Wings Resale Store

I’m a big fan of thrift stores and this place is great. I’ve gone three times and I always find cute stuff. They have daily deals, and the prices are roughly the same as Goodwill. They have a nice book selection. Check this place out! I also love that the money you spend there goes to women and children in need.

I’ve driven by this shop many, many times and finally decided to stop.
Pros:
Store is easy to find and access.
Good parking.
Sales floor isn’t crammed full of stuff so you’re able to move about easily.
Prices were reasonable.
Nice displays.
Cons:
A lot of the women’s clothing appeared to be dated.
Customer service was non-​existent; a man was covering the check-​out counter and he didn’t utter a word. No ‘hello’ or ‘thanks for stopping in!’ He wasn’t busy, so he could have mumbled something.
I wasn’t impressed at all… apparently other customers haven’t been either. I was the only customer in the shop.
I’d take Goodwill over this Wings location any day. Maybe the other area Wings shops are better.

I waited until I visited 3 times to write the review since a person can visit a place once and each experience can be different. Number one, doesn’t compare to the original store as far as merchandise and just the great resale vibe. It is a typical storefront, good parking… location is somewhat obscure… there are so many resale stores along Rand Rd… I think that is probably the only reason I would stop in, because I was shopping others on Rt. 12… there are still a few of the original volunteers there from close to 10 years now… the little lady who does the books is a gem and they are lucky to have her… but overall as far as merchandise lackluster. Yeah, it’s a good cause, but not enough to come back. With such a generous donor pool as they have I’m always perplexed never to find anything really special there… they used to put it in the stores… they aren’t now for some reason. On my trip before last I was actually excited to finally find a decent priced canvas black and white COACH bag. It was stuffed with a lot of tissue so it sat upright in the case… I purchased it for 20 dollars, not bad. I got it home, pulled the paper out, it was all stained with ink and the threads were frayed by the zipper… which led me to take a closer look… turns out it was a knock-​off. My fault, have to take longer to check these things out from now on… in all my haste, didn’t scrutinize it… but was charged 20.00 RESALE for a fake. They don’t take returns… I threw it out… I didn’t want to re-​donate something like that. They had a lot of duplicate newer items, something like they got a bunch of excess inventory from one store. They had a whole rack of new silver metallic sweaters all marked at around 18.00 RESALE… they had at least 20 of these sweaters that had been donated at no cost…18.00? Ridiculous… also a bunch of Vera Bradley off season you could get newer and better at Vera Bradley for better prices… anyway…won’t be shopping there any longer.

It’s «A-​OK». I think the place has gone downhill a bit since they moved out of Palatine. There was not much art, but kind of a lot of furniture when I visited this store.
Another reviewer mentioned something about the store being geared toward women and it did seem that way to me. A lot of the clothes look like they are for a more «mature» person than myself as well.
This stores strength is in the condition of the items in general and in handbags in particular. It is hard to find black handbags in very good condition and this place had a few. At $ 6.99 each they were a bit more than comparable stores (e.g., Community Thrift and Savers), but they were black and in very good shape. They had an entire display of Vera Bradley bags, so if that’s your thing, you could go wild here.
I bought two handbags here, so I am rating it as «A-​OK», overall it’s worth a quick look, but don’t expect the selection of Community Threads or Savers. May be more of a «must see» for furniture, but I did not check the price range.

Wings Palatine has moved out of my typical shopping run area, but forget about that — WHO in the world chose this sh*tty Rand Rand Arlington Heights location?
Because Wing’s HQ is ALSO in a sh*tty location in Arlington Heights?
How’s THAT working for U?
Ask your customers next time, but then your longtime Palatine customers feel like you didn’t really care about us anyway. (ok, I’m done, almost).
I was getting the message in the last Schaumburg and Palatine move that they weren’t really catering to the guys, but honestly I think they are missing the part where AFTER we rummaged through the electronics, hardware and music we would often buy something for the ladies.
And I honestly felt like I was part of the Wings good cause by donating good resale, and then shopping and finding some bargains for me.
NO bargains now. SHOCKing resale «boutique» prices for donated products really and that offends me on the goods I have donated. They now have 2.99, 3.99, 4.99 stickers on any old book without a ripped cover that would sell for a $ 1 on a HalfPrice Books sales cart. On my recent visit Wings did not compare favorably at all with Lucille’s much larger and better lit store and more reasonable prices, as well as Community Thread’s enormous location with even better prices.
Wings is still a fantastic organization with an important mission.
Get it together.
Everything changes. RIP.