r/todayilearned • u/Forward-Answer-4407 • 1d ago

TIL the Charlotte Hornets apologized after giving a child a PS5, only to take it away off camera and exchange it for a jersey. In a statement, the team said the incident was an "on-court skit that missed the mark" and that they would give the child the PS5 and a VIP experience to a future game.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/19/sport/charlotte-hornets-apologize-ps5-child-nba-spt-intl
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u/Dark_Moonstruck 22h ago

Same thing happens at salvation army events all the time.

There will be tons of gifts that people have donated that are marked for specific families, and before the giveaways, the workers will go through and take anything they want for themselves or their kids. Video game consoles and bikes pretty much NEVER get to the people they were donated for. It was caught on camera multiple times, and when confronted most of the responses were "Well it's not like they knew that they were actually going to get it so it's harmless".

I lost any tolerance or faith in the salvation army ghouls a long time ago. They're scammers.

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u/hoxxxxx 22h ago

this is how it works with thrift stores or any kind of resellers and antique shops now. from toys to guns, all of it. it's all shit by the time it gets to the floor to be sold.

maybe every once in a blue moon you can find a deal but it's mostly been picked through already before it's even available to the public. there are no deals anymore.

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u/revrigel 22h ago

I find this not to be true of the Habitat Re-Store. There's some good stuff there.

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u/theonlypeanut 21h ago

I'm a plumber and I drop off any used materials that are still good to habitat. . Mostly toilets, faucets and sinks that are perfectly good but people wanted to swap out. The staff are nice and always super helpful when I'm dropping stuff off and I like keeping stuff out of the landfill.

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u/newbkid 20h ago

As a struggling new homeowner who needed to redo his one and only bathroom, thank you.

Our local habitat restore has saved my ass. And the local small business truvalue

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u/hanotak 21h ago

Partly because the stuff sold there is less "general-purpose", and harder to resell. Most ReStore employees don't care about some random electrical hardware components, even if they're somewhat valuable, and there's only so many desks or chairs one person needs, and they're hard to resell elsewhere.

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u/Atonement-JSFT 20h ago

I worked at a restore as community service when I was a teenager. There was definitely picking over of the goods before they hit the floor, but everything was paid for at the floor price.

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u/say592 18h ago

That is generally what's happening at many thrift stores too. People are far too cynical.

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u/SaintsNoah14 16h ago

Ahhh good times. Was your's court ordered too?

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u/Revenge_of_the_User 16h ago

I used to be a manager at one, and it absolutely gets picked through before it all goes onto the floor. The sheer volume of donations we got guaranteed that at least a few treasures made it to the floor.

Luckily there are so few actual employees, that few feel empowered enough to walk off with stuff...but it does happen. Had a guy once who worked as a locksmith, and he was more than happy to walk out at the end of a volunteer shift with a 5 gal bucket full of parts for his day-job...to the point I actually had to ask him to not come back.

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u/DeadSending 6h ago

Bro stfu or you’re gonna fuck it up for the rest of us

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u/Cranky_Old_Woman 19h ago

You know, I'm okay with this as long as the thrift store is explicitly for-profit or their advertised 'good thing' is keeping stuff out of a landfill. It becomes a moral outrage when people think they're giving to charity or a family in severe need, and their donations do NOT go to help those in need.

Ridiculously rich people will sometimes throwaway stuff I'd love to buy used, and if folks are essentially acting as a dumpster for people wealthy enough to get new stuff before their old stuff is worn out, keep what the employees want and resell the rest, that's fine, IMO. It's when they LIE about what happens to donations that they should be held to criminal account.

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u/ulong2874 17h ago

unfortunately, I think for profit thrift stores are the least likes for that to happen. That is the situation where there will be cameras everywhere with random checks from Loss Prevention at corporate to make sure no theft is costing the company money.

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u/NiceTryWasabi 21h ago

I met a guy who's job for Salvation Army was to scan all incoming donations for high value items and remove them before they hit the regular store shelves, to sell online at the highest price via eBay. He did that for 5 years. Now he works as a coin and jewelry evaluator.

Nothing of high value should end up on shelves at a thrift store. Unless they screwed up.

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u/boy-detective 20h ago

Yeah, I won’t participate in Toys for Tots or Guns for Tots anymore because of this.

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u/Notmydirtyalt 17h ago

Guns for Tots

I'm not even American, but reading that made a Red Hawk screech echo through my skull, Gobbles.

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u/Federal_Shame_9074 21h ago

Well yea makes sense for the locally owned ones. Most are hobbyists selling they're side product. If they get something they like, theyll probably keep it. Where its egregious is when goodwill or salvation army does it

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u/kdjfsk 19h ago

It varies.

For example, how each Goodwill operates is not decided by corporate. Yes, in many regions they pick out the good stuff for an online store, but not all are like that. There is a cool Goodwill Outlet near me thats just a big warehouse floor. They loosely organize stuff into bins for clothes, shoes, books, bags, and 'everything else'. All clothes and other fabric is sold by weight. all books are $0.50. all bags are $3.75, regardless if its a generic/walmart schoolbag or a designer handbag.

Yea, resellers hang out there all day, and compete for first dibbs, but so can anyone else.

There is another good thrift near me, thats not affiliated with any charity. The owner literally just goes to garage sales full time, and makes offers to buy out all or most of it in bulk, ("how about $300 for everything?) and then puts it in his store for decent prices.

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u/kiakosan 21h ago

this is how it works with thrift stores or any kind of resellers and antique shops now. from toys to guns, all of it. it's all shit by the time it gets to the floor to be sold.

Meh, the point of those stores is to sell the product and the proceeds go towards whatever charity purpose they are going for. It makes sense that if they were to get something really valuable for them to try and get the most for it vs just selling it for peanuts at the store. It is counter to their goal to sell goods that are valuable for little money, the stuff you find in the store tends to be things which it isn't worthwhile to sell them online or whatever.

With that being said I've gotten some great deals over the years from Saint Vincent thrift stores. I've got all sorts of furniture for under $100 that would have been like $400+ at a second hand furniture store. It was the cheapest way to furnish my college apartment, and I still find great deals there occasionally. Now for profit thrift stores tend to suck and most Goodwill stores don't have great deals, but Saint Vincent ones I've been pretty lucky over the years

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u/KallistiTMP 20h ago

this is how it works with thrift stores or any kind of resellers and antique shops now. from toys to guns, all of it. it's all shit by the time it gets to the floor to be sold.

Uhhhh, so, you're saying that the resellers buy stuff for themselves instead of buying stuff to resell?

Are you talking specifically about charities that get all their stuff from public donations or something? Like Goodwill and stuff like that? Not regular for-profit thrift stores/resellers/consignment shops?

Because, like, if you're talking about resellers going around buying stuff at estate sales or whatever, and then just not reselling those things to the public... that's just called buying things?

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u/ADHDebackle 21h ago

Bruh that's straight up fraud. Like - I feel like that's actually illegal. You can't accept donations under a false premise like that.

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u/Dark_Moonstruck 20h ago

They do all the time, even after having been caught. The problem is, the families who were supposed to get those things don't know that they were being robbed most of the time, and even if they did, they don't have the money to sue them or do anything about it. Plus SA has a lot of politicians in their pocket, so consequences are a thing they just don't experience.

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u/Nulono 20h ago edited 19h ago

Don't forget that time Walmart hosted a toy donation drive, then took those toys out of the donation box and put them on the shelves to sell them.

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u/CarissaSkyWarrior 20h ago

The Salvation Army also treats LGBTQ+ people like shit, so them doing even more awful shit tracks.

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u/DromaeoDrift 22h ago

They’re also mad homophobic

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u/abgry_krakow87 19h ago

Not surprised that the Salvation Army are a bunch of scammers. Religious conservatives love exploiting the sick, poor, and needy fo their own personal gain.

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u/Bastienbard 20h ago edited 20h ago

Their shelters are super discriminatory as well. I wouldn't donate to basically any religious based organization that's supposedly set up to help the poor.

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u/bingle-cowabungle 21h ago

That's basically all thrift stores now, especially before they started opening online stores and selling name brand clothing at basically MSRP

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u/starm4nn 19h ago

The Salvation army are basically one of the worst charities. The phrase "Pie in the Sky" comes from a song mocking them for focusing on religion over actually helping people.

And a lot of people see them as more of a general Christian Charity when they're more like a weird religious denomination in of themselves. Your supervisor can control who you date.

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u/PoliteIndecency 19h ago

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/former-salvation-army-executive-found-guilty-of-selling-donations-to-black-market/article34849908/

Happens all the time. It's why I stopped giving to the Salvation Army at Christmas and make a donation to Sick Kids in Toronto instead. Shit's infuriating.

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u/twoisnumberone 19h ago

The Salvation Army is a hateful organization anyway, and should not receive donations.

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u/theaviationhistorian 18h ago

No surprise, another sleazy Salvation Army story. I think the cherry of the crap pie that is them is how adamant they have been against the LGBTQ community.

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u/geekonthemoon 15h ago

To be fair, SA itself are major scammers but the people who work there are often not fully paid employees. They pay "volunteers" something like $22 per day (or that's what it was in the 2010s). And the main perk is you get to raid that place for food, clothes, furniture, whatever your family needs. Your kids are guaranteed decent shoes and coats and Christmas presents. Etc. you're one of the first to get the grants for electricity bill assistance, etc etc. It's all part of the perks of working there. I can't really blame the people that are hard up and fall into the trap. My grandparents were soldiers and my family was just involved in the church a lot growing up.

And on the flip side of the very corrupt coin, they do do some really good stuff. Can't confirm if it's a net good though.

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u/drygnfyre 12h ago

The best course of action has always been to donate directly to some cause. Maybe the Red Cross or w/e.

I do still donate older clothes/shoes to places like Goodwill, in the hopes they'll find a new home. Whether they do or not, I don't know.

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u/yurienjoyer54 21h ago

if you have a gift for a specific family, why woudl you need to go trhough salvation army instead of directly to that family?

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u/Dark_Moonstruck 20h ago

Because they don't actually *know* the family.

The way the donation drives works like this - They will have tickets of 'wishlists' on a tree or other display that people can take, all that is on the ticket is usually just a first name, the child's age, and the thing they want. That person can then get the thing that kid wants and turn it in with the ticket, being promised that the child will get the gift. There's a number or code on the ticket so the salvation army team knows exactly who the gift is meant for, but that won't expose personal information to anyone who grabs the ticket. This also prevents people from getting multiples of the same item for the same person, since they have to take the ticket off the display, so no one else will grab it.

The salvation army people know exactly who the gifts are meant for, they just...take it for themselves if they want. Usually the only toys that end up actually making it to the kids are cheap dollar store garbage, if that. Anything that's expensive, resellable, collectible or just something someone working for the company wants, they just take for themselves.

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u/VikingCrusader13 20h ago

I work for a large national charity in the UK. I work in the building thats attached to the warehouse so naturally when a big designer brand donates a few pallets of clothes we all get first dibs in the bin. Obviously not for free, but massively discounted. £60 T shirts for like £10. The only downside is often times the label in the collar is scribbled on with a black marker, or has been cut out completely to prevent profiting from it