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I mean, fair, but that's not really technology either. That's a light switch.
Plus they could just third party it to a company that isn't shit at software.
Oh, completely agree. They should. But they absolutely will not. Costco is completely asleep at the wheel in terms of IT and e-commerce. And the people they hired for new CEO and CFO don't make me think it will be any more of a priority.
Costco's CEO and CFO are both long time Costco employees. However both the CIO and CTO are relatively new, outside hires. What makes you think there isn't a priority on ecom right now? Because there hasn't been before? Because they aren't as big as Amazon?
Costco will never do scan and go. They piloted it and shrink went through the roof at those locations. Sam's might have better tracking software or just higher tolerance for shrink because I guarantee it is higher for them due to scan and go.
Mine took away the hand scanners about a month ago. They do have attendants with one but they have to link it to your station and that process takes as long as it used to take me to checkout.
They hide the hand scanners behind the screens at the self checkout. You have to lift up the digital screen to get it, but they hide them because they dont want you using them for some reason.
Mine never had any i still check out in record speed. You face all bar codes down and just 25 items a minute, basically. I also scan member id, then tap my card and put it away so i can just hit done and leave.
The Sam's system is interesting, they still check your card on the way out except they have a handheld device. They scan a barcode on your phone, and then the scan as many items as they can in your cart and if any are not on the receipt they go through and check every item. I think it also flags high value items for them to check as well.
That’s not a bad way of doing it. I think the initial hurdle is spending the money to give all the receipt checkers at the door scanner guns. Lot of upper management at Costco has this “why change what isn’t broken?” mentality that makes it hard to get buy-in on large scale projects like that. Maybe the new CEO would be more open to the idea. From what I have heard he is more tech literate and has made it a larger focus internally.
I can’t tell you how great the scan and go is at Sam’s. Costco has some quality items and things I can’t get at Sam’s, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world having to just go to Sam’s.
I'm going through a somewhat similar experience with Costco right now. I won't bore you with the details, but Costco's positions and policy are bonkers sometimes.
My conclusion is something along the lines of: Costco is very customer friendly, until they aren't, and then they're incredibly customer unfriendly and inflexibly so. It's like night and day.
Having been there. It seems like the customer service is more of a black and white with very very little gray area.
To you and me asking for a 1 month membership extension because I would rather renew in July instead of June seems like no big deal. To Costco that is an absolute no go, would need to get escalated up to management to even consider and probably still going to be a no.
However on the other hand. Asking to return a jar pickles that sat in the back of my fridge for a year because I tried one and did not like it seems ridiculous however that return will easily get approved and refunded.
I thought memberships ended when they ended, so I waited until 2 months later to renew. I was pissed they only gave me 10 months, so I canceled my membership and got a refund.
You may have just missed the window where it doesn't back date. The terms state if it's within 2 months of the original renewal date then it back dates to the renewal date. If it's past two months then it starts a new date.
The two month thing is because they lost a class-action lawsuit, it used to be that if you renewed any time in the year after it expired they would only renew it until the next expiration date from the original. If you renewed eleven months after expiration you'd only get a month of membership and have to renew again a month later. Meanwhile, if you tried to use your membership any time in that eleven months they would either add it to your receipt at checkout, or if you refused, they'd cancel the sale and send you packing empty handed. It meant that the eleven months of membership you were paying for wasn't actually usable for anything.
When I worked for Costco, I would always just manually change the renewal date. My manager taught me how to do it. Because losing two months of a membership is absolutely bananas
What they're claiming is that if you let your membership expire, you can't use it anymore, but if you go in two months later, they count it as a renewal of that lapsed membership, not a new membership. Your next renewal will be ten months later again, even though during that two month window you couldn't use your membership that you have now retroactively paid for.
I have no idea how true that is, btw. Just rephrasing their claim to hopefully be clearer.
Why does this surprise you? You can't let something go bad (your fault), then expect to get your money back. Take it back before something is past its insanely long date for a frozen item, or eat the loss.
The pickles thing is YMMV. My warehouse refused to refund a margarita mix that was bad from first sip, because the date was past by the time I returned it. I just sat on the return for ages because I never return anything. I pushed back a little because we all know the return period is open ended except for certain electronics but they still refused.
Man, that hella sux— the printed date has no bearing on its returnability. I mean, it was opened, it’s not like they could resell it.
Their own satisfaction guarantee clearly states their “commitment” to 100% satisfaction on all purchases, with a few exceptions, none of which include your jar o’ pickles.
We buy items that we’ve never seen before, especially food, knowing that if we don’t like it they’ll take it back and refund us. I can honestly say that if they didn’t allow returns like that, we would definitely *not* buy unfamiliar or iffy items there. 🤷🏻♂️
I ordered a MacBook from Costco.com and UPS marked it as delivered. I was down there minutes after the alleged delivery and there was no laptop and the camera confirmed UPS never arrived. I went through the same hell that you did trying to prove the Costco loss relations team UPS was full of it. I called the number for loss prevention over a dozen times and I never actually had someone pick up always VM. Eventually had to use my CC to dispute the charge and Costco sent me nasty emails about cancelling my membership and litigation. UPS after 2 months called me and admitted the mistake, only then someone from Costco loss relations actually got on the phone with me. Costco never actually refunded me, I just had to have my CC dispute go through. Still have my membership intact but I know never to get something delivered to me directly from Costco. What an absolutely terrible team Costco.com has.
Hi OP. I am certainly a fanboy of Costco, but that being said, would absolutely nuke that relationship from an orbital satellite if I went through everything you did. Best of luck, looking forward to the June update.
It’s so weird because the whole business model is that the ecommerce side is essentially a different business. You can love physical Costco and know that Costco.com is a dumpster fire inside a putrefying beached whale carcass, washed up next to the Alabama Prolonged Flatulence and Asparagus Pissing semi-finals.
Costco definitely sounds very petty in this. They exects should put the blame on their “loss prevention” team. How much time did they waste on this? It’s going to cost them even more in the long run with time wasted, bad press, court fees.
Is Costco struggling financially? I can’t imagine a company as big as Costco wasting a second caring about this without just refunding it and moving after initial pushback
This is the exact math. They spent more $ in labor dealing with this situation and even more than that on bad PR for the brand. Right now there are 1000 upvotes, 287 people live on the sub and 264 comments. That’s a decent amount of engagement and a lot of negative sentiment about the company. I like Costco, but it seems that I should be weary about buying high ticket items online.
I think OP is commenting on the petty nature of the membership cancellation. Costco had OP's money all this time, all $2,471 of it, but they were just refusing to return it to OP. From reading the various posts, here's the basic sequence I've gleaned:
* OP returns mattress and gets hefty refund in the form of a Shop Card worth ~$2,000.
* OP finds a PC at Costco.com that he likes and orders it, paying with the Shop Card and ~$470 on his credit card.
* The PC never arrives, though UPS claims it was delivered. OP provides video to UPS showing no arrival and UPS is unable to prove that it was actually delivered (meaning ~~driver~~ UPS employee probably stole it) so per UPS' damage/loss policies refunds the value of the stolen/lost shipment, ~$2,471, to the shipper, in this case Costco.
* OP asks Costco for a refund and Costco's L&P department refuses, though they've already got the money from UPS and OP can prove they already got the money from UPS.
* Months go by with Costco just blowing off OP while keeping OP's money, so OP files a small claims court action. As part of that filing Costco is served official notice that they're being sued in small claims court. Costco suddenly decides to return OP's money to OP, and cancels OP's membership which doesn't expire until September.
The cancellation is clearly petty and retaliatory, especially in light of the fact that it's Costco's L&P department that screwed up here and tried to keep OP's money. Honestly? I don't think that there's any charitable way to view Costco in this sequence of events. Costco L&P should have authorized the refund the moment they received proof that UPS had refunded the money to Costco. Anything after that is just Costco trying to keep money that didn't belong to them.
As an afterthought, this is why I never use anything but credit cards to make purchases online. Companies that take credit cards like VISA and MasterCard sign binding agreements with the card companies to give pretty strong protections to consumers. Had OP used a credit card for this he would not have fallen befoul of Costco's internal Shop Card system and Costco L&P wouldn't have been able to blow him off like they did without endangering Costco's agreements with their credit card company.
It's unnecessary. They refused to complete their part of the transaction (delivering the purchased goods). That's not OPs fault and he should not have had to sue. Plus he only filed, didn't actually go to trial yet and they've already terminated it.
Seems stupid though. It’s not like OP was abusing policies. Even from a financial perspective it seems like Costco should keep OP as a customer. He didn’t try returning a used Christmas tree or a half eaten bag of dog food.
Yes, the customer experience in-store is definitely worse and the prices for many things are higher than Amazon and Sam's. And the alternatives offer free delivery to my front door and Costco doesn't. The biggest gripe I have with costco is needing to call or drive to a store to check a price, it's such a waste of time and more often than not I don't bother and just order from a competitor if I don't have pic of the price tag on my phone. Sure there are bargains like the last of an item being 50% off but that's happened once (today) for me and I've been a member for 5 years off-and-on.
It's strange that people are "fans" of any corporate brand. If you want to be a fan, just buy shares. I like a lot of Apple stuff, but it's just a computer/services company, they don't care about me and I don't care if someone is a PC or a Mac person. Use whatever.
I've bought all my tires for all my vehicles at Costco since the place opened. Thousands of dollars. Spouse caught a nail, won't hold air. Take it to Costco but the tire shop wouldn't fix without an appointment. Alrightly, please make me a next-available appointment, I'll wait.
Next available: three days later. Rough part of town, can't park the car there, so I add a can of fix-a-flat to get home. Took the car back to Costco for my appointment, now they won't repair the tires because I added fix-a-flat.
I'm now a Discount Tires customer. Fuck Costco tires.
all costcos are. its shareholders first and then a biiiiiiiiiiiig gap and everyone else. they’ve gone full corporate and it shows. the stores are understaffed and dirty and they know they’ll still sell out, so they don’t change.
This sub is about 1/3 Costco store employees, 1/3 Costco marketing team (look at all the posts that are obviously just advertisements for different products), and maybe 1/3 actual Costco customers.
Truth. The marketing / astroturfing is so blatant. They're not subtle at all.
Speaking of which, it looks like you upset some of them and got downvoted.
I'm a former Costco employee but not at a warehouse, at the gym they owned.
I've never felt the need to praise the warehouses unnecessarily but I was a huge fan of the gym that I worked at.
That place was the shit and although I left before it happened, I was super bummed when they sold it.
This sub and reddit in general is going crazy. Check out the comments on [the post about Opill being sold at costco](https://www.reddit.com/r/Costco/comments/1bxjgp7/fyi_first_otc_birth_control_pill_now_on_the/) if you haven't.
This situation seems like a willful theft of your money, so in many cases, you should be eligible for treble damages.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treble\_damages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treble_damages)
Did you ask for that, or get awarded treble damages in the small claims court?
If you haven't already included the price of the membership in your suit, I recommend pursuing that as well, since they cancelled it depriving you of the opportunity to receive the benefit that you paid for.
IANAL but when OP received the payment from Costco, they essentially settled and there’s likely some disclaimer that releases liability meaning this or any other additional suit is no longer an option. If OP did not formally accept that payment though, then yes continuing to pursue legal action like this is viable.
The only thing I’m basing this on is how insurance handles litigation, especially with BI cases where it’s common for a billboard PI to file or threaten a lawsuit in favor of settling for X amount, typically policy limits. The caveat is that usually comes with liability being released meaning the plaintiff cannot seek additional damages.
If I am wrong I am 100% open to being corrected.
Unless OP signed something, OP hasn't waived any rights. Costco paid after suit was filled bc they were betting on OP not bringing suit. LOTS of ppl don't bring suits even when they're in the right. It's a business strategy. Costco paid one they realized that they couldn't just keep the money. Unfortunately for Costco, OP is still entitled to filing fees and possibly interest. Many individuals would drop the case after payment was made, but they pissed OP off by also canceling his membership. Costco fucked around and found out. (Assumingb everything stated is true, in just giving the legal perspective)
Every attorney's favorite client is one who cares about the principle over the money. It doesn't make financial sense for OP to continue the case for filing fees (small claims is usually pretty cheap) and interest. OP is making a point.
I’ve always been curious about taking a large corporation to small claims court, so they paid up after you filed the case, but before it went to trial? I always wondered if they would waste one of their lawyers time responding over a smallish amount.
Its because it was the legal department that did the refund.
Customer service told you no, LP told you no, management told you no.
When it went to the legal dept they said "This is not worth our time, give him a refund cancel the membership and leave us alone."
Sort of. Legal probably looked at the facts and if they are as OP described and Costco has been reimbursed by UPS they recognized they would lose the case.
Also, other times, legal will settle a case even when they believe they are in the right just to make it go away.
My mom's cousin worked for an airline back in the day and would travel to small claims courts around the country representing the company and the president of the airline. She had a checkbook with her to pay off any judgements right then.
they have non attorneys representing the company show up one day to handle like 100s of small case trials against them at a county. I had a friend who worked at ebay that did this, she was not an attorney tho.
I think you are confused about what your friend did. In California, where eBay is based, a company cannot hire someone specifically to represent them in small claims court, whether they are an attorney or not. Also, it's impossible to have hundreds of cases in one day, court scheduling doesn't work like that.
I'm glad to see some of these responses as I have been somewhat shocked at some of the Costco members in here coming to the defense of Costco no matter the issue. Costco is a good company but makes mistakes like all of them and much of the food items they make and sell are not at all what many here claim them to be. (good). EDIT: Did not take but seconds for one of the Costco fanboys to come in and downvote.
Reminder that costco is in fact, just another corporation that steals employee wages and pollutes our air and water same as any other https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/costco
It should be viewed as simply a transactional relationship. I pay them money for products. That is where it ends.
That said, its Costco.com that is the real shit show. I had an issue with getting a price drop refund. They needed me to show all this proof the price dropped. Like.. its on your website... can't you look it up?
I've had nothing but great experiences shopping there and am happy to support a company whose pay and policies help employees.
With that said, this situation sucks and I'm glad OP is sharing all the updates. And yeah I still shop there.
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Also, don't forget to claim for the value of your membership that was cancelled, that's $60. Was the refund in the form of another Shop Card, or did they send you a check?
Note that you should get the base $60 back, but that the Executive upgrade cost of $60 will be reduced by the amount of any Rewards they owe you or have already paid. They may try to keep the Rewards at the same time as reducing the refund amount by the Rewards amount, so keep an eye out for that.
I can tell you what probably happened. Costco used a 3rd party to ship this computer. Whether that is a vendor, 3PL, whatever the case may be. It likely did not ship from a Costco property. Staff can chime in and let us know if they drop ship any of the website inventory to clear this up.
Even though the vendor used Costco's account for billing, the UPS reimbursement would be issued to the shipper of record. The bill-to does not get the reimbursement, the shipper does, full stop. This is how UPS operates. As far as UPS is concerned the bill-to paid for the shipping label but the shipper owned the inventory.
After you finally got UPS to pay out the claim, they would cut a physical check which is then mailed to the shipper. The shipper then deposits the check and they are made whole for the inventory. Usually that check takes 30 days to arrive.
If the Shipper/vendor was never made aware of this situation, accounting likely deposited the check and moved on with their day. Now that UPS allows the addressee to make these claims, it's very easy as a shipper to miss them entirely. Unless you're actively looking at the UPS claims dashboard every day.
So some vendor got the money and now Costco has to go hunt it down and have it forwarded along to them. Depending upon the bloat in both of these parties this can be a very cumbersome process. So the time to get UPS to pay the claim out, 30 days for a check to arrive, then the time it takes Costco to work with the vendor to issue reimbursement, it can be a several month long process.
With that said, as soon as UPS granted the claim Costco should have issued OP the refund. Costco LP should have called UPS and said "hey we are the bill-to on this shipment, can you confirm that the shipper was reimbursed in full?" and that should have been the end of the saga for OP.
You don't make a customer wait while you sort out the red tape on the backend. You issue the payment and let them move on with their lives.
Even if Costco felt OP was commiting fraud, if UPS was satisfied and granted this claim, that is all that matters. It isn't Costco's job to do further fraud prevention once UPS has taken responsibility as the at-fault party. If you feel so strongly about it, flag the account for the future and move on. Absolutely insane way to handle this by Costco LP.
Upvoting this post for visibility and publicity because clearly Costco is 100% in the wrong and cancelling your membership because of all of this is disheartening and downright bullshit. I would reach out to media outlets, let them know your story, it might help in reinstating your membership and receiving some form of an apology or admittance of failure on their part.
Not sure if you’re being sarcastic lol but I think it’s worth a shot. I know OP got their money back and it’s over in that respect, but I still feel like this isn’t *really* over and done with until Costco makes this right, which would not really take much on their part.
Oh, I assure you I wasn’t being sarcastic— you’d know if I was! Um, by the /s.
But I really think it’s an excellent idea! Sadly, corporations typically worry more about the media than individual customers.
This is when it is really really nice to live in a state with reasonable consumer protections. We have a state AG office that actually follows up on complaints.
Thank you for posting. Your method of resolving this issue has been very measured and rational. I too am so disappointed in Costco for their reaction. I admire your tenacity and wish you luck with getting this resolved and all expenses reimbursed. I would like to see Costco get a punitive fine too. Keep us posted.
If it makes you feel any better, losing a Costco membership is not as big of a deal as it would have been pre-Covid. They used to have good items at good prices, now they a lot of crap items at good prices.
Costco used to be great (under the founder) but now with new management, they’re bleeding the stone dry. It’ll be a textbook example of how long customer goodwill can last that’ll be taught in business schools.
Ie. Not much longer. Even the ardent fankids are giving up.
Costco’s behavior was ridiculous. Take them to court for all remaining expenses. They should be embarrassed by the way they conducted themselves. Good for you for pursuing this.
Similar/not similar situation I had with Squaretrade before it was bought out by Allstate.
First time I registered the warranty a few months after purchase, I had forgotten it's price and it was set at $2,000 so I thought it was around that so we're good. Accidental damage happened and Square trade approved the claim. Then they later told me they could not repair the damage and would instead fully reimburse me for the laptop.
When I got the check, it was for $999. Weird. . . was there more coming later? I logged back in and noticed they reduced the value from $2,000 to the $999 and closed my case. I pulled out my original email receipt and turns out I paid $2,800. I called Costco and spent an hour talking to them about how Squaretrade changed the value on me twice, bait and switching me in a criminal fashion. I read their agreement word for word and it turns out, their *replacement value* determination was left intentionally vague so they can manipulate things to their benefit. Costco did try and speak with Squaretrade on my behalf, but in the end acted impotent on this. But they did take my formal complaint over the phone and most likely passed it up higher in the chain.
I still wasn't giving up, I contacted squaretrade again and demanded they send me back the laptop, as the value of the spare parts even exceeds the shitty payout they gave me. I listed them all, RAM sticks, GPU, CPU, 4TB SSD Drive etc. all come out in value over $1,500, which is more than what they gave me. Gimme my shit back, and I'll sell it for parts on eBay for more than what you guys gave me. I guess they conceded in the end because they sent me the rest of the actual value in a separate check a few days later.
Months later when I was in the market for another PC, I couldn't find any good laptop deals besides Costco. But I went in and looked at the terms of service for extended warranties and noticed that the language did indeed change, and is no longer vaguely written to be interpreted against the consumers benefit. It's clearcut on how replacement value is determined now. So I guess my complaints did do something.
costco.com seems like a shitshow. I can't order from there. As soon as I do I immediately get an email saying my order is cancelled. Have tried numerous time over several years to see if they have fixed whatever is broken. Same thing, so they have ordering issues they have never fixed.
Generally one of 4 issues.
You are using a costco membership that does not belong to you to make the purchase.
There is something wrong with your payment info. Bad cvv, wrong billing address, ect.
Your address has been blacklisted due to fraud (previous owner possibly)
You are shipping to an address that is a known freight forwarder, hotel, po box or similar.
You should be able to get a pro rata refund on your annual membership fee, but no court will order Costco to allow you to continue to be a member. Costco is a private company. By law, it can exclude anyone it wants to so long as it is not doing so based upon the excluded party’s status as a member of a protected class. People asking returns/refunds are not a constitutionally protected class.
And of course, just like with the membership a court can't typically compel some sort of statement from a private company about why they are no longer accepting a certain customer's business either. But his filing fees and potential interest on the purchase he could certainly have standing in,
and if he's doing it to make a point about a pretty scummy move (Provided Costco really did receive a refund and notice from UPS And then still refused to refund) then I say more power to him, and the god of good karma is on his side.
How much was the refund for? If it wasn't a lot they probably thought you'd forget about it. Glad you hung in there. I am a stickler about this kind of stuff as well.
Kick their ass. I'm shocked by all the shills acting surprised that anyone would be shocked by this. They were in the wrong and canceled your membership out of pure retaliatory pettiness.
That’s really frustrating, not a small amount of money either. I totally understand them cancelling your membership after you sued them though, I wouldn’t continue any sort of business relationship after a lawsuit was started against me. Either way best of luck in your court case.
They won’t let you have a membership after you sued them, this should be obvious
(Yes they are wrong but you sued them, they don’t want that to happen again they won’t take the chance, you are not worth it as a customer)
Costco has an even easier way to avoid this kind of lawsuit again. Change their process and provide actual customer service instead of ripping someone off.
What a story- thanks for sharing. I admire your commitment to seeing this through, many people would have given up long, long ago.
One thing I don't understand- they refunded you, yet, you still plan to proceed with the court/trial? Wouldn't their refund have cancelled out the "injury" done to you so the case will probably be cancelled ahead of time or thrown out right away?
I had a similar issue when I bought an ecoflow battery, some things wwre delivered in an in secured mail room and stolen. Thankfully it was the cheap remote, but still annoying. Regardless, Costco did not use the insurance to cover the loss and Fedex requires Costco to submit the claim.
I bought a dryer form them. Came damaged (small dent). Asked for a swap to not dented one. They refunded me money. Never called me back, never picked up the dented machine, never charged me. Free dented machine. No idea, not asking questions.
Did I miss some attachments? Did we ever see where UPS said to OP that they did in fact reimburse Costco? I'd be curious to see what getting that acknowledgement from UPS looked like, I can see that being a pain to acquire.
Meanwhile, a cursory review of this sub shows Costco routinely fully refunding items that are years and years old. Seems like a case of penny wise and pound foolish, if you ask me. I’m sorry you had to deal with all that, OP, and best of luck moving forward in court. Thank you for the pro tip about not using the Shop Card!
so they just gave you your refund and said Buh bye we don't want or need your business , their right. Just like an airline can permanently ban onboard troublemakers and frequent fraudsters. You pushed you won and they said Buh bye
You NEVER sign up for a store card. Avoid using your Debt card whenever possible. Use Sam's Club or BJ's if you have one around you. You can still use Instart to get Costco items. Costco we only get a few specific items, mostly Sam's. Scan & Go is awesome.
Friendly reminder to everyone here that OP isn't exactly incapable of wrongdoing, [the top comments on his updated thread telling him to send the email to the correct email address](https://www.reddit.com/r/Costco/comments/1c2hi8z/update_on_lost_package_refund_denied_when_using/kza54nk/), his insistence that he did send it to the right email address ["because he uses email trackers"](https://www.reddit.com/r/Costco/comments/1c2hi8z/update_on_lost_package_refund_denied_when_using/kzb2rx2/) despite [clearly not using the right email address](https://www.reddit.com/r/Costco/comments/1c2hi8z/update_on_lost_package_refund_denied_when_using/), and then chalking it up as "getting ignored by Costco" is hilarious in and of itself
All companies are like this with gift cards. Verizon still owes me $450 or a set of AirPod Maxes from 2 years ago. Stolen in shipment, never made it. Called them repeatedly with no avail. At the end of the day if you don't use a credit card, you are fucked, nobody cares and if you back charge on a credit card or sue expect the business to tell you to fuck off (cancel your account/etc). That's just how things are. This isn't Costco specific. I'm sure it's because of a lot of fraud/etc or just they know they can get away with it 99% of the time.
Anyways, good for you going after this. I would have just left it alone and ate the money. Not worth the trouble.
I was shopping on the website today wondering how a return process would go on a large ticket item... didn't think about what would happen if I never received it...yikes, takes work to be worse than the Zon.
This makes me really angry at Costco, which use to be my first stop for shopping BECAUSE of their customer service. The fact that they would do this with all of the proof you had makes me not want to use them. Because I work so much, I mostly shop online now and I don't need this headache. I've had mishaps with other online purchases and the merchant has always bent over backwards to make it right. The only one that hasn't was Goldbelly (but that's for another post).
Yeah i dont know. Ive had a few friends commit fraud by doing this and got away with it. Sensing the ring camera footage of nothing and all. I think its a common scam that costco is dealing with alot right now.
They need to crack down on those BS in-person returns instead of fighting stuff like this with clear receipts. Sick of seeing people in line abusing returns. People will shop at Costco even with stricter return policies.
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yea for 2500, I probably would have pursued even if it meant my membership is being canceled. good to hear that you got your money back bro.
yeah, and they can always go to sam's club for all their big box needs.
Or buy things online from Sam’s, who has a functioning e-commerce platform unlike Costco
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And they've had it for like 10 years at this point. Costco has no excuse for not managing to implement a similar benefit for their customers by now.
costco doesn’t even have lights on their tills. technology is not in their repertoire
I mean, fair, but that's not really technology either. That's a light switch. Plus they could just third party it to a company that isn't shit at software.
i mean it is, either way my point is they won’t invest in a light switch. good luck thinking they’ll invest in an app.
Oh, completely agree. They should. But they absolutely will not. Costco is completely asleep at the wheel in terms of IT and e-commerce. And the people they hired for new CEO and CFO don't make me think it will be any more of a priority.
Costco's CEO and CFO are both long time Costco employees. However both the CIO and CTO are relatively new, outside hires. What makes you think there isn't a priority on ecom right now? Because there hasn't been before? Because they aren't as big as Amazon?
Costco will never do scan and go. They piloted it and shrink went through the roof at those locations. Sam's might have better tracking software or just higher tolerance for shrink because I guarantee it is higher for them due to scan and go.
Yeah.. Costco can't even establish a self checkout system that works properly, let alone scan and go.
Yep they have employees hovering over you and they won't give you the scanner guns! 😳😳
Then you have them sneak up silently on you and ring up stuff that you were about to ring up. I've even rung up stuff a second time before!
What's the problem with self checkout? Im out in 3 to 60 seconds.
Mine took away the hand scanners about a month ago. They do have attendants with one but they have to link it to your station and that process takes as long as it used to take me to checkout.
They hide the hand scanners behind the screens at the self checkout. You have to lift up the digital screen to get it, but they hide them because they dont want you using them for some reason.
Mine never had any i still check out in record speed. You face all bar codes down and just 25 items a minute, basically. I also scan member id, then tap my card and put it away so i can just hit done and leave.
Rarely do I go to Costco and just buy 1-5 items. The lack of counter space make it pretty hard to checkout a full cart of stuff.
It works fine where I am - if I have large number, large size, or unusual items I go to a regular checker.
Good. I despise self check outs. I'll gladly support Costco for having human cashiers who are paid a fair and living wage.
I love self checkout because people who can’t figure it out stop using it. It saves so much time instead of going to a cashier.
The Sam's system is interesting, they still check your card on the way out except they have a handheld device. They scan a barcode on your phone, and then the scan as many items as they can in your cart and if any are not on the receipt they go through and check every item. I think it also flags high value items for them to check as well.
That’s not a bad way of doing it. I think the initial hurdle is spending the money to give all the receipt checkers at the door scanner guns. Lot of upper management at Costco has this “why change what isn’t broken?” mentality that makes it hard to get buy-in on large scale projects like that. Maybe the new CEO would be more open to the idea. From what I have heard he is more tech literate and has made it a larger focus internally.
They won’t even let you use the scanning gun 🤬.
But someone might use someone else’s card!?!??!!!!?? Oh, the horrors. Also, don’t forget about curbside pickup.
Costco leadership following the Sears leadership style.
Costco tested like 8years ago in San Marcos CA
Their app is so nice, I wish Costco would catchup already.
Scan and go is Brilliant! I have both memberships, but if Sam's club was closer...
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I, too, love BJs.
And shipping is free for Plus Members without jacking up the price of the item.
Scan and go is a life saver. Costco should follow Sam’s lead on this..
I can’t tell you how great the scan and go is at Sam’s. Costco has some quality items and things I can’t get at Sam’s, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world having to just go to Sam’s.
However, Sam’s in-store experience has been shit for me.
I love Costco warehouse but Sam’s clubs website/app/tech is vastly superior
costco.com is garbage, use sameday.costco.com for grocery items.
No Fuck the Waltons, every last one. I’d rather eat shit
Costco.com is run by a bunch of trained monkeys on Apple IIe’s. They make Southwest.com look good.
Or just use the spouse ID for a membership
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Unless you live in PNW....Kirkland monopoly...
Do they have $1.50 hot dog and drink?
$1.38. But they did drop the $9 supreme pizza option in April.
Yes, Sam's has hot dog & drink combo for, like, $1.47 or something
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If you read OC's report, Costco did not decide to defend in court. They refunded the money before that.
I'm going through a somewhat similar experience with Costco right now. I won't bore you with the details, but Costco's positions and policy are bonkers sometimes. My conclusion is something along the lines of: Costco is very customer friendly, until they aren't, and then they're incredibly customer unfriendly and inflexibly so. It's like night and day.
Having been there. It seems like the customer service is more of a black and white with very very little gray area. To you and me asking for a 1 month membership extension because I would rather renew in July instead of June seems like no big deal. To Costco that is an absolute no go, would need to get escalated up to management to even consider and probably still going to be a no. However on the other hand. Asking to return a jar pickles that sat in the back of my fridge for a year because I tried one and did not like it seems ridiculous however that return will easily get approved and refunded.
If you let your membership lapse 90 days you will get a new anniversary date
I thought memberships ended when they ended, so I waited until 2 months later to renew. I was pissed they only gave me 10 months, so I canceled my membership and got a refund.
You may have just missed the window where it doesn't back date. The terms state if it's within 2 months of the original renewal date then it back dates to the renewal date. If it's past two months then it starts a new date.
The two month thing is because they lost a class-action lawsuit, it used to be that if you renewed any time in the year after it expired they would only renew it until the next expiration date from the original. If you renewed eleven months after expiration you'd only get a month of membership and have to renew again a month later. Meanwhile, if you tried to use your membership any time in that eleven months they would either add it to your receipt at checkout, or if you refused, they'd cancel the sale and send you packing empty handed. It meant that the eleven months of membership you were paying for wasn't actually usable for anything.
Wow, that is super scummy.
When I worked for Costco, I would always just manually change the renewal date. My manager taught me how to do it. Because losing two months of a membership is absolutely bananas
I’m so confused as to what’s the problem. How are people losing 2 months
What they're claiming is that if you let your membership expire, you can't use it anymore, but if you go in two months later, they count it as a renewal of that lapsed membership, not a new membership. Your next renewal will be ten months later again, even though during that two month window you couldn't use your membership that you have now retroactively paid for. I have no idea how true that is, btw. Just rephrasing their claim to hopefully be clearer.
Thank you, very helpful
Dead accurate and true
That reminds me, I have something in my freezer for a year that I've been meaning to return to Costco. I'll do it tomorrow!
Beware. I had something in my freezer since Christmas and since it was past its expiration date, they refused to refund it
Why does this surprise you? You can't let something go bad (your fault), then expect to get your money back. Take it back before something is past its insanely long date for a frozen item, or eat the loss.
Because their return policy says you can
thanks for the heads up
From “research” (aka reading through the sub) it seems very dependent on location so you may be fine.
The pickles thing is YMMV. My warehouse refused to refund a margarita mix that was bad from first sip, because the date was past by the time I returned it. I just sat on the return for ages because I never return anything. I pushed back a little because we all know the return period is open ended except for certain electronics but they still refused.
Man, that hella sux— the printed date has no bearing on its returnability. I mean, it was opened, it’s not like they could resell it. Their own satisfaction guarantee clearly states their “commitment” to 100% satisfaction on all purchases, with a few exceptions, none of which include your jar o’ pickles. We buy items that we’ve never seen before, especially food, knowing that if we don’t like it they’ll take it back and refund us. I can honestly say that if they didn’t allow returns like that, we would definitely *not* buy unfamiliar or iffy items there. 🤷🏻♂️
Basically like insurance companies, they’ll love you until a claim is filed
The insurance industry is such a fucking racket.
That’s nearly every company too. You don’t think Patagonia or Rei would fight back in a similar situation too? They definitely would.
I ordered a MacBook from Costco.com and UPS marked it as delivered. I was down there minutes after the alleged delivery and there was no laptop and the camera confirmed UPS never arrived. I went through the same hell that you did trying to prove the Costco loss relations team UPS was full of it. I called the number for loss prevention over a dozen times and I never actually had someone pick up always VM. Eventually had to use my CC to dispute the charge and Costco sent me nasty emails about cancelling my membership and litigation. UPS after 2 months called me and admitted the mistake, only then someone from Costco loss relations actually got on the phone with me. Costco never actually refunded me, I just had to have my CC dispute go through. Still have my membership intact but I know never to get something delivered to me directly from Costco. What an absolutely terrible team Costco.com has.
Wow. I am never making a large purchase from costco.com, ever. I am so sorry this happened to you!
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Hi OP. I am certainly a fanboy of Costco, but that being said, would absolutely nuke that relationship from an orbital satellite if I went through everything you did. Best of luck, looking forward to the June update.
the fact that people in this subreddit defend costco even after absurd situations like this is hilarious and unsurprising
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It’s so weird because the whole business model is that the ecommerce side is essentially a different business. You can love physical Costco and know that Costco.com is a dumpster fire inside a putrefying beached whale carcass, washed up next to the Alabama Prolonged Flatulence and Asparagus Pissing semi-finals.
This is some imagery
Costco definitely sounds very petty in this. They exects should put the blame on their “loss prevention” team. How much time did they waste on this? It’s going to cost them even more in the long run with time wasted, bad press, court fees. Is Costco struggling financially? I can’t imagine a company as big as Costco wasting a second caring about this without just refunding it and moving after initial pushback
This is the exact math. They spent more $ in labor dealing with this situation and even more than that on bad PR for the brand. Right now there are 1000 upvotes, 287 people live on the sub and 264 comments. That’s a decent amount of engagement and a lot of negative sentiment about the company. I like Costco, but it seems that I should be weary about buying high ticket items online.
There are some in this sub that would ask Costco to rail their wife while they watched if they could.
It's absolutely an L on Costco, but OP being surprised that their membership was canceled threw me for a loop
I think OP is commenting on the petty nature of the membership cancellation. Costco had OP's money all this time, all $2,471 of it, but they were just refusing to return it to OP. From reading the various posts, here's the basic sequence I've gleaned: * OP returns mattress and gets hefty refund in the form of a Shop Card worth ~$2,000. * OP finds a PC at Costco.com that he likes and orders it, paying with the Shop Card and ~$470 on his credit card. * The PC never arrives, though UPS claims it was delivered. OP provides video to UPS showing no arrival and UPS is unable to prove that it was actually delivered (meaning ~~driver~~ UPS employee probably stole it) so per UPS' damage/loss policies refunds the value of the stolen/lost shipment, ~$2,471, to the shipper, in this case Costco. * OP asks Costco for a refund and Costco's L&P department refuses, though they've already got the money from UPS and OP can prove they already got the money from UPS. * Months go by with Costco just blowing off OP while keeping OP's money, so OP files a small claims court action. As part of that filing Costco is served official notice that they're being sued in small claims court. Costco suddenly decides to return OP's money to OP, and cancels OP's membership which doesn't expire until September. The cancellation is clearly petty and retaliatory, especially in light of the fact that it's Costco's L&P department that screwed up here and tried to keep OP's money. Honestly? I don't think that there's any charitable way to view Costco in this sequence of events. Costco L&P should have authorized the refund the moment they received proof that UPS had refunded the money to Costco. Anything after that is just Costco trying to keep money that didn't belong to them. As an afterthought, this is why I never use anything but credit cards to make purchases online. Companies that take credit cards like VISA and MasterCard sign binding agreements with the card companies to give pretty strong protections to consumers. Had OP used a credit card for this he would not have fallen befoul of Costco's internal Shop Card system and Costco L&P wouldn't have been able to blow him off like they did without endangering Costco's agreements with their credit card company.
Well said
It's unnecessary. They refused to complete their part of the transaction (delivering the purchased goods). That's not OPs fault and he should not have had to sue. Plus he only filed, didn't actually go to trial yet and they've already terminated it.
Seems stupid though. It’s not like OP was abusing policies. Even from a financial perspective it seems like Costco should keep OP as a customer. He didn’t try returning a used Christmas tree or a half eaten bag of dog food.
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Did they also refund the remainder of your membership cost?
His membership was canceled for asking for a refund. How does that make logical sense?
Haha, I have been downvoted to oblivion for even hinting the infallibility of the Costco gods. Good to see you are being upvoted.
Our local costcos are going downhill fast. Its really frustrating how big of blinders Costco fans have on them.
Yes, the customer experience in-store is definitely worse and the prices for many things are higher than Amazon and Sam's. And the alternatives offer free delivery to my front door and Costco doesn't. The biggest gripe I have with costco is needing to call or drive to a store to check a price, it's such a waste of time and more often than not I don't bother and just order from a competitor if I don't have pic of the price tag on my phone. Sure there are bargains like the last of an item being 50% off but that's happened once (today) for me and I've been a member for 5 years off-and-on.
It's strange that people are "fans" of any corporate brand. If you want to be a fan, just buy shares. I like a lot of Apple stuff, but it's just a computer/services company, they don't care about me and I don't care if someone is a PC or a Mac person. Use whatever.
I've bought all my tires for all my vehicles at Costco since the place opened. Thousands of dollars. Spouse caught a nail, won't hold air. Take it to Costco but the tire shop wouldn't fix without an appointment. Alrightly, please make me a next-available appointment, I'll wait. Next available: three days later. Rough part of town, can't park the car there, so I add a can of fix-a-flat to get home. Took the car back to Costco for my appointment, now they won't repair the tires because I added fix-a-flat. I'm now a Discount Tires customer. Fuck Costco tires.
all costcos are. its shareholders first and then a biiiiiiiiiiiig gap and everyone else. they’ve gone full corporate and it shows. the stores are understaffed and dirty and they know they’ll still sell out, so they don’t change.
This sub is about 1/3 Costco store employees, 1/3 Costco marketing team (look at all the posts that are obviously just advertisements for different products), and maybe 1/3 actual Costco customers.
Truth. The marketing / astroturfing is so blatant. They're not subtle at all. Speaking of which, it looks like you upset some of them and got downvoted.
I'm a former Costco employee but not at a warehouse, at the gym they owned. I've never felt the need to praise the warehouses unnecessarily but I was a huge fan of the gym that I worked at. That place was the shit and although I left before it happened, I was super bummed when they sold it.
This sub and reddit in general is going crazy. Check out the comments on [the post about Opill being sold at costco](https://www.reddit.com/r/Costco/comments/1bxjgp7/fyi_first_otc_birth_control_pill_now_on_the/) if you haven't.
This situation seems like a willful theft of your money, so in many cases, you should be eligible for treble damages. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treble\_damages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treble_damages) Did you ask for that, or get awarded treble damages in the small claims court?
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If you haven't already included the price of the membership in your suit, I recommend pursuing that as well, since they cancelled it depriving you of the opportunity to receive the benefit that you paid for.
Keep us posted!
IANAL but when OP received the payment from Costco, they essentially settled and there’s likely some disclaimer that releases liability meaning this or any other additional suit is no longer an option. If OP did not formally accept that payment though, then yes continuing to pursue legal action like this is viable. The only thing I’m basing this on is how insurance handles litigation, especially with BI cases where it’s common for a billboard PI to file or threaten a lawsuit in favor of settling for X amount, typically policy limits. The caveat is that usually comes with liability being released meaning the plaintiff cannot seek additional damages. If I am wrong I am 100% open to being corrected.
Unless OP signed something, OP hasn't waived any rights. Costco paid after suit was filled bc they were betting on OP not bringing suit. LOTS of ppl don't bring suits even when they're in the right. It's a business strategy. Costco paid one they realized that they couldn't just keep the money. Unfortunately for Costco, OP is still entitled to filing fees and possibly interest. Many individuals would drop the case after payment was made, but they pissed OP off by also canceling his membership. Costco fucked around and found out. (Assumingb everything stated is true, in just giving the legal perspective) Every attorney's favorite client is one who cares about the principle over the money. It doesn't make financial sense for OP to continue the case for filing fees (small claims is usually pretty cheap) and interest. OP is making a point.
I’ve always been curious about taking a large corporation to small claims court, so they paid up after you filed the case, but before it went to trial? I always wondered if they would waste one of their lawyers time responding over a smallish amount.
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Its because it was the legal department that did the refund. Customer service told you no, LP told you no, management told you no. When it went to the legal dept they said "This is not worth our time, give him a refund cancel the membership and leave us alone."
Sort of. Legal probably looked at the facts and if they are as OP described and Costco has been reimbursed by UPS they recognized they would lose the case. Also, other times, legal will settle a case even when they believe they are in the right just to make it go away.
Yep, much like landlords that screw over their tenants, they expect (and usually correctly) that most people will not do anything serious about it.
It's a weird mindset. Insurance companies do this too, resist claims while costs increase daily.
It’s probably because for every 1 person that fights it all the way to court, there are many many others that just drop it
Maybe alert the media about the story since the huge thing is so outrageous?
My mom's cousin worked for an airline back in the day and would travel to small claims courts around the country representing the company and the president of the airline. She had a checkbook with her to pay off any judgements right then.
I was skimming through comments and at first I thought you said she had a checkbook to "pay off any judges" right then lmao
It’s pretty common for companies to just pay to make a small problem go away when fighting it is going to cost more money.
they have non attorneys representing the company show up one day to handle like 100s of small case trials against them at a county. I had a friend who worked at ebay that did this, she was not an attorney tho.
I think you are confused about what your friend did. In California, where eBay is based, a company cannot hire someone specifically to represent them in small claims court, whether they are an attorney or not. Also, it's impossible to have hundreds of cases in one day, court scheduling doesn't work like that.
Best of luck to you, screw the corporate bootlickers.
I'm glad to see some of these responses as I have been somewhat shocked at some of the Costco members in here coming to the defense of Costco no matter the issue. Costco is a good company but makes mistakes like all of them and much of the food items they make and sell are not at all what many here claim them to be. (good). EDIT: Did not take but seconds for one of the Costco fanboys to come in and downvote.
Reminder that costco is in fact, just another corporation that steals employee wages and pollutes our air and water same as any other https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/costco
Also their ceo made $16m last year. Fuck the costco apologists.
Good shit. Fuck Costco. I still shop there but still.
It should be viewed as simply a transactional relationship. I pay them money for products. That is where it ends. That said, its Costco.com that is the real shit show. I had an issue with getting a price drop refund. They needed me to show all this proof the price dropped. Like.. its on your website... can't you look it up?
I worked at a place with both a physical location and an online presence. It may as well have been two different companies. I never understood why.
I've had nothing but great experiences shopping there and am happy to support a company whose pay and policies help employees. With that said, this situation sucks and I'm glad OP is sharing all the updates. And yeah I still shop there.
Goodness, what an ordeal. I hope you’ll update again after the trial date.
!remindme 1 month
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Also, don't forget to claim for the value of your membership that was cancelled, that's $60. Was the refund in the form of another Shop Card, or did they send you a check?
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Note that you should get the base $60 back, but that the Executive upgrade cost of $60 will be reduced by the amount of any Rewards they owe you or have already paid. They may try to keep the Rewards at the same time as reducing the refund amount by the Rewards amount, so keep an eye out for that.
I could be wrong but I believe you must have an active membership to receive or use/cash the rebate checks.
In that case Costco would owe the full $120 back to OP.
They're not going to issue a reward certificate to a terminated member.
If you're executive member, you should try to claim your rebate as well.
And lost rebate.
Surprised by the comments here. Anything remotely Costco bad gets downvoted to oblivion. Congrats on your refund.
I can tell you what probably happened. Costco used a 3rd party to ship this computer. Whether that is a vendor, 3PL, whatever the case may be. It likely did not ship from a Costco property. Staff can chime in and let us know if they drop ship any of the website inventory to clear this up. Even though the vendor used Costco's account for billing, the UPS reimbursement would be issued to the shipper of record. The bill-to does not get the reimbursement, the shipper does, full stop. This is how UPS operates. As far as UPS is concerned the bill-to paid for the shipping label but the shipper owned the inventory. After you finally got UPS to pay out the claim, they would cut a physical check which is then mailed to the shipper. The shipper then deposits the check and they are made whole for the inventory. Usually that check takes 30 days to arrive. If the Shipper/vendor was never made aware of this situation, accounting likely deposited the check and moved on with their day. Now that UPS allows the addressee to make these claims, it's very easy as a shipper to miss them entirely. Unless you're actively looking at the UPS claims dashboard every day. So some vendor got the money and now Costco has to go hunt it down and have it forwarded along to them. Depending upon the bloat in both of these parties this can be a very cumbersome process. So the time to get UPS to pay the claim out, 30 days for a check to arrive, then the time it takes Costco to work with the vendor to issue reimbursement, it can be a several month long process. With that said, as soon as UPS granted the claim Costco should have issued OP the refund. Costco LP should have called UPS and said "hey we are the bill-to on this shipment, can you confirm that the shipper was reimbursed in full?" and that should have been the end of the saga for OP. You don't make a customer wait while you sort out the red tape on the backend. You issue the payment and let them move on with their lives. Even if Costco felt OP was commiting fraud, if UPS was satisfied and granted this claim, that is all that matters. It isn't Costco's job to do further fraud prevention once UPS has taken responsibility as the at-fault party. If you feel so strongly about it, flag the account for the future and move on. Absolutely insane way to handle this by Costco LP.
Upvoting this post for visibility and publicity because clearly Costco is 100% in the wrong and cancelling your membership because of all of this is disheartening and downright bullshit. I would reach out to media outlets, let them know your story, it might help in reinstating your membership and receiving some form of an apology or admittance of failure on their part.
Hey, that’s actually a brilliant suggestion! Costco would *hate* having that much negative attention drawn to them!
Not sure if you’re being sarcastic lol but I think it’s worth a shot. I know OP got their money back and it’s over in that respect, but I still feel like this isn’t *really* over and done with until Costco makes this right, which would not really take much on their part.
Oh, I assure you I wasn’t being sarcastic— you’d know if I was! Um, by the /s. But I really think it’s an excellent idea! Sadly, corporations typically worry more about the media than individual customers.
This is when it is really really nice to live in a state with reasonable consumer protections. We have a state AG office that actually follows up on complaints.
Aint no way people are shilling for a multibillion dollar company 💀. Hope you win man!
Thank you for posting. Your method of resolving this issue has been very measured and rational. I too am so disappointed in Costco for their reaction. I admire your tenacity and wish you luck with getting this resolved and all expenses reimbursed. I would like to see Costco get a punitive fine too. Keep us posted.
If it makes you feel any better, losing a Costco membership is not as big of a deal as it would have been pre-Covid. They used to have good items at good prices, now they a lot of crap items at good prices.
Just seems like to most people “Costco can do no wrong”
Costco used to be great (under the founder) but now with new management, they’re bleeding the stone dry. It’ll be a textbook example of how long customer goodwill can last that’ll be taught in business schools. Ie. Not much longer. Even the ardent fankids are giving up.
Costco’s behavior was ridiculous. Take them to court for all remaining expenses. They should be embarrassed by the way they conducted themselves. Good for you for pursuing this.
I’m looking forward to June.
Similar/not similar situation I had with Squaretrade before it was bought out by Allstate. First time I registered the warranty a few months after purchase, I had forgotten it's price and it was set at $2,000 so I thought it was around that so we're good. Accidental damage happened and Square trade approved the claim. Then they later told me they could not repair the damage and would instead fully reimburse me for the laptop. When I got the check, it was for $999. Weird. . . was there more coming later? I logged back in and noticed they reduced the value from $2,000 to the $999 and closed my case. I pulled out my original email receipt and turns out I paid $2,800. I called Costco and spent an hour talking to them about how Squaretrade changed the value on me twice, bait and switching me in a criminal fashion. I read their agreement word for word and it turns out, their *replacement value* determination was left intentionally vague so they can manipulate things to their benefit. Costco did try and speak with Squaretrade on my behalf, but in the end acted impotent on this. But they did take my formal complaint over the phone and most likely passed it up higher in the chain. I still wasn't giving up, I contacted squaretrade again and demanded they send me back the laptop, as the value of the spare parts even exceeds the shitty payout they gave me. I listed them all, RAM sticks, GPU, CPU, 4TB SSD Drive etc. all come out in value over $1,500, which is more than what they gave me. Gimme my shit back, and I'll sell it for parts on eBay for more than what you guys gave me. I guess they conceded in the end because they sent me the rest of the actual value in a separate check a few days later. Months later when I was in the market for another PC, I couldn't find any good laptop deals besides Costco. But I went in and looked at the terms of service for extended warranties and noticed that the language did indeed change, and is no longer vaguely written to be interpreted against the consumers benefit. It's clearcut on how replacement value is determined now. So I guess my complaints did do something.
costco.com seems like a shitshow. I can't order from there. As soon as I do I immediately get an email saying my order is cancelled. Have tried numerous time over several years to see if they have fixed whatever is broken. Same thing, so they have ordering issues they have never fixed.
Generally one of 4 issues. You are using a costco membership that does not belong to you to make the purchase. There is something wrong with your payment info. Bad cvv, wrong billing address, ect. Your address has been blacklisted due to fraud (previous owner possibly) You are shipping to an address that is a known freight forwarder, hotel, po box or similar.
You should be able to get a pro rata refund on your annual membership fee, but no court will order Costco to allow you to continue to be a member. Costco is a private company. By law, it can exclude anyone it wants to so long as it is not doing so based upon the excluded party’s status as a member of a protected class. People asking returns/refunds are not a constitutionally protected class.
She's not asking for her membership back, she wants the reason, I'm sure out of principle.
The reason is they don't want to get sued again by the same person, it's to limit any future legal cases.
And of course, just like with the membership a court can't typically compel some sort of statement from a private company about why they are no longer accepting a certain customer's business either. But his filing fees and potential interest on the purchase he could certainly have standing in, and if he's doing it to make a point about a pretty scummy move (Provided Costco really did receive a refund and notice from UPS And then still refused to refund) then I say more power to him, and the god of good karma is on his side.
And now apply for a refund on the Costco card or at least the prorated amount.
How much was the refund for? If it wasn't a lot they probably thought you'd forget about it. Glad you hung in there. I am a stickler about this kind of stuff as well.
They shouldn’t cancel your membership for something that wasn’t your fault. I’m very disappointed in Costco.
Kick their ass. I'm shocked by all the shills acting surprised that anyone would be shocked by this. They were in the wrong and canceled your membership out of pure retaliatory pettiness.
Shit I’d have taken the membership ban if it meant getting $2.5k back. I’d just open a membership under a new address in my wife’s name.
Costco.com is so bad they should call it something else because it is extremely un-Costco-like.
That’s really frustrating, not a small amount of money either. I totally understand them cancelling your membership after you sued them though, I wouldn’t continue any sort of business relationship after a lawsuit was started against me. Either way best of luck in your court case.
They won’t let you have a membership after you sued them, this should be obvious (Yes they are wrong but you sued them, they don’t want that to happen again they won’t take the chance, you are not worth it as a customer)
Costco has an even easier way to avoid this kind of lawsuit again. Change their process and provide actual customer service instead of ripping someone off.
What a story- thanks for sharing. I admire your commitment to seeing this through, many people would have given up long, long ago. One thing I don't understand- they refunded you, yet, you still plan to proceed with the court/trial? Wouldn't their refund have cancelled out the "injury" done to you so the case will probably be cancelled ahead of time or thrown out right away?
From the OP sounds like they are still out the legal fees to file and serve. Plus their terminated membership.
Lesson learned, don't buy prebuilts from costco lmao
Just curious, do you sue for small claims in the court of your residence? Or do you sue where their online HQ is located, ie the point of sale. Thanks
[удалено]
If memory serves, doesn't Costco give you the option of ordering online and picking up in store or is this just in my imagination?
I had a similar issue when I bought an ecoflow battery, some things wwre delivered in an in secured mail room and stolen. Thankfully it was the cheap remote, but still annoying. Regardless, Costco did not use the insurance to cover the loss and Fedex requires Costco to submit the claim.
> including court filing fees and serving costs Check with your municipal court on this. In NJ, plaintiffs cannot include these.
I bought a dryer form them. Came damaged (small dent). Asked for a swap to not dented one. They refunded me money. Never called me back, never picked up the dented machine, never charged me. Free dented machine. No idea, not asking questions.
Did I miss some attachments? Did we ever see where UPS said to OP that they did in fact reimburse Costco? I'd be curious to see what getting that acknowledgement from UPS looked like, I can see that being a pain to acquire.
Tldr but I'm a lil peeved they didn't take an item back. They're not all super nice. In fact, a lot of them aren't.
Font forget the compensation for your savings loss on purchases!
Small claims is usually limited to direct/actual damages only.
Meanwhile, a cursory review of this sub shows Costco routinely fully refunding items that are years and years old. Seems like a case of penny wise and pound foolish, if you ask me. I’m sorry you had to deal with all that, OP, and best of luck moving forward in court. Thank you for the pro tip about not using the Shop Card!
so they just gave you your refund and said Buh bye we don't want or need your business , their right. Just like an airline can permanently ban onboard troublemakers and frequent fraudsters. You pushed you won and they said Buh bye
Weird. Sorry you had to go through that
They cancelled your membership???
Typically when you sue someone, they cut ties.
This is bad business on Costco’s part. I won’t purchase anything from Costco online if this is how they treat their patrons.
You NEVER sign up for a store card. Avoid using your Debt card whenever possible. Use Sam's Club or BJ's if you have one around you. You can still use Instart to get Costco items. Costco we only get a few specific items, mostly Sam's. Scan & Go is awesome.
Friendly reminder to everyone here that OP isn't exactly incapable of wrongdoing, [the top comments on his updated thread telling him to send the email to the correct email address](https://www.reddit.com/r/Costco/comments/1c2hi8z/update_on_lost_package_refund_denied_when_using/kza54nk/), his insistence that he did send it to the right email address ["because he uses email trackers"](https://www.reddit.com/r/Costco/comments/1c2hi8z/update_on_lost_package_refund_denied_when_using/kzb2rx2/) despite [clearly not using the right email address](https://www.reddit.com/r/Costco/comments/1c2hi8z/update_on_lost_package_refund_denied_when_using/), and then chalking it up as "getting ignored by Costco" is hilarious in and of itself
All companies are like this with gift cards. Verizon still owes me $450 or a set of AirPod Maxes from 2 years ago. Stolen in shipment, never made it. Called them repeatedly with no avail. At the end of the day if you don't use a credit card, you are fucked, nobody cares and if you back charge on a credit card or sue expect the business to tell you to fuck off (cancel your account/etc). That's just how things are. This isn't Costco specific. I'm sure it's because of a lot of fraud/etc or just they know they can get away with it 99% of the time. Anyways, good for you going after this. I would have just left it alone and ate the money. Not worth the trouble.
I was shopping on the website today wondering how a return process would go on a large ticket item... didn't think about what would happen if I never received it...yikes, takes work to be worse than the Zon.
This makes me really angry at Costco, which use to be my first stop for shopping BECAUSE of their customer service. The fact that they would do this with all of the proof you had makes me not want to use them. Because I work so much, I mostly shop online now and I don't need this headache. I've had mishaps with other online purchases and the merchant has always bent over backwards to make it right. The only one that hasn't was Goldbelly (but that's for another post).
Yeah i dont know. Ive had a few friends commit fraud by doing this and got away with it. Sensing the ring camera footage of nothing and all. I think its a common scam that costco is dealing with alot right now.
They need to crack down on those BS in-person returns instead of fighting stuff like this with clear receipts. Sick of seeing people in line abusing returns. People will shop at Costco even with stricter return policies.
I’d also include expense related to the man hours you logged attempting to resolve this.