Clothing scam companies

Clothing scam companies are companies/gangs that purport to be collecting second-hand clothes for charities or to be working for charitable causes, when they are in fact working for themselves, giving little if anything to charitable causes.

Clothing Scam Companies are a particular problem in the UK, where they rely on people's awareness of proper charities established practise of collecting used clothes for good causes.

The scam Companies cause major problems for established charities in terms of lost donations and making the public distrustful of all clothes collectors.

Advertising

A popular tactic of clothing scam companies is to leaflet a particular area and then move on before people become aware that the company is a clothing scam company. These leaflets will often illegally claim that they are either charities or working for established charities.

Becoming more frequent is a type of leafleting that is on the borders of breaking the law, they will state in small print that they are a commercial company, but will prominently place wording that implies they are, often quoting very vague charitable aims such as 'third world collection' etc.

Avoidance of Prosecution

These companies are very difficult to prosecute as frequently they are not in fact companies at all, quoting fictitious company names or someone else's company name, when in fact they are just a gang of people getting together to resell used-clothes.

Lots (if not most, possibly all) of clothing scam companies use casual labour, the people who deliver the leaflets and the people who collect the bags are not officially employed by the clothing scam company, the clothing scam company doesn't keep a record of the people they use that can be checked.

The companies utilize this system of employment, so they can simply deny all knowledge of what these people do, even when the company itself has put them up to it.

Operation

The company itself advertises for local agents, these agents are then advised how to advertise, imply you are a charity, imply you are doing charitable work, etc. or just lie. The agent then employs casual labour (cash-in-hand nothing on the books) to distribute the leaflets and pick up the bags.

All of this is word-of-mouth, nothing written down, nothing that can be used as evidence. The agent then lets the clothing scam company know when a collection is ready. The clothing scam company can deny all knowledge of this, even if it can be proved they do the pick-up they can still say that didn't know how they were collected.

A lot of these clothing scam companies also operate like major spammers on the internet. They set up the marketing in such a way that it encourages people to spam, but don't actually tell them to (no evidence) then denies all responsibility for what the spammers do.

Discerning a Clothing Scam Company

Just look at the charitable campaigns of any major company.

Are you left in any doubt about whether it's a charity or not ? No.

Is it spelled out exactly how much and under what conditions they donate money ? Yes.

If a clothing collection company doesn't provide the same answers, it's a clothing scam.

External links

• "Charity Commission homepage". 2007. http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/index.asp. Retrieved 2007-08-23. 
• "The Safer Giving Campaign - Charity Commission". 2007. http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/registeredcharities/sgc.asp. Retrieved 2007-08-23.