I see what you're saying, I just don't agree about the incentives.
The donors want to get a tax break, and I suspect lack even token concern about what happens to the goods as long as they get that tax break.
The store and charity want money in exchange for those donated goods. They don't care who is paying nor why, they just want the money.
If the volunteers are picking up all of the items worth anything, that's likely fine with all of the involved parties other than other customers. The donors are still getting tax breaks, the charity is still getting their money. The stuff left over wasn't going to sell anyways (otherwise customers would still come in to buy that stuff).
The volunteers are still customers, they're just also unpaid employees.
> This is also why these stores don't like people shopping with price-comparison scanners.
Anecdata, but the ones I've been to don't care. There's about a 50/50 split in my area between stores that pay employees to pick out anything obviously valuable before selling the rest, and stores that have presumably decided it's better/easier to just leave everything intact and sell as is.
I still go sometimes, because there's a wide range of items that either their employees don't know to pick or just aren't worth trying to resell. Eg they almost always pass over 3D printer filament (maybe because of shipping costs), so I buy it up for ~$5/kg. There's really quite a few niches that they either don't think are worth reselling or just lack the knowledge to know to resell.
The donors want to get a tax break, and I suspect lack even token concern about what happens to the goods as long as they get that tax break.
The store and charity want money in exchange for those donated goods. They don't care who is paying nor why, they just want the money.
If the volunteers are picking up all of the items worth anything, that's likely fine with all of the involved parties other than other customers. The donors are still getting tax breaks, the charity is still getting their money. The stuff left over wasn't going to sell anyways (otherwise customers would still come in to buy that stuff).
The volunteers are still customers, they're just also unpaid employees.
> This is also why these stores don't like people shopping with price-comparison scanners.
Anecdata, but the ones I've been to don't care. There's about a 50/50 split in my area between stores that pay employees to pick out anything obviously valuable before selling the rest, and stores that have presumably decided it's better/easier to just leave everything intact and sell as is.
I still go sometimes, because there's a wide range of items that either their employees don't know to pick or just aren't worth trying to resell. Eg they almost always pass over 3D printer filament (maybe because of shipping costs), so I buy it up for ~$5/kg. There's really quite a few niches that they either don't think are worth reselling or just lack the knowledge to know to resell.