Costco crackdown: Membership scanners to be added at warehouse entrances

[pedro47]

Most stores, maybe all of them, refund back to the original form of payment and they don’t even need the physical credit card to do it. I pay everything with a credit card and I would guess that is by far the most common payment method. You give me hope that someday I might find a free credit on my statement.

Costco computer system can track almost every Costco purchase without the customer needing the original receipt.

 

[Panina]

One more thought...If you need appliances, when Costco has appliances sales their prices are much lower than everyone else. I recently purchased new appliances and even with the other major store having huge sales, I saved $1500 buying from Costco plus I had free delivery, installation and hall away.

 

[moonstone]

If you have a huge basket of items, with small items piled at the bottom, not making the customer remove all items them put them back after paying leads to a lot of non-scanned items.

A couple ahead of us last Thursday had a huge basketful of items. The woman put about 75% of them on the little desk area so her guy could scan them and place them on the other side. When the scanned items side got full the woman began putting scanned items back in the cart near the back away from the non-scanned items. A Costco employee asked her not to do that and wait until the whole cart was empty before loading it up again. The woman said the area for scanned items was too small to hold all their stuff so what was she to do? The employee pulled an empty cart over from nearby the snack area and said that's what these are for. She then helped load all the scanned items into the new cart leaving the guy to keep scanning the items left in the original cart.

DH & I do that in the Super Walmart when doing our big grocery shop when we arrive in FL. There are not enough self check out desks with large counter areas for scanned items. As he pulls stuff out of the cart and scans them, I bag the items and load up the 2nd cart. It works well!

~Diane

 

[Passepartout]

I don't go to Costco all that often, so this morning, I girded my loins, and after checking that I had my card, headed over there with a quick-strike list. Imagine my surprise when at the door, the nice young person just asked to see my card. I asked when the scanners would be installed and was told 'In a month or so'.

Some small comfort of living in a small-ish town.

 

[clifffaith]

The main thing they do is put the highlighter mark on the receipt. That's to keep someone from reentering the store, loading the cart with the same items, then presenting the receipt as proof of purchase.

Silly me. I thought the yellow line was to just show that your cart was checked, that the exit guy didn’t miss you. I guess I wouldn’t make a good shoplifter.

 

[Elan]

I don't go to Costco all that often, so this morning, I girded my loins, and after checking that I had my card, headed over there with a quick-strike list. Imagine my surprise when at the door, the nice young person just asked to see my card. I asked when the scanners would be installed and was told 'In a month or so'.

Some small comfort of living in a small-ish town.

I ventured into our Costco a couple days ago and the guy didn't even really look at my card. I guess we're late in getting the scanning tech also.

 

[Elan]

A couple ahead of us last Thursday had a huge basketful of items. The woman put about 75% of them on the little desk area so her guy could scan them and place them on the other side. When the scanned items side got full the woman began putting scanned items back in the cart near the back away from the non-scanned items. A Costco employee asked her not to do that and wait until the whole cart was empty before loading it up again. The woman said the area for scanned items was too small to hold all their stuff so what was she to do? The employee pulled an empty cart over from nearby the snack area and said that's what these are for. She then helped load all the scanned items into the new cart leaving the guy to keep scanning the items left in the original cart.

DH & I do that in the Super Walmart when doing our big grocery shop when we arrive in FL. There are not enough self check out desks with large counter areas for scanned items. As he pulls stuff out of the cart and scans them, I bag the items and load up the 2nd cart. It works well!

~Diane

The one time I used self check, I did the same thing. Started reloading my cart with scanned items before I had scanned everything. I can't remember exactly what happened, but the system didn't like it and an "assistant" came over immediately. You'd think they'd make the procedure more clear given the size of the tray relative to the sizes and quantities they sell.

 

[MikeyEye]

Simple enough: cancel your membership if you are not happy. The membership fee is prorated, and you will receive a refund for unused days. There are so many complaints about items going up in price. What about the prices that have been going down? It's your money; spend it where you are happy, but stop complaining. I'll continue to shop at Costco, the complainers won't be missed.

 

[DRH90277]

If you don't like Costco, just buy the stock and you'll be happy.

 

[Brett]

If you don't like Costco, just buy the stock and you'll be happy.

I suppose you could say the same thing about Amazon or Walmart or ... Kroger

Why Walmart Stock Jumped 29% in the First Half of 2024​

https://www.fool.com/investing/2024/07/15/why-walmart-stock-jumped-29-in-the-first-half-of-2/

 

[easyrider]

Do you take appointments? I'll drop it off while I pick up some Tamales from Los Hernández.

No and yum.

Bill

 

[easyrider]

I think that you mean 30 QUARTS (not gallons) of oil. I have never had a vehicle require more than 6 quarts per change. What are you driving? Over-the-road Peterbuilt diesels?

Whoopsie, my bad. The truck has a Cummings and uses 3 gallons of oil and the other four vehicles are 6 quarts each. So 36 quarts.

Bill

 

[easyrider]

Yea, it can be a pain getting things going when you don't drive them all the time, but OTOH when you've got one vehicle in the shop having a spare saves a lot on renting a car and I don't need to pay for car rental insurance in my car insurance.

And we did drop one car down and I'm not sure the scheduling between the 3 users is worth the savings - you'd have to ask them, but there's a lot of seeming stress between the 3 people. It can be hard enough scheduling an appointment between work and home tasks, forget about now mixing in 2 other peoples potential schedules! It can be done, but there's a lot of overhead.

Then again through inheritance we now have an extra pick-up truck, which is an expense and we really need to decide which one to keep I think...

I think we have Progresive Insurance. All of the vehicles have the mandatory liability and uninsured motorist. All of them have towing. Three have full comprehensive. It's just me and my wife driving these for the most part.

Some day one of my kids will inherit my 93 Dodge Ram with the Cummings diesel engine. I paid $10,000 for it back in 93. The odometer broke at 277,000 miles about 20 years ago. It is the going to the landfill truck. I've had offers of $10,000 for it. Many people want a first gen Cummings engine.

So what did you inherit for a truck ?

Bill

 

[oceanlane96]

No scanners at our store - but they do check your membership card at self check-out and look at your picture!

 

[easyrider]

One more thought...If you need appliances, when Costco has appliances sales their prices are much lower than everyone else. I recently purchased new appliances and even with the other major store having huge sales, I saved $1500 buying from Costco plus I had free delivery, installation and hall away.

We bought a stack washer dryer from Costco. I'm a bit fuzzy as to how this worked but it was on sale and we used our Costco business credit card which gave us something like 8 years of warranty.

Bill

 

[PigsDad]

One more thought...If you need appliances, when Costco has appliances sales their prices are much lower than everyone else. I recently purchased new appliances and even with the other major store having huge sales, I saved $1500 buying from Costco plus I had free delivery, installation and hall away.

Another bonus of buying appliances through Costco -- you will get a 2 year warranty instead of the standard 1 year, at least for the appliances I was looking at recently.

Kurt

 

[jp10558]

I think we have Progresive Insurance. All of the vehicles have the mandatory liability and uninsured motorist. All of them have towing. Three have full comprehensive. It's just me and my wife driving these for the most part.

Some day one of my kids will inherit my 93 Dodge Ram with the Cummings diesel engine. I paid $10,000 for it back in 93. The odometer broke at 277,000 miles about 20 years ago. It is the going to the landfill truck. I've had offers of $10,000 for it. Many people want a first gen Cummings engine.

So what did you inherit for a truck ?

Bill

A beat up 2019 GMC Sierra 1500.

 

[jp10558]

Another bonus of buying appliances through Costco -- you will get a 2 year warranty instead of the standard 1 year, at least for the appliances I was looking at recently.

Kurt

This assumes you want the appliances sold at Costco - I'm usually too picky for that unfortunately. A fridge, sure, but other than that my dishwasher, range and washer/dryer I had to order from a distributor and wait to come in.

 

[PigsDad]

This assumes you want the appliances sold at Costco - I'm usually too picky for that unfortunately. A fridge, sure, but other than that my dishwasher, range and washer/dryer I had to order from a distributor and wait to come in.

Yes, Costco carries a limited set of models. In our recent experience of our kitchen remodel, we ended up going with a regional appliance store chain due to this limitation, but it would have been nice to get the additional warranties if it had worked out for us. As for the price, it was about the same as the appliance store when we were looking at the same models.

Kurt

 

[Superchief]

Ohio is still a liquor control state. All hard liquor can only be purchased from a state run liquor agency. And since all purchases are from a state run liquor agency the liquor prices are near universal (and more expensive than almost all of our neighboring states!) no matter which agency you purchase from.

So no Costco's in Ohio have liquor at all. That said every time I am in Cincinnati i cross the river and hit the Costco in Erlanger, KY to stock up. The 1.75L bottles there are $10-$20 less per bottle than what you pay for the exact same bottle in Ohio.

I hate the 'fair trade' liquor laws in Ohio that prohibit any discount pricing on wines. They have to be the same price at all retailers. The only potential savings on wine at Costco is a 10% discount if you buy 6 or more bottles. The Kirkland branded wines are typically lower priced than comparable branded wines, but they have also increased in the past year. Their Malbec was a great value at $6.99, but it is now $8.99 and lower in quality.

I typically buy a few cases of wine in South Carolina on my drive to and from HHI. Prices in Costco are $2-5 lower per bottle. However, their selection has become more limited.

 

[easyrider]

A beat up 2019 GMC Sierra 1500.

Those are pretty nice. My sister in law has one.

Bill

 

[WaikikiFirst]

I hate the 'fair trade' liquor laws in Ohio that prohibit any discount pricing on wines.

this exists? Wow. I have to think that even with S&H, you could do well @ klwines.com and sign up for the "Insider Deals" wkly email.
I live in CA. I travel to the various wine AVAs fairly often. You can buy seriously good CA wines at prices WAY below what you would close to the vineyards, prices below the "wine club" prices with a wider selection and no need to join a club. They often have great deals on OR, WA, SPanish, Italian & French too.
The main problem is they newly won't let you buy a few bottles and wait months to buy a few more, then a couple more months til you have enough worth delivering or picking up. Now I think it is 30 or 60 days holding before they start charging a storage fee.
BUt if you want to buy 2 cases of wine and you know much about CA wines, you can do FAR worse than K&L

 

[Superchief]

We have the Costco Citicard and use that for our membership ID. Our picture and membership numbers are on it. I hope this card works for their new scanning system. I haven't used my actual membership card for several years.

 

[jwalk03]

We have the Costco Citicard and use that for our membership ID. Our picture and membership numbers are on it. I hope this card works for their new scanning system. I haven't used my actual membership card for several years.

the Citi Costco card has the same membership barcode on that back that a regular membership card does. So it certainly will work with the scanners.

 

[T_R_Oglodyte]

Simple enough: cancel your membership if you are not happy. The membership fee is prorated, and you will receive a refund for unused days. There are so many complaints about items going up in price. What about the prices that have been going down? It's your money; spend it where you are happy, but stop complaining. I'll continue to shop at Costco, the complainers won't be missed.

Yeah - to me this is like people buying airplane tickets. So many people buy the cheapest ticket offered, which simply means that they have purchased a seat on a flight. Then they complain when the airline exacts a charge for services that are baked into the higher priced fares they shunned.

I think that if it is important for flyers to have seats where the travelers are all seated together, or where they will have an aisle seat, or to use overhead bin space, then the flyers should be ready to pay for that privilege. Instead you often see complaints from people who, having bought the cheapest ticket possible (which means that they will be placed in whatever seats are left over after people who did purchase seat selection have made their choices), are now complaining because they haven't received seats that meet their needs. People want to have their cake and eat it too.

To me this is a bit like timeshare exchangers, who complain that, as exchangers they were assigned to the dregs of the inventory remaining after owners made their reservations, and their reservation requests were not honored by the resort. To my thinking, the first obligation of the resort is to accommodate owners who are making reservations. Exchangers should get what is left over after returning owners have made their selections.