Deseret Industries Thrift Store & Donation Center — Attraction in Provo

If business had an apostasy.....This is what it would look like.

I have never prayed so much for a group of management to be kind, non judgemental, and be able to feel the spirit.

Management has a grasp on what comes out onto the floor. Your donations can take several days at this location to make it on the floor. The turn around time for goods has increased since they reduced the amount of people processing items. The store itself has reduced the amount of product on the floor. Clothing racks have been reduced. The training program was created to help people learn skills that would increase their resume. The reduction of workers in the processing area from 2 small as is lines to 1 and from 4 electronics workers to 2 or 1 person does not help. There are 2 reasons in my opinion why this has happened. First, the store wanted to operate at a lower capacity to make managment look better because there is less production and less operation cost. Second, the store felt they would be more like other stores with similar output and production. The operation of production was modeled after other stores. This I believe is inferior when you have the largest building in the Deseret Industries and receive the most donations.

The results of this lack of production is causing a couple problems which are now rampant at this location. First, the prices have been increased higher than any other store in our valley. I would personally travel store to store comparing prices. This store is out of check. Provo has a higher povertry area than other cities but also has the college kids. I believe the reason for the higher prices is to captilize on the college kids.

Second, management has become gate keepers on what is coming out onto the floor. There is no urgency for the items to come out to the floor. There are managers who actually go out and scout the area before they bring out items onto the floor. They are looking for certain people that they don't want to get items. This is common practice at all locations.

This type of UnGodly attitude is cancerous. Really this is unacceptable. It has been out of check for sometime.

Management complains about management at this store. Why they don't have a way of sharing it with each other.

The best thing about this store is the security presence. I feel safe in that store when the security is there. They are top notch.

If you have taken the time to read this much I hope you also know there are amazing job coaches there as well. These are managers who don't let upper management control their kindness to the customers. Currently the stats are probably 30/70 with the good...

Edit (11/24/24): Thankfully, this location has since lowered their prices to a reasonable amount for a thrift store. I'm leaving the bulk of this review up though as a reminder of what you get for hiking prices.

Avoid this store at almost all costs: the prices at this location disgust me.

I've been going here a lot the last two years and it's only gotten worse and worse.

Most of the furniture is priced $20+ even for cracking, barely functional chairs and drawers. Anything made of wood is almost always $40+. Even crunchy office/gaming chairs go no lower than $25.

One time they had a bunch of old Nintendo Wiis in and I bought one at about $40, but when I came in a few days later they had upped the price to about $75. They saw that people wanted them and upped the price out of pure greed.

That was bad enough, but the icing on the cake for me was the other day when I saw a sewing machine labeled as $425. I know my sewing machines and I recognized that it was a surger, which are more expensive than regular machines. However, that is for a NEW surger. This is a surger at a THRIFT STORE sold as-is with no way of telling how many repairs/parts it will need to function (and sewing machine repairs can quickly double or triple $425).

Need I remind you: this is a NON-PROFIT thrift store. That receives these items FOR FREE. I've gone to nearby for-profit places with better prices than here.

As a member of the LDS church, I'm ashamed to be associated with this place. I've had a number of people ATTACK MY RELIGION over THIS behavior at THIS store. And this is because this ISN'T NEW. They've been doing this for years: something I can attest to.

Whoever is running this location needs to be replaced IMMEDIATELY. Put someone who can represent the LDS church properly and actually cares about...

(update, i have gone back here a couple times since and they seem alot nicer and they let people play the painos now and they dont seem to mind, still a bit more expensive than other di's, but its alright now)

dont get me wrong, i love to the di been going since i was a little kid but this di in particular (the provo di) was a horrible experience, go to a different one everything is more expensive than all the other di's i have gone to, plus i was playing the paino (not banging on it or anything) and a employee with gray hair came up to me and started YELLING at me that i can only play the piano if i was going to buy it, they had no sign or anything telling me i couldn't play the piano plus every di i have gone to the employees have actually encouraged me to play them, the piano wasn't expensive or anything either it was a cheap brandless spinet with broken keys, probably never going back to this location the guy could have at least not yelled im sure him yelling at me disturbed more people than me just playing the piano, not to mention this was the first time ANYONE has yelled at me or told to stop play the piano in public and even if i was going to buy it i got to only play it for probably 10 minutes, and thats definitely not enough time for me to know if i want to get a crew to move it into my house, disappointing,...