Salvation Army

Had the Salvation Army pick up some furniture a couple months ago and they were very careful, courteous, and on time. In fact my wife had cleaned out one of the items, a cabinet, and I double checked after it was strapped in on the truck to make sure she hadn’t left anything in it. They were very nice about it even though it involved extra work for them. I’ve donated numerous items in person at the thrift store and the staff has always been friendly and helpful. The Salvation Army is considered one of the premier charities for helping folks that need help. I’m sure they do their best on the pricing but are trying to raise as much as they can so they can help more people. If you pay a little more than the market price just consider that the extra money is helping someone who really needs it. If they don’t want one of your items don’t take it personally, they are just trying to be efficient so they can provide more services. You shouldn’t want them to have to incur extra costs like having to throw out some of your junky items. That is less money for people they help. Their primary mission isn’t to make it easy for us to get rid of our old stuff or necessarily provide us with bargains. Those are secondary goals as I understand it.

I like this store and I appreciate them not taking soiled or ratty items. That is one reason I like to go there because other than the usual horrible thrift store smelling items, they are, for the most part, in good condition. If you are into repurposing items or upcycling such as myself, this is the place for you. I have also found several name brand clothing items of clothing for next to nothing from Tommy Bahama to Coogi to Levi. They have a bigger and better selection than the good will and they are Christian based so I am a costumer and will continue to be. Some of the staff that is on the floor could use a smile every now and then but the cashiers are really nice.

If i could give a place a negative star I would. Between the horrible smart a$$ customers service and the bend me over with Vaseline pricing I’ll never shop here or send refer anyone to this place. I am a EXPERT buyer which means I shop for a living. When you see a silver color cup (not plated) with a 75.00 sticker, a set of 4 plastic coasters for 10.00 wrapped in discolored packing tape and the best used sneakers covered in mud 13.99… when I brought these items to the manager he told me «the entire stote is 40% off «im pretty sure he didn’t understand what I was saying. Upside is I found a gorgeous Oscar deletaenta vintage brown suade jacket, lined in lamb skin with a pimped out fir trim collar from «i Magnum» in the 40’s it was clearly miss marked 75.00 and additional 40% off i located the same jacket on ebay for 945.00.
Check out. Even a bigger $hit show when you use your ATM card is rings up as a credit if you don’t have your I. D and your name perfectly spelled on the front end of the card they will refuse to sell you the goods because my middle name on my driver’s license was not on my credit card it was a big problem for the big eyed, eyeglass wearing brunette at the counter. I replied with «i am not shopping at Sacks fith ave on Rodeo Drive for $hit-​sakes, this is the S store!!! If you want overpriced and bad attitudes I recommend you chew on shards of cracked glass and a shot of vodka before you experience that store.

I call these guys to pick some good quality furniture and other items that I was going to donate to them and I was so disappointed with the way they handled business.
They started by taking pictures of the furniture and complaining for little dirt on a sofa.
They didn’t take the sofa for the same reason. The only thing that they were interested was in the clothes. So picky I can’t believe it. Donate your things to a different organization that values your good heart.

cavewife convince neanderthal to give clothes to salvation army. neanderthal show up to some building and drop boxes of clothes next to something that look like big dumpster. no even see anyone there. how does entire army live here? where do they sleep? who do they fight for? do salvation army use gun? is their also salvation navy? so many questions.
but cavewife say it not even real army at all, but just place where you donate old clothes for other people who need them. you also buy clothes and other item here too if want. that is nice. would be 5 star, but delete one because neanderthal still no really understand how this is consider Army.

I don’t know why others have problems with this place. I have donated several times here (all good things in good condition). Someone is always nearby to help at the back gate. I don’t know why some people think they can donate their trashed stuff and assume others will want it. Donate what you yourself would buy, under different financial circumstances.

Can I just start by saying whoever prices the red tag houseware items is out of their mind. As an antique dealer I have regularly seen items that require major cleaning or restoration priced so high that I probably wouldn’t have sold them for that much after cleaning them up first. Compared to literally every other Salvation Army I’ve been to… This place has the most outrageous and unpredictable prices. I do find a lot of random treasures here so they get two stars but half the time I have to try and get them to reduce prices due to the items being in disrepair.

A more appropriate name would be the «Scam Army.» They are so greedy that instead of charging a fair price for the records, they mark them up to ridiculously high prices to milk the most most money out of each one. The prices are way higher than what their mediocre records are actually worth in the real world, but in this store reality doesn’t seem to matter when it comes to their pricing.
Its not just the records that are overpriced, its everything in the store. All you have to do is read the other Unilocal reviews and you will hear the same complaints from disappointed customers. I think they would make more money if they didn’t try to rip off their customers. I will spend my money with thrift stores where I can find a bargain.

EXPERIENCE #1: bought a sleeper sofa from store. Got home and changed my mind. Called Salvation Army to indicate they could keep my $ 175 but asked them to come get sofa. They came to house. Told me that time was not up to their standards. I said it was up to your standards an hour ago when I
. The guy turned and walked away. I had to pay $ 80 more to have the sofa hauled to junk yard.
EXPERIENCE #2: took a roomful of antique items from my antique store to Salvation Army. Employee looked at items and stated” Get this junk out of here, we’re not the dumping ground.” I started to go postal on him but remembered that I had to be at work on Monday for a meeting – so I said, look I am going to drive to Goodwill and I guarantee that they will take these items. There is no junk in this truck – many of items were pristine antiques including a French Vitrine, SInger Sewing machine in stand, Folding Dressing Screen, pair of brocade slipper chairs, Oriental Rug, Folding Game Table, etc. Drove eight blocks to Goodwill and Goodwill took everything excluding two twin size mattresses and bed frames. Goodwill employees were thankful and indicated that if I had more items to bring them by the store.
Salvation Army sells trash and bases its standards off of the trash that they employ. This store is full of delusional employees that get off on insulting customers. I will never donate to Salvation Army again and will certainly not buy their items – if they can’t stand behind their junk sales and need to call me names.

FORGET ABOUT DONATING TO THIS ORGANIZATION! Anything large that is. I had a beautiful couch that was sheduled for pickup and I was extremely DISAPPOINTED in the service! I scheduled a pick up for a beautiful couch and was left a notice that it was not picked up because it has «pet Hair». There is NO pet hair on it and I do not have any pets. Instead they took the pillows that matched the couch and also the towels that were covering the arms. Now the couch will be sitting in the hot sun until I can find another suitable donation site. I will never donate to Salvation Army again.

Though they have a fairly large selection of everything from clothing to household goods, everything is a pricey. Some obviously ‘well loved’ items are priced over $ 20, which is far more than willing to throw down for a used bowl or dress. Not the worst, but usually my last thrifting resort.

This place is the worst, especially if you’re looking for electronics. They resell cheap, no-​name brand electronics for sometimes twice as much as they would cost new. The employees are rude and unhelpful, too. Today I walked in there (for what now will be the last time) and the greeting I received was one of the workers barking at me to put my backpack behind the counter. Ironic that they treat me like a criminal right off the bat when they are the ones criminally overcharging their customers. AVOID THIS PLACE LIKE THE PLAGUE

Don’t ever, ever, ever deal with this orgination. They examine ever item as if they don’t want to move it and find any excuse. They are blood suckers that will cherry pick your items. Please, please give to an organization that appreciates your donation. I understand people give non-​profits junk all the time but this stuff was above average. Very, very disappointed in the Salvation Army, I wont deal with them again!!!

Expensive! I found the exact same shirt brand new for $ 9 they were selling it with a stain for $ 8, never. Coming back. Got yelled at the first step i took in the door because worker confused me with someone they «banned» WOW

This is the worst. Came at the end of the day with a full truck and were super picky about what they would take, leaving a lot of stuff behind. They even had me sign a waiver releasing them from all liability, presumably including negligence and criminal intent.
Thinking this was an unfortunate mishap, I tried them a second time. Was given a 3:30 to 6:30 pm window. Waited all day and they never showed. Never even called. I checked on line and someone had typed in that the pick up was completed at 2 pm. Not only was this outside the window, this was a total fabrication. No one ever came or called. All day.
They pretty much wasted two full days. In the future, I will donate to others.

Just tried to donate a couch and was told that despite having just cleaned it the stain less than one inch long would prevent them from taking the couch? Really disappointed their strict policy will keep a perfectly good couch from someone that needs it and instead end up in the dump. Just lost my business and future annual donations for good. You aren’t helping people you are just looking making a profit!

Good books. It’s a little too pricey for a thrift store. Thrift stores are supposed to be low priced.

I’ve made several donations by dropping off stuff at this location. In general, I’ve had good experiences when I have had to walk into the store to ask the clerk for some help as far as helping unload my car (with the exception of one person who tried to tell me to drive around to the back because he was too lazy to bring a cart out to the parking lot to help me unload my car). However, it was not the same experience when I needed to have a truck come down to clean out the rest of my stuff after a yard sale.
First of all, it was one of their staff named John J. from their dispatch center who had approached me by responding to my yard/​move sale ad on Craigslist and offered to help by sending out a truck to help clean out the rest of my belongings from my sale in exchange for a receipt for my donation. Seeing that, I eagerly responded back to their message as I really need all the help that I could get as far as getting rid of stuff that I cannot take with me when I move.
So what went wrong? Here’s my list:
1) When I responded back to «John’s» email, someone else, I think his name was Shane or Shawn, from their dispatch center waited to get back to me on the day before my sale (which was a 2 day wait on my end) to confirm that they received my email and that they could send a truck over between the time frame of 1pm-1:30pm.
2) Someone else other than John of Shane called me again, this time on the morning of my sale to double check if I still needed a truck to come out to clean out my yard sale. Clearly, the people who work at the dispatch center do not communicate to one another regarding donation pick up requests. On top of that, this guy had pushed out the time from 1 – 1:30pm to 1:30−2pm.
3) Not only did the truck NOT show up between 1 – 1:30 OR 1:30−2pm, they casually showed up closer to 2:30pm. I had called them at roughly 1:45pm to find out what the ETA was for the truck. The person on the phone told me that dispatch was already closed for the day but there were still 2 trucks out and that one of them would be on their way.
After another 30mins of waiting, I called them again to find out the ETA of the truck only to have another person tell me that it looked like that all their trucks had already returned. I was clearly very annoyed at this point and started to argue with this person when the truck casually pulled up. My friend and I waited in the damn heat since 1:15pm for them to show up because we didn’t want to find ourselves by having hauled half of all my crap back up a flight of stairs in case they arrived.
4) I had also needed them to take one piece of furniture that was inside my apartment, which I had notified them about in the email that I had responded to (a large, pine wood computer armoire). The drivers knew nothing about this (which is not surprising since the service was already going down hill from the moment I talked to one of the dispatcher earlier that morning). But one of the drivers came in to look at it and started to lecture me how they can’t take anything made out of particle board because it was too much of a liability.
This is when I really started to get pissed off — first of all, they show up almost an hour late. Then they tell me that my cabinet isn’t made out of real wood. The piece of furniture that I was trying to donate was not purchased at Ikea and it is NOT made of particle board, however, he would not drop the topic and continued to argue with me that it was… further to that he continued to argue that couldn’t take it anyway because there was some small damage to the finish of the exterior of the cabinet. Personally, I think he was just being LAZY and didn’t want himself or his partner to be bothered to have to take this unit down one flight of stairs.
And regarding how they supposedly don’t accept furniture donation if it’s made out of particle board… I find this completely uncanny especially when I was dropping some stuff off at their center a couple of weeks ago, because the accepted one of my accent tables, which was from Ikea and made out of particle board… AND there was an Ikea EXPEDIT shelf in their store!
I don’t get how a place such as The Salvation Army can get away with being so picky when they get all their merchandise for FREE. Fine, if their drivers think that they can talk down to me and lie to my face that my cabinet is made out of particle board when it’s made out of real wood, then I’ll start making donations to other charities from now on.

Completely unimpressed. Everything vintage in the brick a back was ridiculous overpriced. I mean you can buy it on ebay for less even including the shipping. There was a sad primary yellow pyrex bowl that was in sad shape foe $ 29.99. Are you kidding? ! I wouldn’t pay that much for one in mint condition.
I found some embroidery hoops for $ 4.99 which is less than I could have bought them new but the whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth.

You know, the original intent for the Salvation Army Thrift Stores was to take donations and sell used items to needy folks at a discount below box store prices. Growing up poor, my mother was able to cloths us nicely and pick things up for the home that were otherwise hard to come by without having to skip a meal or two.
Today, not so much.
It has become a basement for bargain shoppers looking to score big on some vintage handbag or the like. The cost of clothing is at times MORE than places like target and Walmart. Anything of apparent value is held behind counters and I’m sure researched on Google or Ebay to get BIG money for it. So much for helping the needy,
Case in point, my wife and I just moved to Long Beach. We bought a new bed frame and decided to donate our 2 month old box spring. Simmons, retail about 400+. Salvation Army wouldn’t take it because it did int have a mattress. WHAT? Its not like all mattresses are unique in size! A queen is a queen! They also wouldn’t take several pieces of furniture because they were from Ikea and considered «particle furniture». Well let me tell you, even the furniture from high end places are particle furniture. So, unless you have an Amish woodworker from PA making your nightstands, you have particle furniture. Also, the bookcases and night stands were in PERFECT condition. Not the type that cant be moved or fall apart. I Craiglisted everything for over 1K and it was gone in a day.
Is it really that hard to donate items to needy folks? Should it be? I understand people try to unload some serious junk on these places and there needs to be policies and procedures. But when folks are giving away EXCELLENT things… nearly in box, just because it isn’t a pair of Jimmy Choo’s, it doesn’t mean someone needy out there doesn’t need it.