'That Must Be A Misprint': Influencer Goes Viral For Showcasing How Expensive Goodwill Has Become
A woman has gone viral for showing the absurdly high prices she found at her local Goodwill, a common sentiment that's been growing online in recent years.
In her post, she compared various items’ price tags to their full retail price, expressing how she felt it wasn’t enough of a difference given that the goods are secondhand.
The video received notable engagement, including many comments from people who had similar experiences at their own Goodwill locations or other thrifting stores.
Taylor, who goes by @queen.tay on Instagram, is a social media creator whose content focuses on saving money and budgeting. She’s had a few videos go viral on both Instagram and TikTok, and her latest viral moment came from her going to her local Goodwill and posting a video about her experience on June 28th.
In the store, she noticed that some items’ price tags shouldn’t be as expensive as they were. The video garnered 6.8 million views on Instagram, 3.8 million views on TikTok, and hundreds of thousands of likes and thousands of comments on both platforms in three months.
"Thought I'd just hit the jackpot at Goodwill," Taylor said at the beginning of her video, filming herself and then turning the camera around to show an air fryer. "Do you see this? It looks new on the inside," she said, opening the compartments.
"I couldn't find the price; I was looking all around it," she continued before listing all of the air fryer's functions. "I couldn't find the price though."
"I looked at the back," Taylor said before pausing to turn the air fryer around, showing the price sticker. "$79?" she added, sounding confused.
Taylor turned the camera around to show herself, repeating the price in the same confused tone. "That must be a misprint," she added. "I'm about to go look up how much these cost; hold on."
Filming herself walking through the store's aisles, Taylor showed a Google screenshot of the air fryer she found. "That's a Ninja Foodie. It took me two seconds to look it up; it's only $100," she stated, before pausing and saying, "$100 new?" while looking shocked.
"Then, I saw this, right?" she said, showing a fake strawberry plant on a strawberry-shaped vase. "Martha Stewart, strawberry, cute," she said, turning the object around.
"I think the mistake that was made is, the price tag was left on this," she continued, reaching inside and showing a Marshall's price tag that listed the item's price as $24.99.
"And I was like, okay, $25, maybe it will be like, $5 or $7," Taylor said, grabbing the object and turning it over to show the bottom of the vase, where the price sticker was. "$16?" she said, shocked, before putting it back where it was.
"'Cause at that point I'd rather just buy the Ninja Foodie new, and I'd probably get a warranty or something," Taylor said, while filming herself walking through the parking lot, accompanied by text that said, "For only $20 more, why would I not?"
"I was really interested in trying it," she continued, and stated that she only had a blender from Ninja.
"I don't know," Taylor said once she was in her car. "I was gonna go thrifting for three hours today," she continued. "That makes me just wanna go home; why would I even go out?" she concluded.
In the comments, people pointed out how the items on sale at Goodwill were donated to them, and said that Goodwill’s prices aren’t what they used to be, not seeing much of a difference between their products’ prices and the prices for unused versions of the same products at regular stores.
However, other commenters refuted one of her claims and pointed out that the air fryer that Taylor found went for much more than $100, and argued that $79 was a great price for it.
