So I'm willing to play devil's advocate for a couple of the complaints about them. A. They won't take every single brand name item, only those that are prevalent to teens and young adults, so don't expect to take your Talbots stuff here. Yes it's brand name, but no it's not what they want.
B. Don't go thinking you're going to get a lot of money for your items, even if they're new with tags on them. Remember - this is a thrift store. This is where you go when you have some nice clothes that you don't want to altogether donate for free and feel earning a couple bucks for them might be nice. Being that it's a thrift store, it sells its items for low prices. This means they must buy the items for lower prices, so they can make a profit. Basic capitalism. If you have brand new shoes with tags on them, you shouldn't be taking them to a thrift store to begin with. It's not a pawn shop, it's a thrift shop. If you want to get their worth, you need to be marketing them yourself online on stores like Poshmark. Thrift shops are for used clothes that you just want to get rid of.
C. Now here's where my feelings of Plato's come in. I think they really screwed themselves towards the beginning. I remember when I first heard the commercials for them and thought "Wow, this place sounds potentially awesome" and it was awesome, potentially. And they did pretty good business, people flooded in to get rid of their nice teen clothes that had been laying around in their closets. However, I think in the beginning they got a little too buy-happy. They weren't as picky about their accepted brand items, which resulted in them taking items that weren't even necessarily in style anymore. For example - Happy Bunny. Anyone remember Happy Bunny? That used to be a really hot item - in 2006. So why they have items like that in stock is beyond me. I truly believe they just accepted way too much in the beginning, and then got stuck with it. As the years went on they did well selling the really top notch popular stuff, but a lot of the "bad purchases" sat around gathering dust, and slowly started piling up. They ran out of room, but refuses to get rid of all those bad buys, because that would be money down the drain.
Now when you go in, they're mega picky, almost ludicrously so. I've gone in before with a heap of 20 items, all definitely still in style from stores like American Eagle and Forever21. Thinking wow, they'll definitely take most of this stuff. I think they may have took 1 thing from me and that was it. I remember standing there as the girl handed me a couple dollars and gave me my stack of Forever21 clothes as I just stared at a Happy Bunny t-shirt across the room. That didn't make sense at all.
Honestly, they need to just bite the bullet and get rid of their old out of style junk so they can make way for stuff that's actually in style. Or get employees who are better judges. read more