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Comment by thetrb | Hacker News Reader

I don't know the answer to your question, but isn't Instacart free to resell anything they bought at Costco? So would they even need an agreement from them?

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They're free to resell anything they manage to buy from Costco, but first they have to buy it. To buy it, they must have a valid Costco membership. Looking over the membership agreement, Costco reserves the right to terminate a membership at any time, see page 14 of http://content.costco.com/Images/Content/Misc/PDF/09EX0308_S... , in the "Membership Cards and Fees" section. If they decide they don't like this, they've already got the verbiage to lock any given shopper out. (I do not know if they will or not, or if Instacart has a negotiated deal with Costco, which would be wise of them.)

The first and obvious concern might be over using Costco's name.

Because Costco is a paid membership service. I assume reselling is against their membership agreement. It'd be difficult to enforce, especially on the scale they probably operate at, but still.

EDIT: It's not. I somehow assumed it would be. Interesting to know it isn't.

Former Costco employee here - nope. A lot of the point of the store is reselling large items to small companies. Not many families need gallon jugs of butter or 100lbs bags of rice, but tons of restaurants do.

That being said, the reselling is normally for people who do something with it (ie cook the food, print with the ink, etc), not turn around and sell the exact same product.

When I lived in the Mission the guys who ran the bodega across the street bought half the stuff they sold from the SOMA Costco.

Ahh, good to know. I figured doing another retail transaction would be against the TOS. Thanks for clarifying.

"Reselling against their membership agreement"?! Uh, not likely - I think half of the corner stores, and most of the low-end restaurants and delis, around here buy at least some of their inventory from Costco.

I'm guessing Costco's business is at least somewhat dependent on having successful resellers buy from Costco!

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