Many people who are not members of Sam's Club and Costco often say to me that they can't justify the $40 or $50 annual fee because they don't think they can recoup that in savings. I highly doubt that. In fact, Consumer Reports has repeatedly found savings of an additional 20 to 30 percent at warehouse clubs compared to Target or Wal-Mart. But shoppers who often become fans of their warehouse club shouldn't blindly assume that everything represents a savings of 20 percent or more. I recently shopped Hunter Douglas window blinds. I had to have a designer come out to measure (sent by Costco). To my surprise, Costco's price on Hunter Douglas blinds was the same as places such as Hirshfield's, Aero Blinds and the Little Blind Spot. What this also taught me is that Hunter Douglas tightly controls its prices. In fact, the company has quit selling its products to most mail order businesses, which usually have significantly lower prices. I've never compared prices on Costco's carpet or cabinets because they're so difficult to do an apples to apples comparison.
Anyone ever compared the warehouse club prices on those items? What other products offer little or no savings at warehouse clubs? Soda pop for one. The price of Pepsi products can easily be beat at a sale at Cub, Rainbow, Target or Wal-Mart. Other consumer writers have complained about the high price of gasoline and paper products, but I disagree. Costco's gas prices in St. Louis Park are consistently about a dime less per gallon, and sometimes as much as 15 cents less than other stations in the area. But here's the caveat: You can find prices just as cheap if not cheaper in other areas of the Twin Cities. Prices area always less in Coon Rapids and Burnsville, for example, but it's not convenient for me to drive there. Earlier today, the cheapest price in the Twin Cities was $3.43 per gallon at Sam's Club and Costco stations in Burnsville, according to TwnCitiesGasPrices. Mary Hunt of Debt Proof Living believes that Costco's paper product prices (toilet paper, tissue, paper plates et al) are not competitive, but Consumer Reports found that Costco's party supplies were 20-30 percent less than Target.
I agree with Hunt that some of the bath tissue prices on name brands aren't that low, but the private label Kirkland Signature brand is priced lower than other private labels and is excellent quality. Any other especially good or not-so-good deals you've found recently at Costco or Sam's? Four sales worth the drive to Shakopee Veteran's Day restaurant and retail deals Maybe the best freebie of 2013 happens Saturday in St. Paul $25 tickets available for each "Wicked" performance at the Orpheum At $1.50 per gallon, you can't beat these milk pricesOne of the things everyone really likes about Costco is their very generous return policy: basically, we’ll take back anything from partially eaten food to a year old DVD that you aren’t satisfied with for any reason. And while they are less generous now on electronics items, just 90 days, that’s still far better (like probably 3x as long) than most retailers. In any case, I’m sure we’ve all taken advantage of their return policy by taking back things we tried and didn’t like or didn’t actually want when we got home, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
However, I don’t think you should abuse the very nice Costco policies by taking back things in a totally ridiculous and unintended way. I have a story that will probably make you go ‘what? that can’t be right!’ because I know both my husband and I did that and we were standing right there witnessing it. We were taking advantage of the nice return policy at Costco this weekend to return the SDHC cards that I had purchased that were so overpriced, as well as a DVD that we had bought and never opened quite some time ago. I felt bad about returning the DVD because even though it had never been opened and still had the Costco price tag on it, I think it was probably purchased 6 – 10 months ago. But you know, the Costco guy just took it back like it was no big deal. So, I felt a little less shame. However, the customer standing next to me returning his items should never get over the shame that I hope he felt; though honestly, it didn’t seem like he had an ounce of shame or guilt about him.
(I know that is where I got mine) because they don’t usually have them in the stores. So far, so good. But then he said he had purchased it sometime in spring 2008; he didn’t have his receipt. That’s a long, long time ago, I was thinking, but maybe it had a problem or maybe he had never used it. But then the story got even more horrible. He wasn’t returning it because the violin was defective, had a serious issue, the case wasn’t even damaged, or even because his daughter (the violin recipient) had never played it. Nope, he was returning this year and some months old violin because his daughter was no longer interested in playing the violin in school and wouldn’t be needing this one anymore. Seriously, I know you’re saying ‘What?’ right now because I am and I was there! So, let me just spell this out very plainly: the girl had been playing this violin for over a year, had decided she no longer wanted to play the violin, so this guy wanted Costco to take it back and give him a full refund on it.
And he actually stood there acting like this was the most normal return in the world. To Costco’s credit, the service representative that was processing his return only asked him once if there was anything wrong with it and didn’t say anything snarky or even get too pushy about his reason for making the return after all this time. I was thinking, doesn’t he know that you can rent musical instruments. But hey, why rent and have to actually pay, when you can essentially put a deposit on an instrument with Costco and get a full refund back when your kid doesn’t want to play it anymore; full use for over a year for free! So, in the end the guy got his full refund on the violin and one would assume, walked away a happy Costco customer. But isn’t this a really dreadful abuse of the Costco return policy? I just have to feel that this was never, ever the Costco intent when coming up with their total satisfaction guarantee. I mean, he was satisfied, or should have been since there was nothing wrong with the violin, the only problem was typical childhood apathy to being in band after a year.
Should Costco have to pay for that? Personally, I would never take something back in that situation. I’d sell it, wouldn’t you? Or more likely, it would sit around my house gathering dust. But the last thing I would consider, is that Costco should take it back and give me a refund. I still feel all wound up about this and I’m not even Costco and it happened 3 days ago. But I can’t let it go. Luckily, I have this blog where I can rant about this kind of Costco stuff. I just find this so appalling and I think it is because I worry that ridiculousness like this guy and his old violin, will ruin it for all of us. I’m sure we all feel that repeated things like this explain what happened with the electronics return policy, since it previously had no time period stipulation either. I don’t want everyone to get stuck with things that they aren’t satisfied with or bought two of by mistake (yes, I do it all the time with books and movies) because of someone totally taking advantage of the system;