Costco will not allow returns on high-demand items like toilet paper, water
today.com
today.com
* Stock most items overnight so that if you absolutely need something you can prioritize getting there before they open and likely getting it rather than having to come back over and over (or go to multiple other stores), which limits exposure.
* Set aside additional hours before the general opening for seniors.
* Limit high-demand items. This does have some perverse ramifications for a few items. For instance, we wanted about 4 dozen eggs to get us through a few weeks. Unfortunately the smaller packs were limited to 1 so we ended up having to buy 5 dozen.
* Flood the market with in-demand items to create confidence. I think this is a Seattle thing, but last week I started seeing social mediate posts showing literal aisles composed of nothing but toilet paper. Many people (myself included to some extent) are just just buying because they don't want to get caught without TP when they run out, but if they feel that it's likely it will be in stock they won't rush out to buy some immediately.
At this point, given how poorly I've seen people respect social distancing, I'm beginning to question its cost to benefit ratio. We are not as disciplined as many other countries.
But, hey, more dollars, right?
And remember, 7% of confirmed cases there have already died, and that’s over 1 in 3 of all deaths reported so far.
> The actual Italian death rate, they say, is probably far lower than what the government numbers suggest. The unofficial estimates assume the actual number of people infected with the virus — people who have not yet been tested — is massive. In other words, several hundred thousand people in Italy may be carrying the virus.
> “It’s a huge iceberg,” said Fabrizio Pregliasco, a virologist at the University of Milan. “We are only looking at those who are sick.”
> Though Italian leaders touted widespread testing at the beginning of the outbreak, the government has applied tight guidelines for who can be given swabs. Health officials have been testing those who have severe symptoms and are in need of obvious medical care.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/why-is-coronavir...
Still, if it’s 3% like everywhere else, that’s horrible enough that the point of the person who said 7% still stands, IMO.
A society that has the willingness to abide by voluntary distancing measures wouldn't need it, but the US may not be such a society.
So unlike the Chinese, who shutter themselves obediently and trustingly at the whim of their government.
Maybe I'm misremembering?
People could still get out if they really needed to, but they had to go through the main entrance where they were screening people for symptoms.
These actions can do a lot to alleviate panic not only at Costco, but other retailers too.
Gee, I wonder what effect that will have?
The reality is that one or two weeks from now at most most idiots will have toilet paper for months and you'll be able to buy normally again.
Goods considered non essential, however, might be scarce since those shops will close as the workers are told to stay home. For example, I'm doing a lot of studying and I'm out of sheets of paper. Office supplies stores are closed, and buying that on Amazon feels like overkill and a little socially irresponsible, so I have to make do without them.
Check your house for random silly stuff you might miss if you're stuck at home.
When I go to the supermarkets the missing things are snack foods, beer, ice cream, etc. People have a lot of time to kill and those items arent replenished as much since they're considered non essential.
It's a little harder to ration your bowel movements. It can be done, but it's a lot less beneficial than forced fasting.
Between plumbing and installation alone it's a very expensive solution to what should (under normal circumstances) be a simple purchase.
It's connecting two screw fittings, and then installing toilet seat (two bolts + nuts). If it's a particularly fancy model you may have to plug it in.
This is about as complicated as replacing a furnace air filter, and takes about as long. If you get someone to do it for you, you're paying for them to drive to your house, not the actual time installing it (which is trivial).
A cold water only bidet would save on bathroom tissue and coffee...
But most bidets that do warm water do not use a hot supply, because it takes too long to heat up. Most use a tank or tankless in the seat, and just need a normal 120v plug.
You shutoff your water, disconnect the toilet fill line, add the bidet connection in-between with a T connection, and hook your toilet back up. They share the same supply line.
And it's very cold water depending on your geographic region and time of the year. Not sure I'd want to try it in Alberta during the winter.
However: a smaller independent market has almost always had some toilet paper, and according to our newspapers that's because their chain introduced a rule of checking ID at purchase to confirm you live in the same suburb, if they didn't already recognise you as a regular customer. I assume you've tried all options, but wanted to mention that if you've not considered smaller local indie retailers. Good luck!
They seem to be working lock-step with public health officials. Went there today and they had a LOT of people on hand to manage the entry and checkout lines, and to enforce social distancing.
Eggs don't go bad or spoil after a certain date. They dry up over time, but not in a few weeks.
I can't imagine anyone being in a situation where they need 4 dozen eggs for a few weeks, but none after that.
I'm almost grateful for it; we're hitting peak America, peak capitalism, peak Westernism...
Stop the attention economy and you stop this nonsense.
But also, put these pressures on stores and supply chains and they'll learn to be more elastic which is _necessary_. If demand for a good skyrockets and everybody wants a good inventory at home, it shouldn't be a social evil to go stock up on a month or two of TP, on surgical masks for personal safety, on whatever.
We should have all been able to buy as many surgical masks as we wanted whenever we wanted, we would all be safer if that had been possible.
Shorten lead times and have faster ability to adjust capacity and _you make more money_.
The only peak I hope we're hitting is peak idiocy, where a large portion of people (actually the vast majority of people) choose to elect leaders based on emotional appeal to a chosen sect instead of using reason and valuing real competence.
The peaks I fear we're hitting are peak personal freedom, peak democracy, and peak privacy.
There is a cost, in lives, in not being able to do what China has done to limit and nearly stop the outbreak (once they decided it couldn't be blustered away). I hope we're able, willing, and eager to pay that cost and figure out when it is worth it and when it is not.
The word you're looking for is arbitrageur. Or scalper. Grifter implies some thing dishonest. Arbitrageurs are very up-front with what they're doing, and you get exactly why you're paying for.
By buying in bulk to arbitrage you're acting against the interests of Costco and their customers, and hoping you fly under the radar.
That's debatable. Plenty of small businesses buy Costco stuff to resell, or for business use. They even have business memberships! Unless they have explicit no resell notices (although even then it's unclear what legal force they have), I wouldn't say it's dishonest.
It was poorly worded, but if corporate had a button they could press to stop new entrants buying a bunch in hopes of selling online at high markup, I believe they would.
Trouble is, there's no way to filter them out, and any attempt may in itself signal a lack of faith in the system and result in more panic buying.
Except that the other market administratively blocked them from selling. Then the first market wouldn't reverse the purchase, leaving the would-be arbitrageurs holding the bag.
The others who carried inventory for a nontrivial period of time were market makers, and carried market maker risk. Market maker risk is the bid-ask moving against you when you are carrying inventory. These guys were basically carrying unhedged physical long positions in toilet paper thinking they had a free option to unwind at par, but Costco changed the game on them.
Not all of these guys were arbing.
National emergency price-gouger
I can’t think of a worse product to do this with. The daily newspaper, maybe.
If this really is scammers getting burned, they’re not getting my sympathy (the budget of sympathy-for-the-undeserving is mostly pledged anyway, for the people who insisted on going to Church this Sunday)
Search "17000 bottles of hand sanitizer". First article that came up for me that wasn't paywalled,
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/03/16/new-yo...
But I suppose if you're a hoarder or reseller then you'd probably return whatever you don't need/sell. So good move.
This policy pushes back on that mindset.
IIRC, lots of consumer contracts contain language saying the terms are subject to change at any time with little or no notice.
Maybe so, but the "notice" probably could be something that's practically meaningless, like updating the terms on their website, or something.
Alternatively, their return policy may have language forbidding some kind of ill-defined "abuse" of the policy, which can be interpreted to forbid anything they'd want to forbid.
In any case, Costco has lawyers that unilaterally write this stuff in its favor, so I highly doubt it violated any of its own contracts.
IANAL, but that's breach of contract. To amend the contract, both parties have to assent. That's why you get those "terms of service" updates that always mention, "and if you don't like the new terms, here's how to delete your account," since your usage of the service constitutes assent to the terms.
Purchasing a good is different, it's more bilateral because both parties are still responsible after the initial exchange for delivering on their promises. So if your check bounces, you still owe them, and if the goods are junk, they still owe you.
The tricky part here is figuring out what the contract is. When you purchase goods in the US, the framework of the contract you're engaging in is laid out by the Uniform Commercial Code, if you want to look that up.
Costco has a satisfaction guarantee[1] and they will refund your money but there's an asterisk: "*Limitations apply. See the membership counter or Costco.com for details."
I couldn't find anything more on their site.
A "guarantee" has a legal meaning[2]:
> 4) a promise to make a product good if it has some defect.
So I think it means a customer would be required to explain why he's unsatisfied with the goods, in what way they're deficient.
That someone bought too much TP doesn't make it deficient.
[1]: https://customerservice.costco.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1...
[2]: https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/guarantee
Yes, it is. Until now, absolutely nobody would care if you wanted to buy TP by the pallet, and Costco would be happy to let you return it if you wanted to.
> there will be more instances of hoarding in these communities in the future.
By all means make a new rule and communicate it for the future. I only object to retroactively punishing previously-allowed behavior.
Judging by the balance of comments, and the comment I’m replying to approaching #DDD, people are having a surprisingly hard time with it.
Does it only apply to return policy? Or could CostCo also, say, change the price retroactively?
Does it work the other way around? Say I order from Amazon. Then, I notice many people don’t like them. Labor safety, no paid sick leave, etc. Can I refuse to pay? I’ll tell them why and they can better themselves.
Next time this happens, the memory will help deter the hoarders and profiteers.
- Bag of potatoes almost completely empty. The guy had a few potatoes that were sprouting roots. Costco refunded the cost of the entire bag.
- Cart full of sushi platters. Obviously somebody bought it for a party and didn't finish it. Again Costco refunded.
That's a happy customer, damn.
Incremental levels of management get involved and sometimes a lawyer. By that point everybody loses. But that's enough for an idiot customer. All on top of lost future sales.
Buying back their unsaleable junk is quick. Costco tracks customers so it's fairly easy for them to track abuse and find a cut off point.
Nordstrom doesn't do that anymore. Too many abusers.
The secret to this policy was that we had gross (?) margins of 60%+. Throwing away a $20 product would cost us maybe $8.
The other secret was that for the few incidents where we felt someone was trying to scam us, the next time you wanted to order, just as you were about to enter your credit card number, you would be redirected to our competition.
Conveniently, they had a sign out front showing things they did or did not have in stock, to save you time in case you just came for one thing. The sign included things like TP and bottled water.
People who stock up on necessities as a normal part of their lives would have been stocked up already and typically only buy these things to backfill from their current consumption. I don't know if this applies to toilet paper, but it's common in the LDS community to have at least 6 months' supply of nonperishable food at all times. Mormons don't typically buy 6 months of food at a time though, they just buy groceries at a normal rate to backfill their pantries via a FIFO rotation.
Of course, the rare occasions where someone would buy 6 months of something at a time--e.g. if they recently adopted a lifestyle and/or religion that encouraged this behavior--are easily absorbable by the supply chain assuming not everyone does it at once.
On the flip side, they have been more expensive on quite a lot of things that the normal grocery store carries. Beware that just because Costco sells a giant pack of something doesn't necessarily mean it is cheaper.
Example? On a per unit/per weight basis, for equivalent quality, I have never once observed this.
Real example since I just did groceries so I still remember all the prices and still have my receipt from my last Costco run last week. Asparagus is $0.99/lb at the grocery store bundled with a rubber band; Costco had it for $3.68/lb but it came in a nicely sealed plastic bag with nutritional facts. $0.99 per bell pepper at the grocery store, pick from a pile; $9.59/6-pack (effectively $1.59/per) at Costco, also in a plastic bag with two of each color selected for you.
Peppers are a good example: nobody buys green peppers if they can avoid it. That’s why they sell sets with red/yellow/green.
(I hope “peppers” is the right word here. I have been somewhat confused by America’s use of pepper/pepperoni/paprika)
Also,
> This is particularly clear for products like soda where it's not that certain that the name brand is actually any better.
This hasn't been true in my experience. A lot of soda drinkers have very strong preferences not just between brand to brand (Coke vs. Pepsi) but even within the same brand (Mexican vs. US Coke). About the only time I'd buy any store brand soda would be if (a) I was serving it to people and didn't particularly care how much they enjoyed it or (b) if I was buying it for some non-drinking purpose.
So I think it's hard to say that there's a clear quality hierarchy with sodas. Rather, they drive strong consumer preference and two brands happen to be the best known and most widely distributed. This is more or less true of a lot of other products as well where there isn't a clear objective measure of quality, it just seems especially noticeable with sodas.
Incidentally, Russians drink Pepsi because the Pepsi company bartered distribution rights to the Soviet Union in exchange for the US distribution rights to Stolnichnaya vodka. After the Cold War ended they renegotiated and the Russians threw in a bunch of old naval ships and submarines—for scrap value, but still.
Once I started paying attention, I was startled how many things we buy at Costco are actually cheaper at the grocery store.
That's the problem with these systems. You either limit the good people from doing reasonable things or you expose yourself to bad people. There are some reasonable compromises in between but I wish people were a little less quick to judge an entire person's being from what's in their shopping cart.
It’s hard to imagine a resource distribution mechanism as harmful and inequitable as the free market.
https://www.amazon.com/Life-Soviet-Union-Report-Socialism/dp...
You don't need to take my word. Check out the book. It's only $2.17, thanks to capitalism!
Edit: I do not wish to have an ideological argument. Despite all the conversation about coronavirus relief, many will still die preventable deaths. Much of this is for purely ideological reasons that have been addressed in my opinion more suitable ways in countries with different ideological heritage.
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/bi...
Quite an astounding achievement! If saving lives is your goal, Gates is the man you should help.
Gates gives back some of the money that he earned with dubious business practices. Other people are doing the real work.
Yes. For one thing, it mis-allocates things from where they are needed to where they aren't. (Because rationing assumes that everyone has an equal need when they never do.)
For example, during WW2 gas was rationed. This produced a nation of people who either had more gas than they needed, or didn't have enough. Naturally, this produced a black market to clumsily compensate, with the resulting crime.
Basically rations are an income transfer when they are used to distribute scarce products. It can result in bartering like you describe, yes, but it's not obvious that this negates the advantages. Does the bartering have to be forbidden for rationing to work? Maybe not?
For another example, let's say tp was being rationed. The amount each person gets is calculated to be the amount the average person uses.
One person uses 90% less tp than average, because he's got a bidet. Another uses 3x the average because he's got a bowel problem. Anyone who gets more than they need will feel no need to conserve it, while those who get less will treat each square as precious.
Is this equity? How does this make practical sense?
(Disallowing bartering won't help here, it'll just make things worse.)
If bartering was allowed, even bowel prob guy night have a shot.
There are variables in the model, the price of the rationed goods still reduces waste. Similarly the income distribution of the presumed society affects how many couldn't afford any 10x priced tp. Etc.
(In WW2, organized crime got involved in supplying gasoline due to rationing. Complete with drive-by shootings.)
I used to work for my uncle's coin-op business. I would often go to the wholesaler to purchase vending machine stock. Cases of cigarettes were insanely expensive ($2K each??) even at a wholesaler back in the late 1980s early 1990s.
We didn't renew our membership at either because our family of 3+1 small dog can't consume the enormous minimum quantities fast enough. (How are we supposed to consume 3 larger containers of ketchup, etc)
The could totally have said "normal memberships get one pack of TP a month, business memberships get 10 (or whatever the normal average is)".
Right now it’s a problem that swarms if people are acting like this.
Only failed resellers would.
"If I can't come out of my house for <n> weeks, what will I run out of?"
People just don't stockpile toilet paper and paper towels and diapers because they're so amazingly bulky.
Food in comparison is relatively compact.
Or better yet, politician toilet paper.
the hoarding would be amazing.
Not surprisingly, the signs were mostly clustered near goods that people might stockpile, like pasta and canned tomatoes. Aside from liability, they also want to discourage hoarding.
Morpheus: I’m saying that when you’re ready, you won’t need to.
This is an excellent step by Costco to cut down on the return mindset. If you buy pallets worth of toilet paper, good on Costco for not letting you return them. You better have the square footage to deal with your own inventory.
1) Limit the number of people in the store. Do better crowd control. The over packed stores makes me hate visiting Costco.
2) Make the shopping carts smaller. To allow for easier navigation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/14/technology/coronavirus-pu... (Filed under "technology", ha!)
Seems like there could be good reason to allow returns.
I don't think of small businesses really stocking up on / have a serious about of storage for toilet paper.
Costco is very open about their return policy and it's part of the reason people shop there. They can buy things and know they can return them if they don't need them. It may be the wrong reason to buy things, but if that's the case Costco should alter their return policy.
If they make the effort to stock this in-demand stuff, and people want to abuse their return policy and make their hoarding/arbitrage costco's problem, I don't think costco should have to deal with that, before or after the fact.