Charity scam.

RoundTower · 28-10-2008 12:23AM

Dun laoire wrote: »

To be fair i don't care who takes my unwanted clothes. They don't even need to act like scammers cause i don't care. It's quite simple and straightforward. If Mr Polish man wants to take my unwanted clothes to sell on he's more than welcome to them and if the charity man comes along and says i want your clothes to give to the poor folk over here and there i would also gladly give them to him.

I didn't know they were scams either and I also don't really care. It's not like I was putting wads of cash in the bags for whoever collects them, I wouldn't put anything in the bags I didn't want to get rid of anyway.

Fionnanc · 28-10-2008 01:13AM

These clothes get sorted. The good stuff is kept and sold on the rest is usually dumped illegaly. Alternatively the clothes are compressed into bales( each 1m2 bale can contain up to 100 items of clothing), loaded into containers and shipped to 3rd world countries, where they are sold to businesspeople by bale who then sell each item of clothing individually. So lots of people profiting from these bogus charities

Linku · 28-10-2008 04:55AM

One of these was dropped in my letterbox at 3.30am recently, I heard someone on the driveway, looked out and saw a guy hopping over the wall into my neighbours garden. There was another guy across the road emerging from the side of someone's house, so I thought they were just scopeing the place out for a burglary, not seeing the sticker at the time. I called my garda station and they had a car within 3 minutes driving around the area.
I saw the leaflet the next day and called the gardaí back to tell them what happened, and they said it was most likely a scam, and I googled the website printed on the sticker, and sure enough it was.

Not only are these people scamming anyone who does leave out a bag of clothes by selling them for profit, posting things in peoples letterboxes at 3.30am is unacceptable. My area is full of elderly people who could feel very threatened if they were in my position, and I'll continue to call the police if I see them dropping in again.

Belfafter · 28-10-2008 10:57PM

Linku wrote: »

One of these was dropped in my letterbox at 3.30am recently, I heard someone on the driveway, looked out and saw a guy hopping over the wall into my neighbours garden. There was another guy across the road emerging from the side of someone's house, so I thought they were just scopeing the place out for a burglary, not seeing the sticker at the time. I called my garda station and they had a car within 3 minutes driving around the area.
I saw the leaflet the next day and called the gardaí back to tell them what happened, and they said it was most likely a scam, and I googled the website printed on the sticker, and sure enough it was.

Not only are these people scamming anyone who does leave out a bag of clothes by selling them for profit, posting things in peoples letterboxes at 3.30am is unacceptable. My area is full of elderly people who could feel very threatened if they were in my position, and I'll continue to call the police if I see them dropping in again.

The poor old guards have limited powers with dealing with these guys as it is very hard to decide what is or is not an illegitimate charity.
More success can possibly be had by calling the local council waste enforcement manager.
If they find it is bogus they can have it seized under waste laws i think.

dotsman · 28-10-2008 11:37PM

From a legal/technical point of view, they're doing nothing wrong!

As long as they donate even €5 a year to the various good causes they claim to support, then they are perfectly legitimate. They don't lie on the stickers. Actually read what they say they are doing:

asking you for your old clothes etc
these clothes will be sent to Hungary
the clothes will then be resold (it doesn't even explicitly say they will be resold in Hungary)
fund are raised for breast cancer (the key here being that they don't say how much or what percentage etc).

So, although the stickers give the impression that donating your old clothes will help research/treat/cure breast cancer, by actually reading it, you will see that they are not actually claiming anything of the sort!

Charity scam.

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