Margaretville Hospital Auxiliary Thrift Shop — Attraction in Town of Middletown

i'll start by saying i love thrifting and when i moved to andes several years ago, this was the best little shop nearby to visit. the thrift store raises money for the margaretville hospital, which is awesome, and they often run a 'fill-your-bag sale' in the back room, where i've scored some neat clothes. post- pandemic, however, lots of things have changed.

the thrift store is only open on wednesdays and saturdays for a handful of hours, which makes it harder to find a time to get there if you're working a 9-5. sometimes they'll be closed for weeks (like they are now through the end of Jan) and if you don't have a facebook, good luck figuring that out.

you can no longer just bring donations to the shop as needed, you have to call and arrange an appointment and the staff will determine what to take or not. personally that's a huge blocker for me as i'm clearing clothes and housewares out of my home constantly, so i need to bring donations up to Oneonta where you can just leave things in the back room of the salvation army during open hours.

prices seem to have increased, especially in the front room, and the place feels overly curated - personally i think the fun of thrifting is to dig through odds and ends to find something interesting and unique, but that's harder when the amount of stuff has been bottlenecked by their donation acceptance policy.

i'll still shop at this thrift store when i can get there, but it isn't my go-to anymore. hopefully if they can open a couple extra days a week and become more lenient with their donation policy, they can get it back to how it was operating...

I have been a patron of this thrift in various location in M’ville for over 15 years and I have LOVED my experiences - right up until it moved to its new location in the Bussey Building. The new store is pricier - the front room is for “nicer” clothes and things. That’s fine, but what’s not okay is the snobby, bordering on rude, behavior of those who work there. I just learned yesterday that they took away the dressing room. When I asked why, two women dismissively explained that people were using the area to rip them off - removing price tags from front room items and stuffing them in a bag for “bag sale” days. They went on to suggest that no thrift stores offered dressing rooms (ahem, Pine Hill, Tibet, Phoenecia...), and that at their bag sale prices people didn’t need to try things on. The whole attitude there is that customers are deceitful, and underserving of any explanations or niceties. The atmosphere in the old store was SO pleasant with great music, customers and workers alike talking and laughing. No more. I once questioned a $75 ticket on a model motorcycle from the front room. “Look it up on E-bay!” a worker snapped at me and then said, “And besides it’s for a good cause!” Again, this response to me asking is this price firm? No, thanks. Too many other good and fun...

If you want to be treated like a criminal when you are attempting to make a donation, this is the place for you. My husband made an appointment to drop off several items which included high quality antiques. There were a few Christmas knick-knacks in the lot (oh the horror!) which caused the lady working there to go into full berserker mode. Apparently this disqualifies you from making any donation at all. She erroneously claimed that he knowingly disregarded their "no Christmas item" policy despite it not being mentioned either when he scheduled the appointment or on the shop's voicemail as she indicated through shrieking tones. Our attempt to donate to a local business ended with them threatening to call the police for illegal dumping. Needless to say, don't waste your time with these guys unless you want to truly learn the meaning of the expression "no good deed goes...