Clothes donation scam?

[amdg]

So it was the end of 2007 and Mrs amdg and I were cleaning out the house and we finally get around to the wardrobe. Well, I have several pairs of trousers that no longer fit me due to the fact that I have been, ahem, fulfilling my true potential of late. I've heard it said that married life can do that to you.

Anyway, these were four or five pairs of quality trousers, about 100,000 yen total originally - fine linen, nice wool blends etc, with not a single fault other than that they seem to keep shrinking around the waist so I was loathe to throw them out with the garbage. Some of them, woollen ones in particular would have been great for the homeless guys during this winter, I thought. So I asked the missus to have a look on the net and see if there was any place that would accept them as donated goods.

She found an organization and so we sent them off by takkubin, for about 1800 yen. A bargain for the peace of mind given the alternative of just trashing them.

All was good.

Until yesterday when we got a letter from the organization ..... together with a bill for 22,400 yen for shipping. Shipping. They were sending them to Africa.
Africa. And were billing us for it.

Well, I can get behind sending them to Africa, but that was never really explained on their website (I'm not going to say who it was just yet). But even if they were sending my pants to Africa, it couldn't possibly cost that much unless they were sending them by express airmail - maybe fedex or something, right? Is there a great pants famine happening in Africa at the moment? Maybe an underwear uprising? a jodhpurs junta? (I would be proud if my pants managed to suppress and contain a violent subcontinental uprising)

I send fully working cars to Australia (occaisionaly) for 100,000 yen. These trousers fit into a box that was 40 cm x 40 cm x 15 cm.

I know this must be a scam and so I won't be paying shit, but they have a great brochure. Anyone ever have a similar experience?

[IkemenTommy]

5 bucks says that the clothes are probably sold to the second-hand "furugiya" shops at places like Shimokitazawa and they are making the dough off of the alleged shipping charges.

[Charles]

Well that's stupid. It's not like they are boxing up your clothes and sending them FedEx to Africa. This sort of secondhand clothes deal is usually done in bulk, tying up bales of clothes, sold wholesale by weight.

And there's part of the problem. I read an article that claimed that bales of donated clothing are devastating Africa's small business economy. Clothes are one of the few items that are manufactured locally, everywhere in the world. But when you've got cheap used clothes flooding into Africa, the people who used to sew clothes are now becoming ragpickers, there's more money in scavenging than in fabricating. So the small business/industrial base is eroded by the donations.

[TennoChinko]

Definitely don't pay. And, you'd be doing the rest of a service if you released the name of this so-called 'non-profit organization'.


http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9503E3DF1639F937A25750C0A960958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

March 14, 1996
[SIZE="6"]Clothes You Gave Away Are a Hot Item in Africa[/SIZE]
By JAMES C. MCKINLEY JR.

Martin Eshitemi had to bargain hard for his latest sartorial acquisition, haggling a good 15 minutes with the owner of a wooden stall overflowing with shirts. When it was over, the taxi-driver paid $1.50 for his prize: a used T-shirt with the N.F.L. logo on the sleeve and Budweiser emblazoned across the chest.

"I don't know what Budweiser means," Mr. Eshitemi, 36, acknowledged as he stuffed the shirt into a plastic bag. "I bought it because I like foreign designs. I can't get these kinds of T-shirts in the local shops. I'm looking for some jeans to go with it."

All along the crooked dirt streets of the Gikomba market here, hundreds of merchants were ripping open bales of clothes with knives, spilling shirts, pants, underwear, all manner of clothes, into rough-hewn kiosks. As hawkers sang out prices in Kiswahili, crowds of buyers surged around the stands with the latest shipments, jostling to get the first pick of sweaters, hats, jeans, shoes, slacks, even three-piece suits -- all second-hand.

This sprawling and muddy market in East Africa's biggest city is the final destination for tons of clothes that Americans and Europeans give away each year to charities like the Salvation Army and Goodwill. But by the time they reach the Gikomba stalls, they are anything but charitable gifts.

In fact, the second-hand clothes market is a growing, multi-million dollar industry here, a capitalist free-for-all where dozens of middlemen make a profit before the consumer finally wears the clothes. Last year, American companies exported more than $81.1 million worth of cast-off clothes to sub-Saharan Africa, making worn textiles one of the top eight exports to the continent, rivaling airplanes and wheat.

Most of the clothes come from charities in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, United States Commerce Department officials say. Only a fraction of the clothes many charities collect are re-sold or given away to the poor in their own region. The rest are sold to companies known as "ragpickers," which sort and export them, executives in the business said.

The charities say that selling the clothes for resale abroad is the best way to use some of the clothing donations they receive to raise funds and serve their clients.

"Americans throw away gobs of good clothes, and they get graded, fumigated, baled and exported," said Sally Miller, who heads the Africa desk at the Commerce Department. "For Africans, these are garments being sent over, not rags."

Every morning, tons of second-hand clothes, packed tightly in 100-pound bales, are trucked to Nairobi from the port of Mombasa. Known in East Africa as "mutumba," the bales of used garments fuel a booming industry that provides thousands of jobs, from truck drivers to hawkers to tailors working out of doors in the marketplace.

Markets like Gikomba can be found in almost every major city and in many small towns in Africa. Zaire alone imports $11 million worth of mutumba from the United States each year; Niger is second with $9 million. By some estimates, one-third of the 550 million people living in sub-Saharan Africa are walking around in cast-off clothing.

"There isn't a single market in Africa you can go to and not find second-hand clothing," said Joseph Wanjohi, the spokesman for the Kenya's Ministry of Commerce and Industry. "The original donor to a charity probably doesn't know that somewhere down the line, someone is making money."

The Kenyan Government attempted for years to ban or restrict the sale of imported cast-offs in order to protect its textile industry. A few years ago, President Daniel T. arap Moi even suggested in speeches that people could contract diseases by buying used clothes. But importers continued to smuggle the clothes into the country anyway, attracted by the seemingly inexhaustible demand.

"We have banned it and unbanned it," said one Kenyan official. "We have done everything we can, but we can't get rid of it. They are giving job opportunities to a lot of people in the low income group."

Last summer, the Government gave up trying to interdict the clothes and instead slapped a 85 cent-per-pound import duty on the shipments. The tariff has eroded the profits of some of the merchants in the market and persuaded some Mombasa importers to switch to other products, officials say, but it has hardly dampened the enthusiasm of consumers.

The reason for the used clothing's popularity is clear. With the gross national product per person hovering at $260 a year, most Kenyans cannot afford to buy new clothes sold in shops, where the prices are comparable to those in Europe or the United States. Even middle-class office workers, students and shop clerks come to the Gikomba market to outfit themselves, shoppers said.

A two-piece designer suit can be purchased in the market for $16, while even the cheapest domestic-made suits cost more than $100 in downtown Nairobi. A pair of wool slacks can be bought for $6. A plain T-shirt or a pair of cotton trousers can be picked up for as little as 50 cents or $1.

Beside the kiosk owners, the market is full of ordinary people who are buying clothes they hope to re-sell in the countryside, or even in the market itself. For instance, there are dozens of youths who purchase a couple of choice shirts each day, mend them and then resell them for just enough profit to get something to eat and start over again the next day.

"That's my routine," said Godfrey Karugu, 22, who was trying to find buyers for two dress shirts he had bought one recent morning for $3. "I take them to a tailor and I will try to sell them for 300 shillings" -- about $6.

"You really suffer a lot here," he said. "It's just for survival really."

Many of the shoppers in the market said they prefer the American clothes to local products, not just because the fabrics are more durable, but because American products have a certain cachet here.

So while tourists are paying hard currency for the traditional Kenyan clothes like kikois and kangas, Kenyas are scrapping together their money to buy T-shirts with logos like those of the Chicago Bulls or New York Knicks. Hats with sports logos are all the rage among young Africans, along with washed out jeans and T-shirts sporting beer advertisements.

"The main thing is that the clothes be from the U.S.," said Richard Njeru, 22, who was shopping in the market sporting a Chicago Bears hat and matching T-shirt. "Especially if they have the names of sports teams, you know -- N.F.L., N.H.L., N.B.A."

Not everyone is making a killing in the market. Since the Government started charging a tariff on the imports, small- and medium-sized merchants have found themselves squeezed. The major importers in Mombasa have raised the price of bales to cover the duty, but the wholesalers and retailers cannot pass the cost along to consumers without risking pricing themselves out of the market.

Some have complained that the higher duty means they can never hope to make enough to import the clothes themselves. The market is dominated by a few importers, who either have the money to pay the tariffs or, more often, to bribe customs officials and evade the tariff altogether.

Grace Shira, one of several women who own wholesaling operations in the market, says she is now making less than $4 a bale for some items. A 100-pound bale of top-grade T-shirts, for example, costs her about $76 to buy from an importer these days, but she can only get about $80 from the retailers in the market.

"People are getting tired because they are working for nothing," she said. "Sometimes we don't make anything. We have to sell them at a loss. If the Government agreed to lower the duty, we could import for ourselves."

[amdg]

I'll let you know the name of the organization once I get home and have a look.

Here is a draft letter I am thinking of sending.


Dear Sirs,

Thank you for your letter dated 20 January 2008, notifying us of the current delivery status of our clothing donation. We are very pleased that our pre-loved clothing will be able to assist those in need in Africa.

Regarding the shipping invoice that you have forwarded to us, we are pleased to advise that our accounts department is currently processing the invoice for remittance. However, as you are a new account, there will be a one-time account establishment fee of 57,000 Yen, in addition to our standard processing fee of 41,000 Yen.

Please make the total amount of 98,000 Yen payable to the bank account listed below. Once we receive your payment for this amount, we will immediately settle your shipping invoice.

Yours sincerely

amdg

[Iraira]

I'll let you know the name of the organization once I get home and have a look.

Here is a draft letter I am thinking of sending.


Dear Sirs,

Thank you for your letter dated 20 January 2008, notifying us of the current delivery status of our clothing donation. We are very pleased that our pre-loved clothing will be able to assist those in need in Africa.

Regarding the shipping invoice that you have forwarded to us, we are pleased to advise that our accounts department is currently processing the invoice for remittance. However, as you are a new account, there will be a one-time account establishment fee of 57,000 Yen, in addition to our standard processing fee of 41,000 Yen.

Please make the total amount of 98,000 Yen payable to the bank account listed below. Once we receive your payment for this amount, we will immediately settle your shipping invoice.

Yours sincerely

amdg

While I like your take on it, the best thing to do is to just leave them alone. If you initiate any form of contact with them, they will want to reestablish contact with you (if they are Yaks, then you don't want to spend time dealing with them).
Friend gave his old washing machine to one of those dudes who drives around collecting old appliances. Sure enough, 2 weeks later, he gets a 45,000 yen bill for "handling charges" He called the company (from a pay phone), claimed to be from some Arab country and was planning on leaving Japan "after settling some business", praised Allah several times, and said he would visit the collection company before leaving Japan. He never heard from them again.
Unless, they start hounding you or you can pull off a "I'm more dangerous that you could ever be" trip on them, or if you know where they live, leave them alone and they will leave you alone.