For some people, donations are just another way to throw away things that you no longer want.
Which, BTW, is completely fine if the items are still in good condition. But clearly unusable mattresses infested with bedbugs? Not fine at all.
Hotel Donated Mattresses Infested with Bedbugs
The local charity group Reach Out shared on their Facebook on 3 June about their experience with a local hotel.
The group had received a WhatsApp message from a hotel, stating that they wanted to donate 24 of their mattresses and divans.
As seen in the screenshot below, the hotel told the charity that the mattresses were in very good condition.
The charity then had to pay to cover the moving and rental costs for a warehouse to store these donated mattresses. Take note that they aren’t a full-time charity organisation, so they don’t have staff or a location to store donated goods.
Thrilled and excited to make arrangements to deliver these mattresses to the underprivileged, the volunteers eagerly collected the items. To their disappointment, when they inspected the mattresses, they were found to be severely infested with bedbugs and termites.
FYI, watch this video to learn more about bedbugs:
Needless to say, those mattresses were definitely not in good condition at all.
Don’t Treat Charities like Trash Removal Services
The charity expressed how disappointed they were to be treated like a trash removal services, especially as they had to fork out money to collect what ended up to be unusable items.
“What broke our hearts a bit more was that this was a corporate donor who should know better,” they added in the post.
Fortunately, these kinds of donations are not common, and many do donate out of genuine goodwill. However, these kinds of donations do take up precious resources that could have been used to provide more help to the community.
If you’re planning on donating anything to charity in the future, please make sure that the items are of decent quality and are still usable. Otherwise, it is best not to donate the items just for them to be thrown away.
You can read the full Facebook post here.
Featured Image: Facebook (Reach Out)