Salvation Army Thrift Stores

Great place to donate to, not so great to shop at.
First the good part — making donations. They are a self-​serve donation center where all you have to do is drop off your items in the Dropbox and pick up a receipt on a table right next to the entrance door inside the store. You fill out the items you donated and their value. There is no bickering with the staff as to what items they accept and what items are in good enough condition to be donated (to be clear, I always donate like new or very good condition items). Their valuation guide also gives higher value to most items than, say, goodwill, so you can write off more from your taxes. That’s probably because their prices are higher than Goodwill’s, but more on that later.
Now to the not so good part — shopping. They call it «Salvation Army warehouse» and it does have the dungeon-​y warehouse feel to it. Very dark and gloomy. Racks upon racks of overpriced clothes. Prices are about twice the prices at Goodwill. I saw many Garanimals clothes for sale for $ 4.99 even though new they are $ 3.88 at Walmart.
I personally don’t see myself ever buying anything there, though it’s a great place to donate to.

The clothing racks are extremely over-​packed, to the point where your arm is sore after fighting to view each individual clothing item. Prices are high. If they lowered the prices, maybe the racks wouldn’t be impossible to view. You’ll look through the t-​shirts and see 50 identical shirts from a tattoo shop that went out of business, something that clearly won’t be flying off the rack to be purchased. The help says «they tell us to keep jamming the stuff on there.» Other racks are so packed I don’t even bother to look at them. (lost sales for them) Then you think you found something good and it’s ruined BY THEM with the price tag –stapled– to the item. A $ 40 Victoria’s Secret shirt on sale for $ 6.99 sounds like a good deal. But then you get home and remove the tag and there’s four holes on the shoulder from the two staples. IDK why they can’t just put the price on the tag. Found a Vera Bradley purse there once in nice condition. But again, ruined with staple holes in the strap that caused it to begin fraying. I won’t be back.