Shopping Goodwill Online

Goodwill is a business that resells donated merchandise. They are known for giving employment opportunities to disadvantaged folks. Goodwill is a secular nonprofit organization with no ties to any religious institutions. In addition to their 3200 brick and mortar stores, they also sell goods online at shopgoodwill.com and on ebay. In this post I want to talk specifically about their website “shopgoodwill.com”. The site has two ways to buy. Some items are “Buy it Now” and other items are sold in an auction style format, with different durations, depending on the category. My experience has been that people are bidding way too much for a donated, often untested item, with no return policy. At least when you visit one of their stores, you can inspect the item and get a discount on certain days of the week. In the online store there are no discounts and all you have to go on are some less than perfect photos. Trying to find an item to resell for a profit is very difficult. You may occasionally find an obscure item that has resale value, but shipping fees will cut into any profit you might get after reselling the item. Hot items like computers and video games are bid up beyond their actual resale value. You can easily find better deals on ebay with a return policy and a buyer rating system. The website does have some good search tools and its easy to track your bids and watched items. After you create a login, you can quickly get a shipping estimate based on your home address. There are over 100 Goodwill stores in the US and Canada that use this website to sell online. Shipping fees are higher the further the store is from you. To get the lowest shipping costs, you can search by store location. After you find an item that interests you, do your research to determine what the item is really worth. Then, put the item on your watch list. The best way to win an auction is to bid at the last minute. Don’t get caught up in a bidding war. Remember, this is used, untested, no return, no warranty stuff you are bidding on. Just wait a few days and they will list more of the same donated merchandise.