Costco has a devoted following, and with good reason. But you
don't want your next trip to Costco to be ruined by one of these myths,
do you? Buckle up and get your notepad ready! It’s mythbusters time!
Costco's checkout procedure can be overwhelming when you have several
heavy items packed into your cart, and a common claim is you shouldn’t take anything
out of the cart for the cashier. However, according to Insider, this is mostly a myth.
Just like you would at any regular grocery store, you should take items out and place
them on the belt. The one exception is anything large or very heavy. That,
to both you and your cashier’s relief, can stay in the cart.
Unfortunately, this policy isn’t always enforced, which, as one Costco worker explains,
makes work way more difficult for cashiers when customers won't place items on the belt.
Costco's own customer service website calls its return policy a "risk-free 100% satisfaction
guarantee," and the store is notorious for accepting some very odd returns. A
thread on Reddit went into detail on just how weird some of Costco’s returns were.
"I didn’t really know we carried these."
"These? You guys got everything in here!"
The details included people returning a mattress with urine stains,
a 10-year-old boombox, and even a 13-year-old frozen fish. While these are just anecdotes,
there are enough to show that Costco's return policy is extremely generous. In practice,
it certainly looks like you can return anything and everything.
However, Costco itself is clear that there are some items that must be returned sooner
than others, and some items that can't even be returned at all. For example,
most electronics returns must be received within 90 days of the date the customer originally
received the item. Diamonds over 1 carat can be returned if the customer provides the gemology
paperwork for the diamond, and the item will go through an additional check by a gemologist.
As for items that can't be returned at all: cigarettes and alcohol where prohibited by law,
and custom products made to order for the customer. For example, in California,
you typically can't return alcohol unless it was deemed unfit for consumption, is spoiled,
or was not supposed to be purchased according to Total Wine. During the COVID pandemic, the laws
in the state were relaxed, but the prohibitions on alcohol returns have since been reinstated.
Showing your receipt to someone on the way out of a store isn't unusual. Most stores practice
this policy to keep an eye out for customers walking out with products that aren't on their
receipt. Costco uses their "exit greeters" a little differently than other stores, though.
According to Costco's customer service site, those employees are there and
marking your receipts to ensure that you were charged properly and not overcharged.
The explanation also mentions that it's a way to maintain a quote, "accuracy in
inventory control," which is vague enough to be interpreted as looking for shoplifting.
However, the general manager of a San Francisco Costco location told SFGate
that shoplifting wasn't really a problem. As the article mentions,
it's kind of hard to sneak a 75-inch TV out of the store.
A thread on Reddit also confirmed that while the exit greeters occasionally catch items
that weren't paid for, a lot of the checks are to make sure the prices are correct and that you
have everything that you paid for. As one Redditor wrote, the receipt-checkers also look for things
like gift cards or anything that you have to pick up at a location other than the cashier's lane.
Keep in mind that, according to Costco Insider, if you buy a membership at Costco,
you're agreeing to unconditional consent regarding searches. Unfortunately,
people unaware of this agreement have refused to show receipts at the door,
and that does allow Costco to revoke your membership according to Oregon Live.
"That is your receipt for your husband! Thank you!"
This used to be somewhat true, but as of 2020, unfortunately, it's become a Costco myth. You
used to be able to eat at Costco food courts regardless of whether you had a membership or not,
something that was especially easy to do when the food court was located outside.
However, Costco started requiring proof of membership to eat at any of their food courts,
inside or out, in March 2020. The Instagram account @CostcoDeals first broke the news
in February 2020 with a picture of a sign warning customers that they
would need a membership to eat at the food court starting on March 16, 2020.
Fox Business News confirmed this with Costco and was told by their customer
service department that the company already required membership to eat at the food court;
they just hadn't enforced it because so many courts were outside.
Both Fox Business News and the Los Angeles Times reported mixed reactions from Costco
members on social media. Responses ranged from sadness that a low-cost source of food was being
taken away from non-members to glee at the anticipated shorter lines. The Los Angeles
Times pointed out that non-members would still be able to purchase alcohol and medications.
Costco's non-grocery departments often allow non-members to make use of those services,
making it seem like anything outside the food areas is open to anyone. Many of
the services that non-members can access are medical or health-related, including getting
prescriptions filled and, before the COVID-19 pandemic, attending free health screenings.
"Sir! I can fix those glasses."
"You can? Well here, fix those suckers!"
If you're a non-member, you can get your eyes checked by an optometrist at a Costco location,
but the one service you can't access without a membership is buying glasses and contacts.
For that, you need to be a member. You can't even purchase contacts through the
company's website without a membership, even though the company normally lets
non-members use their online store with a surcharge tacked onto those purchases.
So, why the difference if you can purchase other things like prescriptions without a
membership? According to All About Vision, the optometrists you see are independent,
rather than Costco employees. You pay them and not Costco for the exam,
so you don't need a membership. However, Costco owns the optical centers, making
the frames and lenses Costco products that require a membership for purchase.
It is true that if a price tag has an asterisk,
the product is on its way out. But this Costco secret is often discussed as if the
appearance of an asterisk alone is the final warning, and that's not exactly the case.
The asterisk indicates the product is in one of two stages of being discontinued. So how do you
really tell if an item is on its way out? Check the price. It's the price of the item that truly
shows if the product is about to leave stores. In an Instagram reel, Las Vegas real estate
agent Greg Chin shows that the last digit of the price is the clue.
"You whanna know a secret about Costco?"
He says that if the price tag has an asterisk and ends with an 8, the product is in the first
markdown stage. A tag with an asterisk and a price ending with a 7 means the product is at
its lowest price, and that Costco is taking a loss just to move the product off its shelves.
It's a good idea to keep an eye on how the pricing works even if you think you know all the secrets,
though. The Sun says that a Costco spokesperson not only previously confirmed that pricing is
meant to move inventory along, but they also said that the whole process can change over time. When
asked for further clarification, the spokesperson declined to give the Sun more information.
When you buy in bulk, you typically pay more up front for products that end up
costing less per unit than they would if you bought them in smaller quantities. Over time,
you save money that way because you spend less per unit. While that’s true, it’s not always
helpful for everyone. If individual shoppers aren’t splitting the bulk buys with others or
using everything they buy, then this normally money-saving tactic is a real loser and a myth.
When you buy too much of an item and can't use it all, you lose the money you spent on
the items you have to discard. Then you have to buy more later on, and the cycle repeats itself.
CNBC says to avoid buying perishable foods at Costco for this reason, and also because some
of these foods are available for similar prices at grocery stores. One example CNBC uses is eggs,
which are often available for maybe one cent more at a grocery store in more reasonable quantities.
If you think you can avoid this problem by buying only shelf-stable goods,
think again. Sapling says buying items like cereal in bulk can lead
to waste because the amount of cereal is so great, it could go stale before you can
finish it. That makes it harder to make up for the price of the membership, too.
If you've ever made a meal out of the free food samples at Costco,
the idea of not being able to get unlimited free samples
doesn’t sound right, does it? Sorry to burst your bubble, but it’s true.
While the vendors handing out samples are allowed to give out as many free samples as
customers want and according to CBS News, Costco encourages it,
there's one group of people who can't get any samples for a very smart reason.
Children who are not tall enough to see the foods being handed out are not allowed to get samples
on their own. The reason, according to a former sample vendor who spoke with Mental Floss, is
that the people working the sample stations don't want to aggravate food allergies or sensitivities.
Jim, the former vendor, said the rule is not official, but the risk is a real concern. He
noted that if the child is unaccompanied but can see the samples, they'll let the child take them,
because most kids with food restrictions are aware of what they can't have.
If a kid is shorter and can't see what's on the table, the chances that the child
is too young to understand what they're eating are greater. He said they use the
height of the child to decide, because it's difficult to judge the age of many children.
This is another one of those myths that is based on a true event:
the idea that Costco employees hide products so that customers have to search through the
store to find them. The key word here is "hide." According to Paige Saunders, an
employee at a Canadian Costco location, products really are moved around, but they're not hidden.
"This is kinda half true, kinda not true?"
She discussed the problem in a YouTube video posted in 2020,
saying the company has merchandising teams that go
into Costco locations overnight and move products around as a corporate strategy.
So, the products are in plain sight, just in a different part of the store. Saunders expressed
frustration at the policy because the teams don't warn the retail employees ahead of time,
so even the employees have trouble finding items they saw the day before.
Costco puts a less-frustrated spin on the practice, calling it a "treasure
hunt atmosphere." In the company's eyes, it's a way for customers to discover new
products each time they come to the warehouse to shop, similar to how regular grocery stores
rearrange their entire layout to get people to spot new products as they wander the aisles.
Snopes, a fact-checking website, investigated claims in March 2022 that Costco would stop
selling their beloved rotisserie chickens. The culprit? A fake advertisement. The advert claimed
Costco would stop selling 24 specific items with the picture of Costco’s rotisserie chickens.
When clicked on, the ad led to an article claiming that Costco would stop selling
either 24 or 21 items, with no mention of the rotisserie chickens in the picture in the
ad. Snopes was unable to find anything about Costco discontinuing their chickens because,
as the website noted, the company never made the claim to begin with.
The rotisserie chickens obviously aren't sold online,
but you can bet that if the company did stop selling the rotisserie chickens,
the news would be everywhere, not in just one online advertisement.
Forbes did report in April 2022 that Costco's chicken
operations in Nebraska were hit by bird flu and thus at risk. However,
the article noted that losses were not that big, and so far, there have been no other hints that
anything might disrupt the company's ability to continue selling the chickens.
This is probably one of the most widespread myths about Costco. The $1.50 hot dog and
drink combo is not increasing in price, and if former Costco CEO and founder Jim
Sinegal has anything to say about it — which he has — you will not see this price go up.
What started this outcry, according to Verify This,
was a viral tweet from a Twitter account calling itself Breaking911 but actually
using the handle @JohnWRichKid. In other words, it wasn’t the actual Breaking911 news account.
However, that didn't stop several verified Twitter
accounts from retweeting the "news." Even the House GOP Twitter account quote-tweeted
it and blamed “Bidenflation” for the beloved hot dog combo’s price raise.
However, the rumor is just a rumor. The $1.50 hot dog deal is not increasing in price, and as
Costco CEO Craig Jelinek told 425Business in 2018, the cost will never go up lest Sinegal kill him.
As the story goes, Jelinek told Sinegal that the low price of the combo was not sustainable,
and Sinegal responded with an order to Jelinek to figure out a way to
not raise the price. This is when, according to Jelinek, Sinegal said:
"If you raise the effing hot dog, I will kill you."
"Can anybody tell me what’s wrong with this picture?"
Jelinek noted that the $1.50 price is so closely linked to Costco that it's
become a mindset. His solution was to have Costco build its own hot dog processing plant
and to use those hot dogs for the combo instead of the previous non-house brand.