was to employ the disabled. My Goodwill has a staff of perfectly sane, able people. I'm just sayin.

My complaint is that I haven't gotten a decent game there in at least a year. I think that everything that looks like it has any value is sent off to be sold at shopgoodwill.com. Goodwill is a 100% profit organisation, aside from the regular expenses such as bills and payments for employees. 95% of their product is received at no expense to them. I just feel a little bothered that I've been shopping at the same Goodwill for over 3 years and they've more than tripled the price on games. I wouldn't be bothered if it was, say Super Metroid or Earthbound or something for $3.99, but when I see John Madden 93 for $3.99 or more it bothers me. It bothers me that I can get games cheaper at a flea market than at Goodwill.
(btw, $3.99 is the lowest I've seen video games here. They had some original Xbox sports games for $12.99, with $4.99 GameStop stickers grr...)

It's not just video games, I've seen price hikes on everything. Paperback books used to be $0.29 and now they're $0.99 among other things.

Say what you want about the "OMG BBQ They're raising the prices at Goodwill and I can't get anything good.", but I do expect something from them every once and a while.

Salvation Army, on the other hand, has had awesome prices and I've gotten some decent stuff over there recently. $4.99 Atari 2600 system FTW.

[sebastiankirchoff]

Yah I know how you feel. I went to Goodwill a couple of weeks ago and they had Xbox Demo Discs for 15 bucks each. Yah, and they had regular games on the other rack for 5 bucks. I don't get their pricing sometimes.

I can understand if they are a charity and trying to raise money for a good cause, but if they overprice their stuff so much, they aren't going to make any money at all. Seriously, why price a bare-bones Genesis for 30 bucks and not have it sell for 6 months when they could sell 10 Genesi for 10 bucks each in that same amount of time?

[Ed Oscuro]

If you're having an issue with tape or (!) marker being written directly on games, talk to the manager about it. Frankly I'd offer to pay more if they promised to use a real price sticker.

On packing tape, I've only seen it used to keep game boxes closed. It's a stupid thing to have to do, but people will open the games and fool around with the contents (or steal them outright). I haven't seen that in a while at mine, though. Packing tape may be hard to get off, but I generally don't see the need to mess with it once it's in place. The only thing I'm worried about with tape is the possibility of residue discoloring the box. Other than that, it's almost like an extra layer of protection.

[Gameguy]

My local Goodwill used to be a prime place to pick up some cheap classic gameage, but in the past couple of years, it's been going downhill. First they raised the price of cartridge based games from $1.01 to $3.03, then they started applying the price tags directly on top of the cart label. Now in the past couple of months, they've gone an extra step, and actually put packing tape over the price tag and cart label! I was just in there tonight, and I spotted a boxed copy of Tetris in the jewelry case, but upon closer inspection, they had it completely wrapped in more damn packing tape! And it wasn't even out on the floor, it was IN THE DAMN GLASS CASE! What are they thinking? I can see that some people wouldn't care too much about the condition of the game, or if there was a price tag perminately affixed to the cart label, but as a collection, it brings my piss to a boil.

Has anyone else had this experience with Goodwill?

I've seen some game boxes in display cases that were missing the games for some reason, somehow they were stolen even though they were in a case. They wouldn't give me the boxes that they would otherwise throw out because it's against company policy, but they would sell them to me. This wasn't at Goodwill though, that's not really near me so I don't go so often.

"OMG THE CHARITY IS TRYING TO MAKE MONEY."

Goodwills don't exist to feed your need for cheap games, they raise money for needy causes. Good on them for catching on they could raise more money and do more good rather than you getting $0.99 games you can flip for $40 on ebay - why SHOULDN'T they pay attention to what comes in?

I see your complaint about writing on the games directly - sure that's valid. Just don't bitch them out for trying to make a buck when they've been getting the shaft for so many years.

Jeez.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodwill_Industries

I wouldn't mind so much if thrift stores tested the stuff out before selling it, or allowed returns for broken products(not just exchange). I've seen plenty of stores asking for the full going ebay rate only the stuff wasn't tested or guaranteed. I've found some games cheaper at Microplay and they came with a 6 month guarantee which would give me a full refund if there were any problems. It's rare but I've come across a few dead carts over the years which is why I'm careful with what I buy.

Anyway, I used to find lots of stuff a few years ago at thrift stores but not so much lately. I used to go almost daily, but now maybe once a week and I pretty much come out empty handed. Either people aren't donating as much good stuff now, or other people beat me to it. I remember years ago getting handfuls of NES games pretty regularly.

[Ed Oscuro]

I wouldn't mind so much if thrift stores tested the stuff out before selling it, or allowed returns for broken products(not just exchange). I've seen plenty of stores asking for the full going ebay rate only the stuff wasn't tested or guaranteed.

My goodwill allows a seven day return period, no questions asked. They don't charge eBay prices for broken stuff either.

[Jehusephat]

I worked for Goodwill for more than three years. No, I'm not a criminal or otherwise unemployable--it was just a good job at the time and I needed one. I am amused by how many people think they're "helping" Goodwill by donating all of their useless junk to them. I was a donation attendant, and whenever myself or anyone else refused their "help" because it was clearly garbage, heads would roll. Most people treat Goodwill as a free alternative to the garbage dump, and most Goodwill stores consequently have garbage bills adding up to thousands of dollars a month. Even if you place signs on all of the doors saying "we kindly ask our patrons not to donate after hours," you will inevitably find 600 pounds of trash lying in front of the doors the next morning -on a good day-. Nothing made me angrier than waking up on a Saturday around 5 AM, arriving at work, and then immediately being told I had to carry two soiled mattresses, a couch, some useless particle board "furniture," five broken televisions and about 100 pounds worth of broken concrete weights to the trash compactor BY MYSELF within five minutes of being there. A lot of people were even less subtle about it, and would just leave five or so garbage bags literally full of garbage and soiled diapers right next to the door. One woman actually had the nerve to throw a vomit-soiled shirt in my face, just for laughs, and a lot of other people would throw or push pieces of furniture at me in dangerous ways just because they were angry I wouldn't accept something they intended to get rid of. I preferred the ones who just threw bags of clothes at me, because at least they were soft. Confront people about the garbage they're leaving you and they will scream at you, and all of the nerve you must have for daring to insult them after their gracious act of charity. You would think that only a small portion of people were like this, but I'd say roughly 1 in 4 people donating were consciously aware of the fact that absolutely nothing they were donating was of any use to anyone. The best we could do was to simply let them give us their trash if they seemed like they wanted to cause trouble, and let the garbage bills rise as a result. This ultimately led to higher prices for everyone shopping in the store. To sum it up, the Goodwill raises the prices of things you want to buy in order to pay for having to get rid of your junk, among other expenses. Think about what you donate before you leave it at the door. If you don't want it, chances are they won't either. Goodwill does not repair, clean or refurbish anything, so anything that isn't in good, working condition goes straight to the dump.

I guess what I'm trying to say is: don't blame Goodwill. Blame the people who abuse Goodwill and take advantage of the system. They're why your games cost more, in part, though I can't help but say I'm a little annoyed by the price increases, too.

Tupin is right, though. I saw some pretty awesome stuff go into the compactor, and I've personally thrown some pretty cool things in there, just because they set the prices too high and no one could afford to buy them. the general excuse for not lowering prices on expensive goods is that if they did so, no one would buy them at their original prices, and would wait until the prices for everything went down before buying anything. That makes sense, but in my opinion they would save a lot of waste if they just set the prices lower to begin with. It broke my heart to destroy some of that stuff, but I guess that's why I got paid.

As for finding games at Goodwill, I just walked out of my local one last week with a boxed copy of Ogre Battle 64. Other good finds I've had include two separate copies of Lunar (PSX and Sega CD), Breath of Fire 3, Wild Arms, a Master System with about 20 games for about $20, and a sealed copy of Dr. Mario. I know that last one isn't very impressive, but I thought finding a sealed NES game was pretty cool. It had been years since I had even seen one for sale outside of an actual gaming store. I got my half busted PS2 there for $20 a year or two ago, too (it doesn't play CDs, and I'm too dumb to take it apart without detaching that little ribbon that connects the two halves). Goodwill isn't as good of a place to find games as pawn shops are, but I like shopping at mine because I'm probably the only person who goes there to look for games anymore.

Aslo, a quick addition that I forgot. The games (and pretty much everything else in the store) are primarily expensive if the employee working in the electrical department is an idiot. That employee is also the reason why there was packing tape on your game. That's about the only reason. They have set prices that they try to use for games and other items, but most of the pricing usually ends up reflecting whatever the person pricing something thinks it's worth. There's just too much stuff to price in a day to refer to a list every five seconds. If the electrical person doesn't know a thing about games and doesn't care, they tend to sell for next to nothing, or the going rate for that store. If they think they know something but really don't, then you'll find a lot of bad games for high prices. If they actually know what to look for, you'll never find a good game in that store, because it will be sent somewhere else.

[Gameguy]

My goodwill allows a seven day return period, no questions asked. They don't charge eBay prices for broken stuff either.

I guess it varies between different locations. I don't go to Goodwill to often, but when I travel to one particular one they put "No Exchange" stickers on some electronics. I've seen some PC games priced high, like a disc only copy of Myst for around $10. This store used to be at another location that had less people attending and it was better priced with more stuff, now it's not that great to find stuff as anything decent is kept in the display case as it's "valuable".

With Salvation Army it can depend on the store, one location just sells video games in silent/live auctions which I find really stupid with how they're set up. They have a book where people can record their bids, then they have a live auction day and start the bidding on an item using the highest bid in the book as a starting point. If nobody bids at the live auction, they then call the person who wrote the bid in the book and he can purchase it if still interested. Most Salvation Army locations aren't like that, but prices do vary somewhat(like VHS tapes at my local one being $1.99 each, and at another location at $0.49 each). My local one had an original xbox for $99.99 a few weeks ago, I think that's pretty expensive now.

[Ed Oscuro]

I worked for Goodwill for more than three years.

That's one heck of a story.

We (me and my folks) occasionally leave little bags of stuff (NOT junk) at the local GW after hours - of course it's always possible that somebody will come by and just steal it, but that doesn't rattle us.

I think part of the difference here is that we're in a more rural area, sounds like you're in the inner city or something. Not everybody around us is rich, but it seems to me that they have enough sense not to take absolute garbage to Goodwill. That said, there's usually something out in the dumpster behind the store.