The agony and ecstasy of Costco (2023)
blog.benedictfritz.com
blog.benedictfritz.com
My main use of Costco has become non-prescription pharmacy products. CVS and Walgreens have marked up basic items too much. I don't buy much else there, except tires every few years.
Unfortunately, they're into the overpriced mattress racket. Look on Alibaba to see what mattresses really cost.
Many times I've found products at Costco that I enjoy, only for them to suddenly stop carrying them a week or a month later.
I am considering ordering everything for delivery, delivery costs more, but the tax of in store shopping is a lot more.
The whole post is some ridiculous first-world tears, just wow.
[1]: https://www.costcobusinessdelivery.com/kirkland-signature-co...
You just have to know where to get the best prices for the stuff you regularly buy. Once you do that, you realize there isn't one store with all the best deals, you have to mix-n-match to really save money.
Not to mention the gas. With a Costco credit card, total savings are substantial. It's always at least 50 cents cheaper per gallon than other gas stations, and if you know when to go there isn't a huge line.
Edit: Besides meat, we also don't buy paper products at Costco, as a few years ago we switched to bamboo-based toilet paper and paper tools (reelpaper.com though there are others). It's definitely more expensive but it's just the choice we made. Same thing for switching from plastic to compostable garbage bags (not available at Costco), and absolutely no bottled water or soda cans (another Costco favorite for many) - we use DrinkMate for seltzer (besides, soda, i.e., Coke etc., is strictly verboten in the house along with sugary snacks--the kids gripe but are healthy, and that's another reason we buy lots of fruit).
That's the second reason I find the practice so irksome: on top of requiring customers to wait in line to prove their innocence, they pretend that the practice is for their customers' benefit. And people believe them!? Maddening.
https://www.tasteofhome.com/article/why-does-costco-check-re...
"So, as someone who's done this job, I gotta be completely honest to those of you bagging on us and calling us liars.
If a receipt shows under 20 items, we count. It's a very quick count to 20. Most people who work at the exit are actually counting your cart before you even hand the receipt over. So by the time the receipt is in your hands...they already know there's 15 items in your buggy. They look at the receipt for a split second, see the 15 at the bottom, mark it and hand it back. Easy.
Now, for carts with over 20 items...even packed with 100 items. The main things we check for are stuff on the bottom. Cases of water, TP, pop cases, etc. All those extra things that maybe a cashier misses. We're not gonna catch EVERYTHING and that's fine, we also don't want to keep you there all day long. Ideally the people at the register are doing their jobs right, sadly that's not always the case. 99 percent of the time, it's not due to theft. If you were genuinely trying to steal something, you wouldn't just leave it sitting in your cart. We also check for big items, bluetooth speakers, electronic items, etc. Also gift cards. Basically anything that requires a second check to make sure either the cashier got it, or the member has to pick it up."
https://www.reddit.com/r/Costco/comments/8uqhgw/how_much_is_...
(Turns out it is all that: runs on 120VAC, doesn't need a vent for the dryer; awesome. Downside: you have a single pipeline, so if you're washing then you can't be drying at the same time. Oh, and get the GE instead of LG: filters are easier to get to, among other advantages.)
Also, if you're travelling to Hawaii or Iceland, it's a cheap place to eat for the family.
People rave about the low prices, but I can only assume that is some kind of collective delusion. Where I live, the grocery stores across the street always have better prices on meat and dairy, usually fruit and veg too. For the non-food things they sell, you can usually get the same exact thing on Amazon at the same price, without having to drive anywhere or wait in line for the receipt-checking security theatre.
I'm an avid comparison shopper and this this has been my experience anyway. YMMV.
We have a Costco membership, and I never use it to buy gas even when I'm already at Costco. There's always a line, and at a $0.05/gallon savings on a 12 gallon tank (assuming that I sputtered my way to the pump as the tank runs dry), the most I'll save is $0.60. My time is worth more than that, I'll just swing by Chevron on the way home where the only time consideration is how fast the pump can shove gasoline into the tank.
(Okay, maybe you save $0.10/gallon where you live: it's still only $1.20 savings in our car.)
One of the execs at my company that has since retired once spent 2 hours waiting to fill up his BMW when the local gas station had a free $20 of gas promo. Always boggled my mind how that guy thought it was worth his time to do that, but I guess it deprived some poor person he edged out of $20 so it was worth it in the end, lol.
Basically the BS of American exceptionalism ran up against the reality of us importing 80% of our energy needs from Autocratic middle eastern countries. We got cut off from that and it gave us a national crisis. We had two options going forward:
Either we focus on independent energy solutions, like nuclear and renewables. It would take more effort but would clearly be a smart and forward thinking investment, making us into an energy independent nation that could afford to make hard choices in geopolitics because of that independence, and could be a center for energy tech moving forward. It would probably be difficult for a decade but we basically would have avoided the worst of climate change, and likely be on a stable climate path already.
Or we could just turn ourselves into vassals of the oil states, throwing away any morals to the quick and cheap solution that would give us a rich 80s and immediately put us on a path to more future problems and burning cash in the desert trying to keep them pumping that black gold. We would sacrifice our future for slightly more success right here and now, and damn the consequences 50 years down the road, we will all be dead by then anyway.
Guess which option we picked? What's funny is that we eventually got the energy independence anyway, thanks to fracking and conservation, but we already wasted trillions in the sandbox, but we STILL need to dedicate enormous national effort keeping the sandbox just stable enough to pump oil because even though we export a significant quantity of our oil, if the price goes up a few cents that apparently ruins the economics of owning a Bro-Dozer so much that people who haven't gotten a raise in 50 years get really upset that """the economy""" is doing poorly.
Nevermind that the price of gas seems to suspiciously go up in November, regardless of the actual production figures, but only when there is a democrat in the white house.
Per gallon? Wow, I grant that I haven't comparison shopped in years, but you're getting more of a break than we did in WA when I was looking. I'm serious when I say that there was about a nickel's difference. Perhaps I should take another look at the price signs next time I'm there. Because, yeah, I'd sit in line for $6 (on a ten gallon fillup).
In my experience, you can certainly get things for much cheaper elsewhere in terms of price, but not at the same quality.
Costco definitely pays off if you have a family of 4+. I think the benefits you get from buying in bulk are really limited if you’re a single person/a couple.
It seems to me that Costco sells a lot of "B Stock" products. Things from manufacturers that didn't pass their Q/A or brand standards and get resorted and labeled as Kirkland products. Which I always assumed is why they have such a generous returns policy.
Sometimes the complete lack of selection at Costco is nice - no more rummaging through faceless brand names on Amazon selling you the same generic junk, just shut your brain off and buy the one option at Costco.
I only go to Costco an hour before their closing time on the weekdays just to avoid the crowds, it's worked out so far but obviously that's not practical for everyone.
We're fortunate to have a debit-card-only store that usually beats Costco, Aldi's and Walmart and has the most variety. Not common for people to have that. Costco is best for some packaged foods and paper products and sells some distinctive items.
You can get better prices at the grocery, but the quality is generally lower and the price isn't always lower. For example, chicken breasts are $3/lb at costco, individually packaged for freezing and high quality. Sure, I can often get breasts at the market in the bulk pack for $2/lb or less, but they're more water-logged, not ready-packed for the freezer, and don't taste as good. I happily pay somewhat more for the convenience and quality at a still low price. To get that level of quality at the grocery, I'm up at $6/lb for organic, name brand chicken. That's Costco's approach, especially with their in-house Kirkland Signature products: very high quality, and reasonable, sustainable prices.
> For the non-food things they sell, you can usually get the same exact thing on Amazon at the same price, without having to drive anywhere or wait in line for the receipt-checking security theatre.
Sometimes this is true, and sometimes you get the Amazon item and it's actually hidden lower-quality; the stitching on clothing is worse, the colors don't pop as much, etc. For fungible products that have a single SKU (books, electronics, kitchenware, most dry goods), Amazon is great, but when there's an opportunity for hidden quality drops and cost-downs, Costco has a buyer on-staff ensuring that the manufacturer doesn't cut corners. Amazon is rife with corner-cutting.
Sure, some specific items are always cheap -- like the rotisserie chicken. But outside of those few things, you really have to look for actual savings, and that's true even of baby products which so many in our area seem to get at Costco. In many cases, we would be buying something in bulk for more money than at Winco or Kroger.
Shopping there is also rather disorienting... many times an item we bought one week would be gone the next. Or items would unpredictably shift locations.
As some commenters have identified, there may be specific items you want that are in fact cheaper at Costco. And I only have personal experience from my area, which is not a big city and has cheaper local grocery prices than a more urban area. My main point is: if you've been shopping at Costco assuming you are getting a good deal, you might want to double check against other stores!
I'm sure they'll even figure out contactless payment any day now!
My main memory of Costco is seeing tons of products that were presented as bulk, but were actually regular. Like a bottle of 200 Tylenol (normal size that every small pharmacy carries) but at Costco it was in a quart-size bottle and each individual bottle was placed in a giant cardboard tray and shrink-wrapped to make it physically take up as much space as possible. And it was selling at an above-average price.
Costco does an amazing job of delivering a product (quality food and merchandise) without any of the additional frills that would lead to markups, like nice ambiance or displays. That is a huge deal for millions of Americans who are happy to shop on bare concrete floors if it means saving money.
- there's only one choice for each item. The Company chooses for you
- the emphasis on (relatively) flat pay structure and high starting wage
- their logo is a big red C