The East Cooper Home Store — Local services in Mount Pleasant

Wow. Just called to donate a linen fabric sofa and matching chair. I’m a first-time donor of furniture and asked about protocol for pick up. “Britney” answered the phone and immediately established an unfriendly tone that was offensive and unprofessional. She was robotic in her explanations and abrupt in her responses to my questions. Her rudeness made me reconsider my donation, so I simply said I would find another place to donate.

After hanging up I decided that this shouldn’t be overlooked. I’m a supporter of Habitat for Humanity and have never encountered this attitude from someone associated with Habitat. I called back to ask her name and asked to speak to her manager. After being on hold for a couple of minutes Britney told me the manager was gone for the day and wouldn’t be back until Monday. She said what she was telling me was their protocol. I tried to explain it wasn’t what she was saying - but how it was being said. At which point she hung up.

I am in public relations as a profession. I never raised my voice or argued with Britney. When I mentioned that I had been to the Habitat ReStore on John’s Island and my furniture was nice relative to what I had seen there (I live in MP but haven’t visited this store), Britney replied, “Well, that was John’s Island and THIS is Mt. Pleasant.” Wow. Not exactly reflective of the Habitat spirit.

Please don't let my experience deter donations. It’s just that some customer service training...

I just stopped by the Long Point Road store on my way home from work today to drop off a nice ceiling fan we had left over from a room remodel. As I set the box down on the drop off table at the back of the building and started to walk away, I hear someone screaming "Hey, you see that sign?! That one you just walked by?!" I looked back and realized he was screaming at me so I asked, "The 'place donations here' sign?" He screamed back as he was walking up to me, "No, the one you walked by that said no donations after 5pm!!!" After letting him know that I didn't realize it was after 5pm and I was just leaving a good condition, working ceiling fan, he "thanked" me for my donation. When I got back in my truck I looked at the time on my phone...5:03pm. Guess I was guilty of breaking a donation rule, however minor and unintentional.

I've found a few bargains here and everyone else has always been polite enough, but I won't be making any more donations here. No one's ever screamed at me across the parking lot at Goodwill. I definitely didn't feel like the donation was...

I hate to give a nonprofit a poor review but the manager at this Restore is not pleasant. We were dropping off some furniture that was used but appeared to us to be in resellable condition. In fact, we had customers offering to take several things the moment we pulled them off the truck. But there were a couple of pieces that had a small rips and (larger) stains and they have a strict no-rip policy. So, we started putting the few items they said they wouldn't​ take back on our truck and the manager came out and started yelling at us and telling us this wasn't the dump. I told her we thought they could be reused and that we weren't trying to dump at all and we were putting it back on the truck anyway but she berated us further. I won't be giving to this Habitat anymore. One of the volunteers apologized and told us the Kidney Foundation would take stuff without asking any questions (or yelling at us) so we took the stuff over there and, as promised, they took it all. So hopefully the furniture will make it to someone who needs it and not into a cranky Habitat...