St Vincent De Paul

I’ve been thrifting for over 20 years now, and while I generally enjoy most thrift stores, I’m also very picky about which ones I’ll add to my regular rotation. This one is hands down my favorite. Why?
It’s huge. They have so much space inside, and they fill it well but they’ve definitely got some room to grow. Also lots of fitting rooms, that are always kept clean.
The staff. For all the bad attitudes you’ll find at Goodwill, there is none of that here. St Vinny’s in general has friendly employees but I’ve found the Sun Prairie staff to be especially friendly and helpful.
The item selection. Every thing is generally pretty clean/​in good condition. Very well sorted. Much of the furniture is either in very good condition, or unique older pieces.
The prices… most of the time. Clothes, books/​cds/​dvds, dishes, regular household items — those all seem to be priced in the low-​to-​reasonable zone. I love finding nearly-​new clothes for $ 5−6/piece. The furniture and frames, both things that I buy regularly, can really be priced erratically. Sometimes it’s obvious — a cheap Walmart frame For $ 3 vs. a high-​end one for $ 50. Other times, it’ll be a Pier One picture with a Pier One clearance sticker for $ 16 and a St Vinny’s sticker for $ 15. So I would like to see more consistency with the pricing. But 95% of the time, I feel that the prices are fair.
Also as a frequent St Vinny’s shopper, I love their rewards card. It doesn’t save you tons, but it’s great to get a few extra bucks off each time.

I love this place. It’s allowed me to clothe my kids, furnish many rooms and get my crafting on.

The pricing is ridiculous. Five dollars for a tiny box with a hole in the bottom of it? Ninety dollars, yes 90 dollars for a teetering, severely worn out foot stool? I felt like I had stepped into another dimension. Glass bowls and their matching lids priced separately, but packaged together? It’s like someone let a toddler run wild with the pricing gun.
We didn’t buy anything here because we realized that we must have accidentally slipped through a rip in the space-​time continuum into the twilight zone.
I wish I could say this was just a bunch of oopsies because this location is relatively new, but I’ve visited their location in Waunakee too and found the same pricing practices there as well.
No thanks.

Immediately when walking in it felt like you could find some pretty good quality finds. After exploring around it, there were several items that stood out., some for the wrong reasons — pricing. I would have expected the pricing to be a bit better on a lot of what I was looking at.
One item in particular stood out — I was looking at a table that had already been marked down twice — with the last markdown almost a month old. It was pretty evident the item was not priced right — or it surely would have moved already. Since I was interested, I wanted to work on the price a little — since it was likely to get another markdown soon, as it appeared overdue. When talking with the staff, they were not flexible. Which I can understand, they want their sticker price without any negotiation. Considering I wasn’t looking to get a steal on the item, I was willing to offer a fair price, you would think we could work something out. They just said sticker price is where they are.
Before leaving I figured I owed it to them to let them know what I would be willing to spend (a mere 10% reduction). At which point they said ‘ok’ and we proceeded to heck out. All good, it seemed. A fair deal for them, a discount for me — though still more than I wanted to pay. Then when waiting for the cash register to warm up, I started talking about logistics for picking up — as I had a full load with passengers. At this point I was told they had to get the sticker price again… Huh? If that was the case, why say ok and move to the cash register to check out?
While it is great to have a St. Vinny’s in Sun Prairie — they really should check their pricing a bit more, and consider their willingness to negotiate a little more — especially on higher priced items.