My value village (Bloor Lansdowne) has closed and it is a major disruption to my life. I've depended on it for so much since I moved to toronto. They opened one a bit west to replace but it sucks. Only women's clothes/shoes NO men's. NO housewares except few textiles. NO furniture. NO electronics. NO books. NO multimedia. And NO human cashiers, just self scanners which I (yes pointlessly) boycott anyway. 

Last weekend I set up a router as a WAP with openWRT. It was $10 at VV last year. So I can have WiFi in my whole unit. Where else can I get a $10 open source router? And sometimes you could get a good deal on power bars. $5-12 vs $20-80 retail. I also got a display there for $15 or so. I think that's the most I ever paid for a display. The others I found on the curb or they otherwise floated into my life. 

Recently when someone was looking for a specific older modem I would have suggested VV because they always had previous gen modems. But I  don't know any other locations that have as much electronics as my dearly departed Bloor & Lansdowne (RIP).

I wonder where all that stuff is being redirected to. International markets? "Recycling"?

But since COVID they really restricted their return policy. On things like electronics especially. You  used to be able to take things home and test them out. It's good we were all kept safe from getting COVID from a defective table lamp. If were looking for something that is mission critical and/or a higher price than you are willing to burn, you'd have to bring whatever would be needed to test. I brought batteries when I wanted a wall clock.

Hard to go to the Sal. They are such a nasty organization. Decade upon decade of bad behaviors. Sure there are humans but much of the time they are forced unpaid labor. Is there a word for that? 

Hard to believe in 2025 the thrift shop concept is being destroyed. Shouldn't it be promulgated by all the deprivation in context of consumer excess? I do not understand the world.

All the above said, dollarama is a different solution to a different need. 

By the way I have bought 1 cheap old PC and a couple peripherals from www.freegeektoronto.org . I'd give them a rec for whatever it is worth. 

On April 8, 2025 6:13:58 PM EDT, Kevin Cozens via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
On 2025-04-07 23:12, William Park via talk wrote:
I always go to Dollarama before I go to Canadian Tire.  I swear, you can find pretty good deals at Dollarama, even better than Value Village.

Value Village was better before it was sold or bought out. I'm now sure which it was. The current owners are treating like a business where they are out to make money. I once bought a 15" monitor from them for around $15 or $20. Don't remember which. Monitor works great and sits on a shelf that is beside my workroom table and is connected to a Raspberry Pi. I no longer support VV. It is actually easier for me to get to one of two Dollarama stores which are each a short walk from home.