The government was busy telling the hoi polloi that foreign companies were paying the tariff. They fought US companies that wanted to list the tariffs on receipts. They were actively suppressing clarity on the matter to end buyers. Your claim that customers assumed the higher prices was going to the government is specious or simply misinformed.
"When we looked at -- we also source flowers from Central and South America. We looked at that item and decided that while we were able to offset some of the tariffs through similar activity that we did increase some price there because we felt that, that was something that the member would be able to absorb and it was more of a discretionary item there."
Customers purchasing from them are on the revenue side and there was no line item on receipts listing tariffs, just increased prices. As a customer if you assumed that 100% of a price increase is because the business is paying tariffs, then you are almost certainly mistaken. Even if the price increase was 100% because of the tariff, the business made the decision to internally absorb the fees and not directly involve the customer. They absorbed that extra cost of business by increasing prices as needed to maintain business margins within acceptable ranges.
TL;DR: A customer paid a unit price for a good from a vendor. The cost the vendor paid or any future refunds they may receive on those costs do not factor into the transaction.
Paid prices are revenue to the business, not cost.
>Costco was telling it's investors why they had to raise prices
It told everyone. They were public. There was zero limitation at all that it go to investors, nor a ban from investors being a customer. It might have been targeted to investors but it was an earnings call broadcast to customers, indeed publicly made available to ~all their customers.
>Customers purchasing from them are on the revenue side and there was no line item on receipts listing tariffs, just increased prices.
They line itemed in their earnings call that part of it was to pay for tariffs. Not saying an exact amount doesn't unbind you from this and if no tariffs are paid it is a false representation (though in this case, not wittingly so, though they should still pay to rectify this false covenant).
I think this is even more obvious if you remove the political bias here by just saying something like "part of our prices are increased to donate to charity." If it turns out the charity was paid but for whatever reason had to return the money and no charity was actually paid, it would be obvious the business must repay the customers for this breach of agreement the portion of price raised to pay the charity even though there was no fraud or intentional deceit and even if they never told the customers the exact amount of the increase actually initially paid to charity.
> Even if the price increase was 100% because of the tariff, the business made the decision to internally absorb the fees and not directly involve the customer. They absorbed that extra cost of business by increasing prices as needed to maintain business margins within acceptable ranges.
Costco did absorb part of the cost, which turned out to be no tariff owed. They are in a position now though where the customers are simply asking the company to do what they promised the public in their earnings call which was for the tariff increases to be zeroed since the company promised and itemized out they would be used to pay for tariffs which are zero. A non-zero increase based on a promise to pay a tariff but with a tariff of zero obviously breaches this covenant made in the earnings call, as it can't be simultaneously true that a non-zero amount was actually collected in payment of a tariff while zero being owed in tariff.
This isn't a moral failure or even a case of fraud, just customers asking the company to fulfill the promise they made to the public.
It's public because they are publicly traded. How about you venture a guess at how many non-investor customers had any knowledge about that call. Maybe some number caught a news article, but it wouldn't have been an appreciable number.
> false covenant
Seriously? Even if it was a "false covenant", it was to *INVESTORS*! For an investor, it's happy days if they recoup those costs because that's a net increase in revenue.
The company set the price for the good based on their costs. Customers bought the good based on the price advertised. The fact that the company might be able to reclaim some of those costs has ZERO bearing on the price customers paid. That's as far as you need to look. Trying to contort the situation to conflate it with fraud is disingenuous. They didn't lie or defraud anyone.
> Political bias
There's no political bias in discussing the core aspect. Sure, the situation leading to it is politically charged, but the core of the issue is the company made a pricing decision based on their costs, the customers bought the products, and in the future the company might be able to recoup some of their costs.
On your last paragraph, a few things. First, tariffs were paid and have not been refunded. They are still trying to affect that change. Second, they made no promise to customers regarding tariffs. Third, you happened to use the PERFECT word here to explain why your entire argument is flawed. You said "collected in payment of a tariff" with "collected" being the operative word here. Costco did no such thing. If they had, you'd have had a line item stating so, like the one for taxes. Costco is obligated to collect and remit taxes. The importer of record is obligated to pay the tariff (or ensure it has been paid). They didn't say they were increasing prices by adding and collecting tariffs. The raised prices to offset the cost of them having to pay the tariff or to cover the higher cost of purchasing goods from parties that imported the goods and paid the tariff.
This entire lawsuit is flawed at it's core as is this entire line of argument.
Thus the whole disingenuine "gotcha" where we say " ha ha ha, it's not on the receipt" is just a fraud to pretend the customers weren't explicitly itemized out in the investor call that they were partially paying a non-zero amount for what turns out to be a zero tariff.
Of course, we reveal your whole 'receipt' nonsense as a fraud -- the investor call came before many of these purchases while a receipt comes after the purchase yet you anachronously flip things expecting the receipt to be used to know about something that is only issued after the transaction. So you're receipt argument is flawed it its core and safely dissmissed.
That being said, we should treat the designated audience of the information as an indicator how the information should be interpreted. Just because an investor shops at Costco and was on the public call doesn't somehow change the messaging on the receipt.
Had the business been listing tariffs directly on receipts it would be a very different conversation.