ShopGoodWillReviews 652

Ashamed to say I, too, thought I would be helping out if I bought at ShopGoodwill - after paying too much for items themselves and paying too much for shipping a couple times - I belatedly did my research. DO NOT BUY HERE if you want value shop elsewhere. If you want to help the less fortunate, shop at the bricks and mortar stores or donate directly. With that said, review where your donated money is going... so much siphoned off for CEO and executives it's a shame. I'll stick with eBay and Craigslist.

Goodwill is owned by an individual and is not what it is portrayed to be. Everything is donated and then sold either through their stores or on line. It is like any other business, except they use the system so they can hire at a lower wage.

The Salvation Army, Volunteers of America, and other organizations who receive donated items help a great number of individuals with their proceeds. Not Goodwill, it goes into the pocket of the business owner.

At one time you could find some very nice things at the local Goodwill stores, but not anymore. Most of the stores mainly sell clothing with a scattering of other items. All of the "good stuff" is sold on line where they can get more money for the items.

The clothing prices have reached the place where you can purchase new items, on sale, for close to the same price as they are charging for used items. Occasionally you can find a bargain, but not often.

I would suggest donating to organizations that will use your donated items to help others, instead of donating to Goodwill where it only helps one individual. With other organizations some of the items are placed for sale while other items are free to those in need. They also use their proceeds to help the community and the people within that community who are homeless or struggling for survival.

I have purchased from several of the stores, and they must have a training program on how to overcharge people for shipping. An item that weighs 7 lb is listed at a shipping weight of 28 lb. I'm looking at an item right now that hasn't ended - I have one just like it here and it weighs 9 lb boxed up and they are charging shipping for 45 lb! They need to allow buyers to leave feedback for the stores. There are some that are reasonable on shipping, but I'd say over half of them are out of control.

Apart from possibly excessive postage and packaging, although I did receive the item overnight, and the concern about possible shill bidding driving up the price, I bought a vintage replica ring in perfect condition, it looks like new, and I am very happy with it. The remaining few new ones of this ring were being sold on ebay at the time for over 3 times the price I paid. I would be wary of buying anything else from this site for the reasons given by other people here, with which comments I mostly agree, but in this instance I'm very happy to have this ring.
I am revising this review because I have since bought a second item which I just received today, this time a necklace from Middle Tennessee, and although I have no complaints about the necklace itself, the postage charges were excessively high. They charged me $7 for sending a flat necklace in a small, barely padded envelope, and depending on whether it was considered a letter or a large envelope, it only cost them either 68 cents or $1.15 plus the cost of the flimsy little envelope that shouldn't have cost more than 50 cents if that. I think a couple of dollars of what I was charged was a handling fee. Like others have said, everything these people sell has been donated to them, and they are supposed to be helping people who are disadvantaged in some way. They certainly don't need a handling fee, nor do they have any good reason for charging so much more than the cost of the postage and the envelope. They can be a good source for discontinued, vintage items that are rare and hard to find, as long as there isn't much that could be wrong with them (like jewellery in my case) and that's the only thing I've been interested in buying from them, but with their dubious business practices that they seem to have been able to get away with due to being a charity, they are going to alienate more and more customers, I think, judging by the bad reviews here. Many more people probably have bad experiences than actually take the time and trouble to write reviews. At least this time, thanks to the reviews here, I knew better and didn't make anything but the smallest bid at a time so as to try to not invite shill bidding. I'm now starting to use shopgoodwill.com as a source of some available older items and then searching elsewhere for them on websites where the sellers are held more accountable for their actions.

I've spent probably $500 on this site because you can find some very rare items for a good price. The caveat is, as others have noticed, that the shipping is easily twice what the cost should be. Also, beware of getting into bidding wars. The user can't view the maximum bid for an item, so when entering what is said to be the minimum bid you are likely to be told you have been outbid several times before you are finally granted the highest bid.

It is also suspect that many collectible items (video games, rare toys and board games) will be bid up higher than the worth of the item - especially when factoring in $20 or more in shipping. Whether this is done by Goodwill employees or uneducated shoppers, I do not know.

I was a DAILY purchaser on Shopgoodwill.com until recently. The items I wanted to bid on, which would have made MUCH more money for the store, was "PICK UP ONLY. The Items were shelves, cots, camping gear ETC. They state that they don't have a box large enough. I explain that they can tape 2 boxes togeather, but they will not go the extra mile to support THIER CAUSE. Why have items listed that are only sold LOCALLY? They are becoming a SCAM.

I used to bid on many items and won lots of bids. Always paid on time too. Then I had to have surgery and rehab. During that time I apparently won some auctions but since I was rehabilitating from surgery wasn't on the computer and missed the deadline for payments. They promptly disabled my account. I explained the situation to them but they didn't care a bit. The guy said thank you for all your purchases but you can't have an account ever again. What a jerk! So much for having compassion. I won't even donate to this criminal organization again. I'll give to Purple Heart or Salvation Army.

I can appreciate and even admire a company that is set up to help people that would otherwise struggle in the "normal" workplace. Here is what I don't admire. When you are flat out fraudulent and hide behind the "charity" guise, I am literally disgusted. If you've never had the displeasure of shopping GoodWill online, stay away from it in the future too. I've been an active member for about five years now. By active, that means I check their listings about 3x weekly. I've bought only one item since being a member simply due to their repulsive practices. Please keep in mind that EVERYTHING they sell was given to them free of charge. And not only was it free, it was delivered to their doorstep. It is then tested, if applicable, to the extent of plugging it in. They will tell you if it powered on or not, and that's the extent of their testing. Now if it's an item that they believe will bring a considerable amount of money if it was working, they somehow found a means to test it. This isn't the exception, it's the rule. Remember, I've been watching this happen for five years. Next is the shipping charges. I've had an account with UPS for about ten years now and I ship far less packages than Goodwill does. I know from experience what their minimum discount is. Yet they charge fees that are beyond even what the UPS website would charge you. But we're not done yet. They are going to charge you a "handling fee" too because they had to carry the item from the drop box to the table to photo it. Doesn't matter if you pick it up at the store either. You are paying the handling fee. Some of these are as much as $8 for a single item. Some are 5% of the selling price which means a $500 item which means you will pay an additional $25 for someone to pack it with some more free stuff. Don't think so? Look up item# *******. What does the selling price have to do with anything when it comes to handling fees? And to think of all the buyers that participate in this corruption all because "it's for charity". If ANY retailer conducted business in this fashion, I can about guarantee you wouldn't shop there. There is so much corruption in charity, you'd swear they are run by government and religious affiliations. What is probably the most disgusting is that people continue to buy from them. There can't be a murder without a murderer.

I like the idea of ShopGoodwill. The problem is they have not way of keeping the individual stores honest. Just look at the post at any rating site or type shoppgoodwill.com comments into any search engine and you will see the level of dishonesty that happens on this site. From my personal experience, last week I ordered a silver statue when I received it it has not silver at all in the statue. If the site had a rating system like Amazon or eBay this kind of thing would not happen.

Please sign the petition

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/make-shopgoodwillcom-a-safe-place-to-shop.html

Please be aware that Goodwill's auction sellers (in my case their DENVER store) shipped two junk watches to me instead of the nearly $150 silver rings I bid on, won and paid for and... get this... told ME to try and get them back from the customer they inadvertently shipped them to!
After reporting to my Credit Card provider, who asked me to send them all correspondence between myself and the Denver Goodwill store, the auction site immediately shut down my account so I could not retrieve or access any of the emails.
They are horrible, dishonest people to deal with. Not that Goodwill had a good reputation anyway. And, despite what form of payment you choose to use, buyers have no protection against deceit and lies.
Do yourself a favor and shop elsewhere! At least you will receive what you paid for, it will be the item pictured and described and you will have some way of recovering your lost money when you receive the garbage they are selling.
Someone needs to investigate this site and all the Goodwill stores participating in these scam auctions!
PLEASE DON'T BE THEIR NEXT VICTIM!