As thrift store shopping becomes more popular, you might think that the lack of nice finds at your local Goodwill has something to do with how early you go or even what day of the week you go.
According to a rumored ex-employee of the retailer, there’s another reason you could not find a reasonably priced Gucci bag or two during your shopping trip.
In a video, the previous employee described a mechanism that Goodwill allegedly had in place for more valuable gifts.
He recalled: “Five or six years ago, I used to work for Goodwill and I was one of their Drive Thru Ambassadors.”
“A Drive-Thru Ambassador is in charge of taking in donations that get donated from the cars and pricing them so they could be put out on the floor.”
“So you gotta know what things are worth. We were told that if we ever came across anything that we thought was valuable, to take it straight to the manager so it could be sold to our e-commerce store.”
The ex-employee detailed the purpose of the e-commerce store. They said that any valuable goods were not put out on the floor for buyers to buy.
They were instead shipped to Goodwill’s headquarters to be auctioned online on Goodwill’s equivalent of eBay.
Goodwill, it appears, has a website similar to eBay where they sell and auction off valued stuff.
As a result, the high-value items identified by the Drive-Thru Ambassadors were sold on the internet.
“A lot of times nowadays you can’t find really good items at Goodwill because they’re all being sent off,” he said.
Watch the video below to learn more.