St Vincent De Paul Thrift Store Pewaukee — Attraction in Village of Pewaukee

I’ve always loved shopping at St. Vincent de Paul and have given them positive reviews in the past especially this location. It used to be one of my favorite places—full of charm, great prices, and genuinely kind, helpful staff. That’s why it’s so disappointing to write this review today.

Over the past several months, I’ve noticed a sharp decline in the professionalism and friendliness of the staff. While I understand that businesses evolve and sometimes need to adjust pricing or staffing, the changes here have been hard to justify. Prices have increased to a point that feels out of touch with the mission of a thrift store. I understand the explanation that it’s to support staff wages, but the quality of service has unfortunately declined even as the number of employees seems to have grown.

Many of the newer employees are dismissive, unprofessional, and at times, outright rude. During a recent visit with my mother and I, we approached the express checkout line first. The cashier turned her back to us and began chatting with a group of coworkers. Despite clearly seeing us waiting, they ignored us entirely—no greeting, no acknowledgment, nothing. We waited several minutes while they carried on their conversation. This wasn’t an isolated incident. I’ve returned four or five more times to give the store the benefit of the doubt, but the same behaviors continue with many of the same staff members.

In the past, staff would carefully wrap fragile items without being asked. Now, if you request wrapping, you're handed the packing materials and told to do it yourself.

It’s disheartening to see such a well-loved and community-centered store lose the heart that made it special. I truly hope they reconsider both their pricing model and their customer service standards. I would love to be able to support this store again, but not at the expense of dignity, kindness,...

Watch employees very closely at the register as you make your purchase and ensure they place every item they charge you for in your bag. I believe they charged me for an item and then had it up again for sale. These cashiers make careless mistakes and are unaccountable. Their mistakes will cost you money. Management is unwilling to help. An old female manager literally said "I'm not going to help you" and refused to look up my purchase because it was "hard to do". I didnt appreciate her accusatory tone and unwillingness to help. A simple friendly "Im afraid theres nothing I can do, I'm really sorry about that" would have sufficed but the fact that there was a way to help she just didnt want to really stinks. They made me feel like by kindly inquiring about my purchase I was attempting to do something fraudulent when in my opinion their failure to ring people up properly is fraudulent and poor cash/merch handling. They fail to create a positive shopping experience that way and lose the trust of the customer. If you charge someone and dont put all the purchased items in the bag that's relative to stealing. The company takes the money while the customer doesn't take the merchandise. If a customer places items on the counter to be rang up properly then they should be! and failure to do so is unacceptable because it creates a poor shopping experience... receipt or no receipt. Those customer dont come back. It defeats the purpose of taking the time to shop and find those special items. I guess since it's just a thrift store they dont care about customer experience. I guess I'll consider my purchase a small donation. It's not about the money, as I'm sure they believe me to have none, but about the principle. After all I thought this was a...

Today while shopping here I observed something while testing an item at the testing station. There was a customer thay was walking around the electronics area for a while and I thought he needed to use the testing station but I then noticed thay he met an employee by the employees only door and the employee placed a reel to reel a receiver and a tape deck and all were vintage stereo equipment. The customer and employee talked for a while and then the customer was walking away I asked him how was he able to buy something like that as i did not see them on the shelf as for sale items. The customer told me that he had a connection at the store and continued to close the boxes and went straight to check out, he also told me that he had boxes full of parts only and that nothing in the boxes worked and I know that st vincent de paul doesnt sell parts . I continued to shop but when I check out I told the cashier of what I observed happen with the customer and the employee I then i asked to speak to the manager I then spoke with Mariyah who informed me that this should not be happening and that she would try to figure out what happened and why it happened and she stated that all products should be put out for sale for 3 hours before employees have a chance to purchase an item. This really bothers me as I travel from milwaukee to mabey find something exactly like items that this guy purchased from someone who works there that keeps items to themselves and call there "CONNECTIONS " to pick them up this is really bad business of you ask me . I will be calling back and will hopefully speak with...