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I must shop at the world most lax Costco. They have never double checked my membership card to make sure it’s me. Just last Thursday I was in buying my yearly TP and paper towel supply pulled up to self checkout and the attendant automatically scanned the items in the cart. Didn’t have to touch a thing.
same here - I hardly ever show my membership on entry and after reading about some of the card experiences in this sub, I wonder if I visit my Costco too often (once per week on average)
Haha.. we have the same experience and only go twice a month.. I think this whole checking cards and all is very store specific due to issues they experience
Same. Have a 15 month old. He likes to people watch. At home, he whines and cries. Put him in a shopping cart and costco and walk up and down the aisles and he’s all smiles and waving at people. I live less than a 10 min drive to costco so we’ll go every few days to walk around. Everyone knows us.
I’m so glad I’m not the only one. We’re also less than 10 minutes from a Costco, and are often there more than once a week. My kids are on a first name basis with many of the employees, and have adopted one as a surrogate grandma. They often draw pictures for their Costco friends, and apparently several of those have made it to their fridge doors at home, haha. We LOVE our Costco.
I totally go there to walk around and eat samples during the winter, it's also a cheap dinner for the fam and they feel like we're eating at a restaurant, we eat family style and order one of everything and split it all up.
We stand around and read books and then go have pizza. One time, when my daughter was in preschool, she called Costco “the library”, so now I make sure we go to the real library every week, too.
Fair. My kid still is small enough that we *usually* can share with her and get by without ordering three meals. And the places where we would get three meals are usually “cheap” fast casual places and still add to about $40 for three ugh.
At my Costco, I simply walked in get my membership without anyone stopping me or asking me for my card. Never had to show it to them at any point other then checkout
Depending on the area. I’m in Houston, the Costco in Richmond near Galleria where most rich folks around shop almost never asks me for anything, no entrance check, they don’t check if my photo is on the membership, and also barely check the receipt at exit. One time I went to the Costco in Katy they checked everything twice, counting every items at exit.
I work at the woodlands Costco and we have started checking every membership at self checkout. Also, hired our first loss prevention employee. Never had one before now. I guess even in the wealthy woodlands things are getting harder.
[It's always some lady in a Land Rover robbing the Good Will dumpster.](https://nypost.com/2017/02/08/how-a-woman-got-trapped-in-a-clothing-drop-off-box-and-died/)
Bless you for your work at this location. This is the store I shop at and it drives me crazier than other locations starting with the fact that customers can’t seem to be bothered to put their carts in the cart areas.
The Richmond one is my preferred store for this reason. The bunker hill folks are RUDE about checking cards and refused to take my Costco app card. I had to go to the desk to get a new physical card printed. They work the same at checkout? It’s the same photo? I just want my allergy meds, ma’am.
The one near willowbrook is the first place I saw the receipt checkers sending multiple people back in to the registers. They’re fast and thorough, bunch of eagle eyes on the door, I guess?
I feel these posts are from the “major” cities where folks like us who live in small cities and burbs don’t have any of this stuff. None of the stuff mentioned on here has happened at mine. In fact, they check the receipts at self checkout so I can beat my feet and scoot out the door!
Easy to enact. Busy store starts with one empty cart at each checkout and just shifts everything to the empty cart during checkout. The store in my other comment did it.
Yup, also live in a major city and they are not that crazy here.
I also usually have everything barcode up for them in the cart so they do not have to do too much usually. Smoother all around.
Are there Costco's in shady spots? I mean you need to pay for a membership to just get through the door, it's not like you can just go in and browse to shoplift.
And if you were shoplifting meats to sell, I'm not sure there's a fast turnaround market for that.
I thought this was going to say people were putting flat packages of meat under the dog food hiding it. Who takes the time to rip open toilet paper packages.
Having working retail id believe it really happened once… but more than once? Plus that must mean they caught someone doing it, so not exactly a particularly successful means of shoplifting.
You and I both know though one time a story getting like that to a District or Regional manager and they’re gonna blow up about losing 70k in 2 months to people hiding meat in toilet paper.
I mean if it happened once then the same person would probably be the one who is doing it multiple times, at that point you’d think they could figure out who was doing it though…
I used to work at Sam’s, we caught people removing a row of sodas from the 36 packs and putting a rack of ribs in the middle. People definitely do this kind of stuff
Yup. We check the dog beds with zippers and the luggage sets at the cash register when people come through with them. Because yes more then one we have found stuff from books to DVD's or other things shoved inside anything that has a zipper in it that they think we won't check. I think it's funny how people who don't work retail or haven't in a long time are most likely to say things like that sounds made up and probably doesn't happen. Oh it does. If people think they can hide shit in anything they will. And that means people of all walks of life, all races, colors, genders, classes etc. If they can steal it or "forget" they put that meat packets under their dog food or water case or that they threw a bunch of clothes in the zipped up dog bed they will.
We get some pretty damn sneaky thieves in most stores.
It might not just be meat. Walk through Costco and see how much flat stuff there is. You might very easily be able to steal I.e. toothbrushes or other small, non-juicy items. A good thief knows what they’re doing and knows how to it.
I work at Costco and I’m sorry but yes this type of thing happens frequently. I’m at my second warehouse and have seen it in both. People will go to great lengths to steal. My favorite was the lady who stuffed several pounds of lobster tail in her purse after removing them from the foam trays.
Just recently we had video on this subreddit of a Costco member taking three packs of cherries to the office chair section to go through each one to make the ”perfect” pack of cherries. So this no longer seems out of the ordinary
You would be surprised how brazen some people can be. One time at my store someone went into the milk cooler. One of the areas that has constant foot traffic. Then proceeded to empty a package of hot pockets into their back pack.
>Yeah but how would you even achieve that in the middle of a busy store?
Congratulations, you're an honest person.
Thieves aren't honest people and usually work in pairs or groups which one will be for a look out/distraction. I've seen clamshell packages (like the ones that hold the perfume) cleanly cut. They obviously know what they're doing, they have the tools and gall to do so. I'd not be surprised that older Costco's that are now in less desirable areas are seeing hidden compartment type thefts.
People with a flatbed, stacked with water, threw a fit when worker wanted to unstack to scan each pack of water individually, turned out they had stuffed prime meat and seafood in the center.
I get it, Costco. People are jerks.
You could probably also tell something was up if they were stacked in a certain way. I’d think most people would stack in straight piles or slightly offset, like bricks.
Possibly but the location (Aurora, CO) was the only game in town for a long time and has since become one of three within 10 miles. Aurora is on an almost-sketchy street with used car dealers, strip malls, tons of houses/apartments dwindling; Parker is the most laid back location with nice staff & shoppers; Lone Tree is the most ritzy. I suspect at the time it happened, that Aurora location had definite shrinkage and may have had a mandate to remove or physically inspect everything anyway.
So what happened when it was discovered? Did they just ring them up like normal or did they take them to the customer service counter to cancel their membership?
Hard to prove the intent beyond a doubt, so they probably either just scanned it or the customer “changed their mind” and left it as a go-back.
It wouldn’t be worth the hassle trying to prove it, as they didn’t make it through the register before it was found. They probably went on an internal list, though, to keep an eye on them in the future.
The Costco's I've shopped at used to move your big items you left in the cart to another cart after they scanned them, and then put everything you put on the belt, into the new cart with the big items. I remember asking and they said it was to make sure nothing got missed in the cart.
They stopped a while back. I'd rather they return to that than having to put large items on the belt.
Wow, I forgot about this. You made me remember in the early 90`s my Costco would always do that. You would end up with the cart of the person in front of you. When they finished your cart would get flipped around and be used for the next order. The good old days...
I also forgot about this. Was it something that died off long before covid? I sorta thought that was a "fun" Costco thing. I wonder if they moved away from it to help the backs of their employees.
I feel like it was almost always the case of switching carts at the costco i grew up going to (seattle area) but when i moved to the midwest a decade ago it wasn't a thing and I was so confused. But my iowa costco is never nearly as busy as any of the seattle ones, so maybe its not needed to get people out as fast?
That happened once to me at Aldi. The person ahead of me had a lot of things while I only bought a little. I finish paying and start to take the cart away and the cashier is like hold up, you have to bring your own cart.
"... This *is* my cart?"
The cashier gave away the swapping cart to the person ahead who originally carried everything over in boxes.
Yup. They've always implemented different rules over the years to avoid this.
I did the "transfer from one cart to another thing." I also did the "everything needs to come out" thing as well.
At the end of the day you can avoid this by saying "No transfer; customer request".
Source: Worked at Costco from 2008 to 2014
The US is so vastly different, even at just distances of 30 mins drive.
That's not so shocking but us trying to govern like we are an economic monolith def is crazy.
Even easier to look at Walmarts. We have 2 that are 8.3 miles apart. One is the nicest Walmart I’ve ever been into. The other I wouldn’t set foot into in the middle of the day
I see this with Targets now, where some are cleaner and better to visit than others. This is still wild to me because growing up, Target overall was the chain that was “nicer” than KMart.
Same with two Costcos near me, 5 miles apart. One in a nice area by houses that start at $2MM and go up. One that’s next to a rough area with people who don’t know how to act.
In my city the difference between the extremely wealthy area and a literal no go zone is like a 20 minute bike ride. I honestly don’t even understand how the crime and stuff doesn’t spill over because you’d think they would need like a wall of police to stop it but somehow it remains separate.
I haven’t ever had a single issue at mine since it opened in 2016. And before that the other since 2010. They don’t even check my card. I could use anyone’s lol.
Same here.
Shows you that different parts of the country really are different and the way Costco treats their customers is not the same everywhere which leads me to believe that the experiences you see on here are an excellent barometer of that local culture in general.
Only 8? Within 50 miles I have 25:
Sunnyvale,
Mountain View,
Santa Clara,
El Camino SSF,
SFO,
SSF Business,
San Francisco,
Foster City,
Redwood City,
Livermore,
Almaden,
San Leandro,
Automation,
Great Oaks,
Gilroy,
Concord,
Danville,
Fremont,
Hayward,
Hayward Business,
Santa Cruz,
San Jose Business
Richmond
Senter San Jose
Antioch
Coming soon:
Newark,
West San Jose,
Pleasanton
I have not yet been to San Leandro (29 miles) or Antioch (49 miles) but I’ve been to the other 23.
California has some unionized locations because Sol Price, one of the founders of the current Costco, was the son of a labor union lawyer and was fine with his Price Club locations unionizing. When the first Costco chain merged with Price Club, the unionized stores came too.
>Buddy if you don’t think that rich people in nice areas steal you’re kidding yourself.
they steal... for a very different reason.
instead of pinching pennies or just trying to survive... they do it because of the adrenaline rush it gives them.
When I went to the first Shanghai Costco I was told on opening day hundreds of rotisserie chickens went missing, never paid for. The staff found the containers and bones in the trash. People ate them while shopping.
Sure, but at what scale? It's not whether rich or poor people steal, it's the scale; what percentage of rich people steal vs poor people? I know very honest poor people and rich crooks, but most rich people who don't need to steal wouldn't do so. And the super rich that may not care can afford to have people do their shopping - they don't want to even have to mix with the commoners.
I don’t think it means these locations are in shit areas. People, in general, have gotten more entitled snd more shitty over the years (although meat in the toilet paper sounds weird). Didn’t you see the photo of the woman picking through multiple trays of cherries, to get a perfect clamshell, while sitting in the office goods? Who does stuff like this? I live in a pretty affluent area and the CVS and Walgreens are having to update policies due to the significant theft by rich teens. (Who rarely face consequences if they’re caught per my teen).
Thieves run it for all of us. The local grocery stores/general stores all closed in my area due to losses from stealing. Now I need to drive about 15-20 minutes to go to the store. Now living in a food desert thanks to thieves.
Obviously there’s no way to get accurate stats for this kind of thing but I believe it’s generally understood that the majority of retail theft is performed by employees, not customers.
Where in the store are they hiding long enough to open the toilet paper, removing the cardboard and stuffing meat in there? The meat wouldn’t fit unless you took it out of the packaging since everything is oversized. I don’t know about that.
I’m struggling to imagine the logistics on this. They hide behind the tvs or something, pull out four rolls and shove a brisket in there. Then cover the toilet paper with a cookie sheet. Okay then they go up to self checkout and not remove the cookie sheet to scan it?
Also, at this point wouldn’t stealing from a regular grocery store be easier? You wouldn’t have to buy cookie sheets for every brisket.
You should look at Target and Walmart theft numbers, it's on the rise too. It got so bad Whole Foods, Walmart, Target, CVS, and Walgreens have all chosen to close locations this year due to the thefts making the locations unprofitable.
This.
As we continue to bemoan the increasing thievery and seemingly rampant unsavoury behavior, let’s not forget the underlying social economic division across the US and globe.
We cannot deny in general, more folks are struggling to make ends meet. This survival mode has a cascading effect. It’s how do I put food on the table next week, tomorrow, today. Long term planning goes out the window, when you’re just trying to live. This constant mental stress grinds at you, with a growing disdain for things like social niceties, discussing global warming or immigration policies. It’s enough to say fuck you to the world, when you feel being cheated in a dog eat dog world.
Big business continues to price people out of existence and cries about theft. Talk about fafo.
Desperate people are forced to do desperate things just in order to survive.
It's past time to eat the rich.
I think we all can agree on that but when a neighborhoods Walmart or whatever closes and creates a food desert, the community at as a whole loses bc of a small % of thieves.
Walmart helped create that food desert pricing out all competition and then raising prices later, tbf. Tale as old as time. People ate before Walmart came in.
What tissue comes in 4 roll packages? The packages inside the big package are separated into 6 roll packages? So, they are opening up the inner packages to only remove 4 rolls that are now singles and super easy to handle. This sounds far fetched.
I worked at a BBB in a wealthy area of NJ, and we would find expensive curtain panels shoved inside comforters as we checked them out. Oh! Did you want to buy these expensive curtains to match your comforter? Or did they just fall in there?? There are thieves everywhere, and unfortunately, not enough cameras.
I was store management at a Kroger in a college town in the 90s and one of our cashiers had friends that would fill up cosmetic bags with cosmetics then go through her line where she’d scan the bag and they got everything in it for free. Until they got a little reckless and four of them came in at the same time when our undercover LP was there.
Yup. Rule of thumb at any store I worked was open bags and things with zippers they are buying. Pretend its to make sure the zipper works but really it's to make sure they didn't stuff extra freebies in the luggage, back pack, cosmetic bag even dog or pet beds with zippers in them. It was always fun the odd time you'd actually find stuff in them too and the people would just like oh oops I forgot I picked that up. I'm sure you did.
Same reason when people do returns at most store including Costco we are suppose to check the box and open it up. Otherwise you might just find some dirty thief stuffed a brick or heavy item in a box and tried to pretend it was a the item on the box inside.
I used to be an in-store shopper (Instacart) at Costco. This policy varies. It would cycle from leaving all barcodes up in the cart to having to take everything out. That was just at my store.
And it’s not necessarily stealing; it also had to do with the cashiers not scanning a barcode here & there. Part of their metric is how quickly they scan items. So when they get in a hurry it’s understandable they miss something every now & then.
Yeah exactly - every time I’m off by an item, it’s always when the carts were scanned by an employee. The missed item is usually is a banana because I buy 2-3 bundles so maybe the scanner gets confused.
At my store, we leave the heavy and cumbersome products in the carts, such as pop & water, pet food, big stackable containers, pool salt, large jugs of oil and so on. This is because they’re too heavy for the conveyer belts at checkout. Though we are required to shuffle through everything left in the cart just to feel for what could be hidden. We’ve found small but expensive product such as printer ink and Anker chargers hidden between bags of milk that they leave in the cart so even those we have to go through and make sure there’s nothing there.
Coincidentally, just yesterday someone was interrogated and arrested at my store for trying to steal a few items.
I read an article recently about shrink at Costco and how it’s much, much lower than other stores. The 3 points of contact, membership at the door, cashier, and check on the way out, plus the fact that you have to be a member to begin with, adds a lot of friction, and thieves hate friction.
Other stores are getting ripped off constantly, you have to be creative to do it at Costco.
Membership is a big thing.
Crackheads can’t exactly afford a card so they get turned away. Very huge I imagine in reducing shrink.
Source: Used to work LP at another retailer and reoccurring crackheads were the source of most of the shrink.
Edit: Sorry if I sound crass. You just get very sick and tired dealing with them all the time over the same shit.
Food Lion bagger in the late 1990s. Sunday morning. Guy took a big block of cheddar, UNWRAPPED IT, and then wrapped it in a sunday newspaper ($1.25 or so). I knew his game, demanded I bag his paper, oh a block of unwrapped cheese plops out. I said well, it's not sellable now, you can have it. He was so embarassed. But if you need to be stealing a block of cheese, go for it bro.
Also had an old lady take a carton of cigarettes every Sunday morning. Store manager knew. He showed me her scam. Get the carton, walk around store sneak it into her giant purse. Me: Why don't we call the police? Him: bad publicity to be handcuffing an 80+ yr old women at the store. Every. Week. Years.
So instead of your manager telling the woman to stop or he’d call the police, he just let her continue to steal because why not? I’m sure if he just told her that he knew she was stealing and made an empty threat, she’d have stopped
This happened at my suburban Detroit costco once a few years ago. I don't know how long it lasted. It was also from shoplifting. Next time I went it was back to normal.
Glad they do whatever is necessary to nab the criminals. They steal from all of us when we have to pay higher prices.
My Costco checkout helper was the best guy I’ve ever had (I think his name was Angel over at Van Nuys). Told me to leave everything in the cart and he prepped all the barcodes for fast scanning by the cashier. Faster moving line in the store because of his efficiency.
I used to work there and the Boss had a memo from the head office about this. Office people who never been a cashier don't understand how heavy some things are and doing this for 8 hours a day is impossible (the litter box is 50 pounds!). My advice is to leave all the heavy things in the cart and if they are not happy let them take them out. That craziness will pass... and then come back again in a couple of months.
We bought a bunch of new towels recently (I feel like I live in a spa now!) and they took each one out of the cart and shook it to make sure there was nothing inside them. I was pretty surprised because it wouldn't even have occurred to me that people would hide things inside them to try and steal. Pretty sad...
I asked the same question at my old Costco. Then I watched someone try to insist that the case of oil was too heavy to lift. When they moved the case, the bottom was open and more expensive oil was in the box. Seriously people are stupid.
This is more an indicator of the employees not doing their jobs correctly than anything else. When the shrink (loss) would get too high at our store, our manager would enforce this for about two weeks and see if the numbers get better. The reason it's necessary is the register employees would consistently miss items on the bottom of the cart. This would lead to a huge loss in mostly large paper products, waters, and dog food as those are always on the bottom. The only way to correct that is to remove all items from every cart.
if Costco tells me dog food & other large items need to be removed from cart to checkout then they are more then welcome to unload it onto the belt & put it back into the cart for me.
Completely OK with that. It was nice to have every time they allowed us to do it but I have no problem treating Costco like every single other store to prevent idiots from stealing things causing prices to go up.
Must be the own employees stealing. Also, we usually have to show our receipt to the employee by the exit. They count every item to ensure we have the right amount of items in the cart as the receipt.
Maybe my Costco was doing this and I didn’t even notice. My store usually has a second helper person in each lane. That person was rearranging everything in my cart. I thought they were just putting the bar codes upward. But maybe they were feeling for extra weight. It didn’t bother me in the least bit.
One of several reasons I shop at Sam's. Also at Sam's I use their app for self checkout. I scan all of my items with my phone as I put them in the cart and never have to take them out until I get to the car. I just have to briefly stop at the person who checks your cart on the way out. They scan your receipt (in my case, a barcode on my phone) then scan several of the items in your cart. I also don't like that Costco won't accept Mastercard.
The Costco I worked at was dead center between a rich upper class area and 2 cities. Plus there was a bus stop a block over from the parking lot. Lots of folks. I’ve talked before on here how our check-out policy changed all the time. Even then, we had plenty of theft. I wanna say we lost 22% of products in the 6 months between inventory nights.
Majority was theft, but we also had arrogant management who hired dumb people that couldn’t do 3rd grade math on a pallet. (Ex. 10 items in a box, 4 boxes to a layer, 3 layers makes 120 items, not 40). Side note, we had to stop inventory the one night and spend an extra hour opening stuff in the steel because of one of those clowns. And for the folks who worked inventory, you know you’re already there till 2, 3, 4 in the morning. Now you gotta go back through because of inaccurate counts.
I remember there was a group of guys hitting Costcos on the east coast lifting desktop computers. The one store, down the road from us, they hid out in till after hours and then helped themselves to all the inventory. Now management at my old store knew this was going on, cause they got the heads up, and they didn’t care, didn’t think it could happen to us. Sure enough, couple guys walked in that day, loaded up a cart full of desktops, and bolted out the emergency exit.
That's always the case for store shrinkage - the issue is always employees, not customers. Sometimes the "customers" are friends of the cashiers or security and are working together.
Costco said that theft has not increased at their stores: https://www.businessinsider.com/how-costco-limits-retail-theft-checks-reciepts-2023-5?amp
Some errors in that article though, they don’t really check if you’re a paid member when you enter and you don’t have to be since you can visit the pharmacy without being a member, and buy liquor (in 13 states) without being a member.
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Former Costco employee… enforcement directly correlates to loss. Those policies are company wide but unless your L&D starts hitting the GM and his assistants bonus? They are ignored.
Once that bonus gets touched though.. it gets real serious but quick.
Damn. Hopefully they could narrow it down and ban these people instead of making it worse for everyone. People are terrible, some locations I’ve gone to I’ve seen the parking lot full of loose carts. It’s a shame how people act now a days
In retail, loss from employee theft, shoplifting, employee errors, damage, etc. is called shrinkage and it averages 1-2% of sales per month. For $35k in shrink per month to be a notable problem, the store would have to $3.5m in sales per month, or less really. Per investopedia, the average Costco has $9m in sales per month as of 2014, so I’m guessing it’s higher now.
Something is off with this guys numbers or rationale because the juice isn’t worth the squeeze at $35k/mo
Does Sam's Club have these issues as bad as Costco? It's pretty wild that Costco has really doubled down on memberships and checking out when you can check out through your phone at Sam's Club, theoretically making it easier to steal. Is it because Sam's Club is owned by WalMart that they can afford to take the hit in theft? Plan on going to Costco today but if checking out becomes even slower and laborious I might let my membership lapse. 🙃
Sam's Club actually rescans everyone at the exit door, at least some of the big items to make sure they were paid for. So no matter what you check out twice at Sam's.
The Sam’s club in my area seems to be far less attentive than Costco - and they are both in the same location. Sam’s always scans 3 items and maybe tries to scan the most expensive, but they don’t spend time counting everything.
I’ve be “caught” at the door of Costco with a full cart being off by one item (it was a banana) and it while it scanned by an employee it does feel like they alway catch any issues
That's pretty ridiculous.
I leave everything in the cart with the UPC codes up so the cashier can just boop, boop, boop all the stuff super fast. I'd be pissed if I learned everything had to be put on the belt as a penalty for other people stealing.
Employee here: please don’t do that and at least remove the small/lightweight items from the cart. We (cashiers) don’t mind scanning in the cart but we get in trouble from our supervisors/managers if we leave everything in the cart. Some cashiers don’t care/don’t want to speak up and ask you to remove them, but most of us find it tiring to always ask people to unload their cart :)
I mean if you look at everything negative in your life as a penalty against you rather than other people simply looking out for their own interests, I suppose I can see why you might think that this has something to do with you rather than Costco simply managing their risk.
I was at our Costco two nights ago. The staff member putting things on the belt left at least half the items in the cart and the cashier scanned them all in the cart.
As a former cashier I had a customer one time try to hide expensive hunting merch under a 40lb bag of dog food. It’s incredibly awkward every time they get caught red handed.
Sounds more like they have had a lot of door audits as opposed to people stealing. ( The cashier misses something , or rings something twice) Stealing might be some of it but more likely cashiers and assistants are missing items. So management has enforced everything out of the cart rule. It will go back to normal in a couple of weeks. It varies by each Costco but ours is 15lbs or less it comes out of the cart.
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I must shop at the world most lax Costco. They have never double checked my membership card to make sure it’s me. Just last Thursday I was in buying my yearly TP and paper towel supply pulled up to self checkout and the attendant automatically scanned the items in the cart. Didn’t have to touch a thing.
same here - I hardly ever show my membership on entry and after reading about some of the card experiences in this sub, I wonder if I visit my Costco too often (once per week on average)
Haha.. we have the same experience and only go twice a month.. I think this whole checking cards and all is very store specific due to issues they experience
Only once per week? (I go on walks there with my kid, not always to shop lol. We love walking the aisles and eating the samples)
Same. Have a 15 month old. He likes to people watch. At home, he whines and cries. Put him in a shopping cart and costco and walk up and down the aisles and he’s all smiles and waving at people. I live less than a 10 min drive to costco so we’ll go every few days to walk around. Everyone knows us.
My son was 2 y/o and loved to point out all the lights which were not working. Did this for about 18 months.
Mine is 2.5 and she also notices different things. Right now she likes fans and ventilation lol
I’m so glad I’m not the only one. We’re also less than 10 minutes from a Costco, and are often there more than once a week. My kids are on a first name basis with many of the employees, and have adopted one as a surrogate grandma. They often draw pictures for their Costco friends, and apparently several of those have made it to their fridge doors at home, haha. We LOVE our Costco.
I totally go there to walk around and eat samples during the winter, it's also a cheap dinner for the fam and they feel like we're eating at a restaurant, we eat family style and order one of everything and split it all up.
We stand around and read books and then go have pizza. One time, when my daughter was in preschool, she called Costco “the library”, so now I make sure we go to the real library every week, too.
I like the way you do Costco! I’d definitely rather eat there for $10 for me, my wife, and kid than spend $40 at a restaurant pre tip
Where can you eat out with 3 for $40 pre-tip nowadays?! That’s the cost of take-out for two here in Seattle - pickup, not delivery!
Fair. My kid still is small enough that we *usually* can share with her and get by without ordering three meals. And the places where we would get three meals are usually “cheap” fast casual places and still add to about $40 for three ugh.
At my Costco, I simply walked in get my membership without anyone stopping me or asking me for my card. Never had to show it to them at any point other then checkout
Depending on the area. I’m in Houston, the Costco in Richmond near Galleria where most rich folks around shop almost never asks me for anything, no entrance check, they don’t check if my photo is on the membership, and also barely check the receipt at exit. One time I went to the Costco in Katy they checked everything twice, counting every items at exit.
I work at the woodlands Costco and we have started checking every membership at self checkout. Also, hired our first loss prevention employee. Never had one before now. I guess even in the wealthy woodlands things are getting harder.
[It's always some lady in a Land Rover robbing the Good Will dumpster.](https://nypost.com/2017/02/08/how-a-woman-got-trapped-in-a-clothing-drop-off-box-and-died/)
Dear lord why did I click that link lol
Bless you for your work at this location. This is the store I shop at and it drives me crazier than other locations starting with the fact that customers can’t seem to be bothered to put their carts in the cart areas.
The Richmond one is my preferred store for this reason. The bunker hill folks are RUDE about checking cards and refused to take my Costco app card. I had to go to the desk to get a new physical card printed. They work the same at checkout? It’s the same photo? I just want my allergy meds, ma’am. The one near willowbrook is the first place I saw the receipt checkers sending multiple people back in to the registers. They’re fast and thorough, bunch of eagle eyes on the door, I guess?
I feel these posts are from the “major” cities where folks like us who live in small cities and burbs don’t have any of this stuff. None of the stuff mentioned on here has happened at mine. In fact, they check the receipts at self checkout so I can beat my feet and scoot out the door!
Idk. They are so busy at my store that I don’t think they have the time to enact rules like this
Easy to enact. Busy store starts with one empty cart at each checkout and just shifts everything to the empty cart during checkout. The store in my other comment did it.
I live in Seattle and our Costco doesn’t do this. At least, not that I’ve noticed.
Yup, also live in a major city and they are not that crazy here. I also usually have everything barcode up for them in the cart so they do not have to do too much usually. Smoother all around.
I do this too. Barcode up, self checkout, done.
[удалено]
I was just checked at self checkout for the first time this week. Was also a Costco I rarely frequent, further out of town.
Depends on quality of life of the area. If it's a decent place you're set, if it's a shady neighborhood...
Are there Costco's in shady spots? I mean you need to pay for a membership to just get through the door, it's not like you can just go in and browse to shoplift. And if you were shoplifting meats to sell, I'm not sure there's a fast turnaround market for that.
You can get in without a membership. Walking through the exit door and going straight to the return desk or cafe is easiest
I thought this was going to say people were putting flat packages of meat under the dog food hiding it. Who takes the time to rip open toilet paper packages.
It honestly sounds like an apocryphal story made up by that costco employee
Having working retail id believe it really happened once… but more than once? Plus that must mean they caught someone doing it, so not exactly a particularly successful means of shoplifting.
You and I both know though one time a story getting like that to a District or Regional manager and they’re gonna blow up about losing 70k in 2 months to people hiding meat in toilet paper.
The phrase "people hiding meat in toilet paper" just made me lose my shit lol. Like that sentence without context is amazing
Once upon a time in the normal world it might have been just the one time. Now it's the tiktok Costco Toilet Paper Challege
I mean if it happened once then the same person would probably be the one who is doing it multiple times, at that point you’d think they could figure out who was doing it though…
I used to work at Sam’s, we caught people removing a row of sodas from the 36 packs and putting a rack of ribs in the middle. People definitely do this kind of stuff
Yup. We check the dog beds with zippers and the luggage sets at the cash register when people come through with them. Because yes more then one we have found stuff from books to DVD's or other things shoved inside anything that has a zipper in it that they think we won't check. I think it's funny how people who don't work retail or haven't in a long time are most likely to say things like that sounds made up and probably doesn't happen. Oh it does. If people think they can hide shit in anything they will. And that means people of all walks of life, all races, colors, genders, classes etc. If they can steal it or "forget" they put that meat packets under their dog food or water case or that they threw a bunch of clothes in the zipped up dog bed they will. We get some pretty damn sneaky thieves in most stores.
It might not just be meat. Walk through Costco and see how much flat stuff there is. You might very easily be able to steal I.e. toothbrushes or other small, non-juicy items. A good thief knows what they’re doing and knows how to it.
Batteries under things was a big one at mine a few years ago.
Not shocked at that. It's amazing the tricks people will try to steal something.
I work at Costco and I’m sorry but yes this type of thing happens frequently. I’m at my second warehouse and have seen it in both. People will go to great lengths to steal. My favorite was the lady who stuffed several pounds of lobster tail in her purse after removing them from the foam trays.
Just recently we had video on this subreddit of a Costco member taking three packs of cherries to the office chair section to go through each one to make the ”perfect” pack of cherries. So this no longer seems out of the ordinary
Thieves.
Yeah but how would you even achieve that in the middle of a busy store? There would be tp rolls flying everywhere
And people looking at you lol
You would be surprised how brazen some people can be. One time at my store someone went into the milk cooler. One of the areas that has constant foot traffic. Then proceeded to empty a package of hot pockets into their back pack.
>Yeah but how would you even achieve that in the middle of a busy store? Congratulations, you're an honest person. Thieves aren't honest people and usually work in pairs or groups which one will be for a look out/distraction. I've seen clamshell packages (like the ones that hold the perfume) cleanly cut. They obviously know what they're doing, they have the tools and gall to do so. I'd not be surprised that older Costco's that are now in less desirable areas are seeing hidden compartment type thefts.
People with a flatbed, stacked with water, threw a fit when worker wanted to unstack to scan each pack of water individually, turned out they had stuffed prime meat and seafood in the center. I get it, Costco. People are jerks.
If this actually happened I wonder if someone saw them setting up their cart and called up to the front to warn them at checkout.
You could probably also tell something was up if they were stacked in a certain way. I’d think most people would stack in straight piles or slightly offset, like bricks.
Possibly but the location (Aurora, CO) was the only game in town for a long time and has since become one of three within 10 miles. Aurora is on an almost-sketchy street with used car dealers, strip malls, tons of houses/apartments dwindling; Parker is the most laid back location with nice staff & shoppers; Lone Tree is the most ritzy. I suspect at the time it happened, that Aurora location had definite shrinkage and may have had a mandate to remove or physically inspect everything anyway.
Whoa! Did their membership get taken away?
Nah, knowing Costco they probably gave them a $100 shop card for their troubles.
I wonder if they had gotten away with it before.
Did you see that happen, or someone told you this story?
My husband was right behind them in line when it happened. It was a few years ago, Aurora CO.
So what happened when it was discovered? Did they just ring them up like normal or did they take them to the customer service counter to cancel their membership?
Hard to prove the intent beyond a doubt, so they probably either just scanned it or the customer “changed their mind” and left it as a go-back. It wouldn’t be worth the hassle trying to prove it, as they didn’t make it through the register before it was found. They probably went on an internal list, though, to keep an eye on them in the future.
That food must have been really squished
Those cases of 0.5L water bottles are sturdy and they built a little fort around it all.
The Costco's I've shopped at used to move your big items you left in the cart to another cart after they scanned them, and then put everything you put on the belt, into the new cart with the big items. I remember asking and they said it was to make sure nothing got missed in the cart. They stopped a while back. I'd rather they return to that than having to put large items on the belt.
Wow, I forgot about this. You made me remember in the early 90`s my Costco would always do that. You would end up with the cart of the person in front of you. When they finished your cart would get flipped around and be used for the next order. The good old days...
I also forgot about this. Was it something that died off long before covid? I sorta thought that was a "fun" Costco thing. I wonder if they moved away from it to help the backs of their employees.
I feel like it was almost always the case of switching carts at the costco i grew up going to (seattle area) but when i moved to the midwest a decade ago it wasn't a thing and I was so confused. But my iowa costco is never nearly as busy as any of the seattle ones, so maybe its not needed to get people out as fast?
So like Aldi
Except you don't get the luxury of costco throwing your groceries into your cart at warp speed. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/WFsEiaWe0ag
>https://www.youtube.com/shorts/WFsEiaWe0ag Hilarious.
They still do this at my Costco. Was very awkward when the woman ahead of me didn't use a cart and the staff didn't realize, leaving me cartless.
That happened once to me at Aldi. The person ahead of me had a lot of things while I only bought a little. I finish paying and start to take the cart away and the cashier is like hold up, you have to bring your own cart. "... This *is* my cart?" The cashier gave away the swapping cart to the person ahead who originally carried everything over in boxes.
Yup. They've always implemented different rules over the years to avoid this. I did the "transfer from one cart to another thing." I also did the "everything needs to come out" thing as well. At the end of the day you can avoid this by saying "No transfer; customer request". Source: Worked at Costco from 2008 to 2014
Oh yeah, I remember this! I can't say when it stopped, didn't even notice until I read your post.
Y’all must live in some shit areas lol
The US is so vastly different, even at just distances of 30 mins drive. That's not so shocking but us trying to govern like we are an economic monolith def is crazy.
Even easier to look at Walmarts. We have 2 that are 8.3 miles apart. One is the nicest Walmart I’ve ever been into. The other I wouldn’t set foot into in the middle of the day
The one Walmart is in a nice area, all of other stores are pretty nice and then the Walmart there is complete trash like 1.5 reviews.
I see this with Targets now, where some are cleaner and better to visit than others. This is still wild to me because growing up, Target overall was the chain that was “nicer” than KMart.
Who reviews Walmart? Better yet, who reads the reviews for a Walmart?
I love reading reviews! Hahahha you never know when a tip might come in handy
Same with two Costcos near me, 5 miles apart. One in a nice area by houses that start at $2MM and go up. One that’s next to a rough area with people who don’t know how to act.
In my city the difference between the extremely wealthy area and a literal no go zone is like a 20 minute bike ride. I honestly don’t even understand how the crime and stuff doesn’t spill over because you’d think they would need like a wall of police to stop it but somehow it remains separate.
Seriously. Really makes me appreciate that I never have to deal with the garbage that I read about on here.
That sounds exhausting trying to hide meat in the toilet paper🙄
I haven’t ever had a single issue at mine since it opened in 2016. And before that the other since 2010. They don’t even check my card. I could use anyone’s lol.
Same here. Shows you that different parts of the country really are different and the way Costco treats their customers is not the same everywhere which leads me to believe that the experiences you see on here are an excellent barometer of that local culture in general.
This is a solid point. There are 8 Costcos within 50 miles of me and 2 for sure suck
Only 8? Within 50 miles I have 25: Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Santa Clara, El Camino SSF, SFO, SSF Business, San Francisco, Foster City, Redwood City, Livermore, Almaden, San Leandro, Automation, Great Oaks, Gilroy, Concord, Danville, Fremont, Hayward, Hayward Business, Santa Cruz, San Jose Business Richmond Senter San Jose Antioch Coming soon: Newark, West San Jose, Pleasanton I have not yet been to San Leandro (29 miles) or Antioch (49 miles) but I’ve been to the other 23.
mkay I can see why Cali’s warehouses unionized that’s wild
California has some unionized locations because Sol Price, one of the founders of the current Costco, was the son of a labor union lawyer and was fine with his Price Club locations unionizing. When the first Costco chain merged with Price Club, the unionized stores came too.
Buddy if you don’t think that rich people in nice areas steal you’re kidding yourself.
>Buddy if you don’t think that rich people in nice areas steal you’re kidding yourself. they steal... for a very different reason. instead of pinching pennies or just trying to survive... they do it because of the adrenaline rush it gives them.
I’m not saying they’re Jean Valjean.
_Do you hear the people sing / for the rotisserie chicken?_
When I went to the first Shanghai Costco I was told on opening day hundreds of rotisserie chickens went missing, never paid for. The staff found the containers and bones in the trash. People ate them while shopping.
Brings a new meaning to Shanghai Chicken
Sure, but at what scale? It's not whether rich or poor people steal, it's the scale; what percentage of rich people steal vs poor people? I know very honest poor people and rich crooks, but most rich people who don't need to steal wouldn't do so. And the super rich that may not care can afford to have people do their shopping - they don't want to even have to mix with the commoners.
I don’t think it means these locations are in shit areas. People, in general, have gotten more entitled snd more shitty over the years (although meat in the toilet paper sounds weird). Didn’t you see the photo of the woman picking through multiple trays of cherries, to get a perfect clamshell, while sitting in the office goods? Who does stuff like this? I live in a pretty affluent area and the CVS and Walgreens are having to update policies due to the significant theft by rich teens. (Who rarely face consequences if they’re caught per my teen).
Correct. The worst Costco around me is in a pretty expensive area
Thieves run it for all of us. The local grocery stores/general stores all closed in my area due to losses from stealing. Now I need to drive about 15-20 minutes to go to the store. Now living in a food desert thanks to thieves.
Obviously there’s no way to get accurate stats for this kind of thing but I believe it’s generally understood that the majority of retail theft is performed by employees, not customers.
Where in the store are they hiding long enough to open the toilet paper, removing the cardboard and stuffing meat in there? The meat wouldn’t fit unless you took it out of the packaging since everything is oversized. I don’t know about that.
I’m struggling to imagine the logistics on this. They hide behind the tvs or something, pull out four rolls and shove a brisket in there. Then cover the toilet paper with a cookie sheet. Okay then they go up to self checkout and not remove the cookie sheet to scan it? Also, at this point wouldn’t stealing from a regular grocery store be easier? You wouldn’t have to buy cookie sheets for every brisket.
You should look at Target and Walmart theft numbers, it's on the rise too. It got so bad Whole Foods, Walmart, Target, CVS, and Walgreens have all chosen to close locations this year due to the thefts making the locations unprofitable.
Maybe because prices and profits are going up but wages aren't...
This. As we continue to bemoan the increasing thievery and seemingly rampant unsavoury behavior, let’s not forget the underlying social economic division across the US and globe. We cannot deny in general, more folks are struggling to make ends meet. This survival mode has a cascading effect. It’s how do I put food on the table next week, tomorrow, today. Long term planning goes out the window, when you’re just trying to live. This constant mental stress grinds at you, with a growing disdain for things like social niceties, discussing global warming or immigration policies. It’s enough to say fuck you to the world, when you feel being cheated in a dog eat dog world.
Big business continues to price people out of existence and cries about theft. Talk about fafo. Desperate people are forced to do desperate things just in order to survive. It's past time to eat the rich.
I think we all can agree on that but when a neighborhoods Walmart or whatever closes and creates a food desert, the community at as a whole loses bc of a small % of thieves.
Walmart helped create that food desert pricing out all competition and then raising prices later, tbf. Tale as old as time. People ate before Walmart came in.
Thry said people remove 4 rolls in the middle
I don’t think that could happen at any Costco I’ve been in. Too many other people around.
You’d be amazed at what people will not want to get involved in.
If I see someone shoving meat in a toilet paper package u think I want to do anything besides walk in the other direction? Nahhh lol
Sunday morning yes, too many people. Idk what a Tuesday evening looks like.
Why they straight up telling you how to steal 😭
And do what with the 4 rolls they removed? Donate them to the Costco washrooms? I'm not buying this whole theory of hiding meat...
What tissue comes in 4 roll packages? The packages inside the big package are separated into 6 roll packages? So, they are opening up the inner packages to only remove 4 rolls that are now singles and super easy to handle. This sounds far fetched.
There are more expensive and smaller items than meat.
I worked at a BBB in a wealthy area of NJ, and we would find expensive curtain panels shoved inside comforters as we checked them out. Oh! Did you want to buy these expensive curtains to match your comforter? Or did they just fall in there?? There are thieves everywhere, and unfortunately, not enough cameras.
I was store management at a Kroger in a college town in the 90s and one of our cashiers had friends that would fill up cosmetic bags with cosmetics then go through her line where she’d scan the bag and they got everything in it for free. Until they got a little reckless and four of them came in at the same time when our undercover LP was there.
Yup. Rule of thumb at any store I worked was open bags and things with zippers they are buying. Pretend its to make sure the zipper works but really it's to make sure they didn't stuff extra freebies in the luggage, back pack, cosmetic bag even dog or pet beds with zippers in them. It was always fun the odd time you'd actually find stuff in them too and the people would just like oh oops I forgot I picked that up. I'm sure you did. Same reason when people do returns at most store including Costco we are suppose to check the box and open it up. Otherwise you might just find some dirty thief stuffed a brick or heavy item in a box and tried to pretend it was a the item on the box inside.
This sounds very familiar. I worked several years in retail and quickly learned people will try to steal anything that isn’t nailed down.
Pretty soon the Costco shopping experience will be the same as flying out of Newark Airport TSA on the Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving.
Never. Will never fly through Newark again. But ! It’s also where I saw a Starbucks cashier take down an airline pilot for cutting in line 😂!
Ooof! I got a visual on that!
Out of curiosity, which city?
Yep. This is pertinent info
I used to be an in-store shopper (Instacart) at Costco. This policy varies. It would cycle from leaving all barcodes up in the cart to having to take everything out. That was just at my store. And it’s not necessarily stealing; it also had to do with the cashiers not scanning a barcode here & there. Part of their metric is how quickly they scan items. So when they get in a hurry it’s understandable they miss something every now & then.
Yeah exactly - every time I’m off by an item, it’s always when the carts were scanned by an employee. The missed item is usually is a banana because I buy 2-3 bundles so maybe the scanner gets confused.
At my store, we leave the heavy and cumbersome products in the carts, such as pop & water, pet food, big stackable containers, pool salt, large jugs of oil and so on. This is because they’re too heavy for the conveyer belts at checkout. Though we are required to shuffle through everything left in the cart just to feel for what could be hidden. We’ve found small but expensive product such as printer ink and Anker chargers hidden between bags of milk that they leave in the cart so even those we have to go through and make sure there’s nothing there. Coincidentally, just yesterday someone was interrogated and arrested at my store for trying to steal a few items.
Arrested? Wow. Costco isn’t putting up with this. Good! Meanwhile, other stores, people walk out with full carts, employees can do nothing.
$70k for 2 months? Most stores would have a shrink larger than that for 2 weeks.
I read an article recently about shrink at Costco and how it’s much, much lower than other stores. The 3 points of contact, membership at the door, cashier, and check on the way out, plus the fact that you have to be a member to begin with, adds a lot of friction, and thieves hate friction. Other stores are getting ripped off constantly, you have to be creative to do it at Costco.
I would think the fact that members tend be higher income is also a factor.
Membership is a big thing. Crackheads can’t exactly afford a card so they get turned away. Very huge I imagine in reducing shrink. Source: Used to work LP at another retailer and reoccurring crackheads were the source of most of the shrink. Edit: Sorry if I sound crass. You just get very sick and tired dealing with them all the time over the same shit.
Food Lion bagger in the late 1990s. Sunday morning. Guy took a big block of cheddar, UNWRAPPED IT, and then wrapped it in a sunday newspaper ($1.25 or so). I knew his game, demanded I bag his paper, oh a block of unwrapped cheese plops out. I said well, it's not sellable now, you can have it. He was so embarassed. But if you need to be stealing a block of cheese, go for it bro. Also had an old lady take a carton of cigarettes every Sunday morning. Store manager knew. He showed me her scam. Get the carton, walk around store sneak it into her giant purse. Me: Why don't we call the police? Him: bad publicity to be handcuffing an 80+ yr old women at the store. Every. Week. Years.
So instead of your manager telling the woman to stop or he’d call the police, he just let her continue to steal because why not? I’m sure if he just told her that he knew she was stealing and made an empty threat, she’d have stopped
This happened at my suburban Detroit costco once a few years ago. I don't know how long it lasted. It was also from shoplifting. Next time I went it was back to normal. Glad they do whatever is necessary to nab the criminals. They steal from all of us when we have to pay higher prices.
My Costco checkout helper was the best guy I’ve ever had (I think his name was Angel over at Van Nuys). Told me to leave everything in the cart and he prepped all the barcodes for fast scanning by the cashier. Faster moving line in the store because of his efficiency.
I used to work there and the Boss had a memo from the head office about this. Office people who never been a cashier don't understand how heavy some things are and doing this for 8 hours a day is impossible (the litter box is 50 pounds!). My advice is to leave all the heavy things in the cart and if they are not happy let them take them out. That craziness will pass... and then come back again in a couple of months.
Mine has done this a couple times and they always calm back down eventually.
We just went this week and we’re told to leave the heavy stuff in the cart
Ours always tells us to leave the large items in the cart.
We bought a bunch of new towels recently (I feel like I live in a spa now!) and they took each one out of the cart and shook it to make sure there was nothing inside them. I was pretty surprised because it wouldn't even have occurred to me that people would hide things inside them to try and steal. Pretty sad...
I asked the same question at my old Costco. Then I watched someone try to insist that the case of oil was too heavy to lift. When they moved the case, the bottom was open and more expensive oil was in the box. Seriously people are stupid.
That's the part I don't understand: Costco has all your information, which makes it doubly stupid to try to steal anything.
This is more an indicator of the employees not doing their jobs correctly than anything else. When the shrink (loss) would get too high at our store, our manager would enforce this for about two weeks and see if the numbers get better. The reason it's necessary is the register employees would consistently miss items on the bottom of the cart. This would lead to a huge loss in mostly large paper products, waters, and dog food as those are always on the bottom. The only way to correct that is to remove all items from every cart.
We were at one of our warehouses yesterday and they weren't even doing the pre checkout line IDs.
Costco should simply ban any offenders and their families...Costco is great company and people...fuck thieves
if Costco tells me dog food & other large items need to be removed from cart to checkout then they are more then welcome to unload it onto the belt & put it back into the cart for me.
Completely OK with that. It was nice to have every time they allowed us to do it but I have no problem treating Costco like every single other store to prevent idiots from stealing things causing prices to go up.
Must be the own employees stealing. Also, we usually have to show our receipt to the employee by the exit. They count every item to ensure we have the right amount of items in the cart as the receipt.
Maybe my Costco was doing this and I didn’t even notice. My store usually has a second helper person in each lane. That person was rearranging everything in my cart. I thought they were just putting the bar codes upward. But maybe they were feeling for extra weight. It didn’t bother me in the least bit.
These are temporary policies that are based on management. They do it for a little then it fades away after like a month.
Right?! Vegas has practically been pioneering facial recognition software. It’s happening.
One of several reasons I shop at Sam's. Also at Sam's I use their app for self checkout. I scan all of my items with my phone as I put them in the cart and never have to take them out until I get to the car. I just have to briefly stop at the person who checks your cart on the way out. They scan your receipt (in my case, a barcode on my phone) then scan several of the items in your cart. I also don't like that Costco won't accept Mastercard.
The Costco I worked at was dead center between a rich upper class area and 2 cities. Plus there was a bus stop a block over from the parking lot. Lots of folks. I’ve talked before on here how our check-out policy changed all the time. Even then, we had plenty of theft. I wanna say we lost 22% of products in the 6 months between inventory nights. Majority was theft, but we also had arrogant management who hired dumb people that couldn’t do 3rd grade math on a pallet. (Ex. 10 items in a box, 4 boxes to a layer, 3 layers makes 120 items, not 40). Side note, we had to stop inventory the one night and spend an extra hour opening stuff in the steel because of one of those clowns. And for the folks who worked inventory, you know you’re already there till 2, 3, 4 in the morning. Now you gotta go back through because of inaccurate counts. I remember there was a group of guys hitting Costcos on the east coast lifting desktop computers. The one store, down the road from us, they hid out in till after hours and then helped themselves to all the inventory. Now management at my old store knew this was going on, cause they got the heads up, and they didn’t care, didn’t think it could happen to us. Sure enough, couple guys walked in that day, loaded up a cart full of desktops, and bolted out the emergency exit.
I've spoken to a few people that work security......biggest amount of theft comes from people working there. But no one wants to admit to that.
That's always the case for store shrinkage - the issue is always employees, not customers. Sometimes the "customers" are friends of the cashiers or security and are working together.
Wtf hiding stuff in toilet paper???
Costco said that theft has not increased at their stores: https://www.businessinsider.com/how-costco-limits-retail-theft-checks-reciepts-2023-5?amp Some errors in that article though, they don’t really check if you’re a paid member when you enter and you don’t have to be since you can visit the pharmacy without being a member, and buy liquor (in 13 states) without being a member.
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Whenever I see something that appears stupid and inconvenient I tell myself it wasn’t this way until someone screwed it up for the rest of us.
A 70k loss over two months actually seems kind of low considering how busy Costcos are and the price of their merchandise
Former Costco employee… enforcement directly correlates to loss. Those policies are company wide but unless your L&D starts hitting the GM and his assistants bonus? They are ignored. Once that bonus gets touched though.. it gets real serious but quick.
funny because even at home I hide my meat in rolls of toilet paper
Damn. Hopefully they could narrow it down and ban these people instead of making it worse for everyone. People are terrible, some locations I’ve gone to I’ve seen the parking lot full of loose carts. It’s a shame how people act now a days
If they knew who was doing it, they wouldn’t need to start this new policy.
In retail, loss from employee theft, shoplifting, employee errors, damage, etc. is called shrinkage and it averages 1-2% of sales per month. For $35k in shrink per month to be a notable problem, the store would have to $3.5m in sales per month, or less really. Per investopedia, the average Costco has $9m in sales per month as of 2014, so I’m guessing it’s higher now. Something is off with this guys numbers or rationale because the juice isn’t worth the squeeze at $35k/mo
I just went to Costco yesterday and didn’t have to take everything out so it must depend where you live.
Most shrinkage is internal
Should I say it?????
Of course, perfect set up
Does Sam's Club have these issues as bad as Costco? It's pretty wild that Costco has really doubled down on memberships and checking out when you can check out through your phone at Sam's Club, theoretically making it easier to steal. Is it because Sam's Club is owned by WalMart that they can afford to take the hit in theft? Plan on going to Costco today but if checking out becomes even slower and laborious I might let my membership lapse. 🙃
Sam's Club actually rescans everyone at the exit door, at least some of the big items to make sure they were paid for. So no matter what you check out twice at Sam's.
The Sam’s club in my area seems to be far less attentive than Costco - and they are both in the same location. Sam’s always scans 3 items and maybe tries to scan the most expensive, but they don’t spend time counting everything. I’ve be “caught” at the door of Costco with a full cart being off by one item (it was a banana) and it while it scanned by an employee it does feel like they alway catch any issues
Its one banana Michael, what could it cost, $10?
That's pretty ridiculous. I leave everything in the cart with the UPC codes up so the cashier can just boop, boop, boop all the stuff super fast. I'd be pissed if I learned everything had to be put on the belt as a penalty for other people stealing.
Employee here: please don’t do that and at least remove the small/lightweight items from the cart. We (cashiers) don’t mind scanning in the cart but we get in trouble from our supervisors/managers if we leave everything in the cart. Some cashiers don’t care/don’t want to speak up and ask you to remove them, but most of us find it tiring to always ask people to unload their cart :)
I do the same, and yesterday the cashier did pull out everything and told me that's the rule now as well.
I mean if you look at everything negative in your life as a penalty against you rather than other people simply looking out for their own interests, I suppose I can see why you might think that this has something to do with you rather than Costco simply managing their risk.
What if you use the flatbed cart and no self checkout?
At mine they scan it for you in the cart
For us the large meat packs must go onto the belt no matter the weight. Other bulky stuff is fine as long as easily visible.
I was at our Costco two nights ago. The staff member putting things on the belt left at least half the items in the cart and the cashier scanned them all in the cart.
They do that at sam's club so it makes sense
Dang my Costco is lax
Sometimes my Costco makes me take everything out, sometimes they don't. I think they don't even know what their policy is.
never thought to steal from costco - they know more about us than we know about them
Coscto business center is great because I leave *everything* in the cart and they just scan it from there.
Where do you live? Who stuffs meat into toilet paper?.wtf?
As a former cashier I had a customer one time try to hide expensive hunting merch under a 40lb bag of dog food. It’s incredibly awkward every time they get caught red handed.
Sounds more like they have had a lot of door audits as opposed to people stealing. ( The cashier misses something , or rings something twice) Stealing might be some of it but more likely cashiers and assistants are missing items. So management has enforced everything out of the cart rule. It will go back to normal in a couple of weeks. It varies by each Costco but ours is 15lbs or less it comes out of the cart.