Intro
I have found that existing resources on how to maximize your Costco are a little underwhelming and not that insightful.
While my family’s not heavy Costco shoppers by any means (our annual 2% cash back doesn’t even cover the $120 Executive membership), the benefits that we get from shopping at Costco is immense that we try to buy from Costco as much as possible and haven’t really thought about cancelling the membership.
Some of the ways to maximize that are frequently talked about include using the right credit card, buying gift cards, booking travel deals, and others.
Below are some unique ways to maximize your Costco membership.
Return policy
Costco proudly “guarantee[s] your satisfaction on every product we sell” according to its website, and our experience has been that this is not a marketing gimmick. Costco’s return process has been smooth both at the return counter and online.
There are restrictions for certain categories like electronics, jewelry, and others (please refer to the page here for further details), but unlike other retailers, there is no category-wide return window, return conditions, and other fine print that customers need to pay attention to.
I have successfully returned products across a wide range of conditions – some were used, unused, purchased 2+ years ago, or did not even have the original packaging.
Also, through experience, I’m aware that customers are asked to donate or discard the product in certain categories when the return requests are initiated online with certain reasons – but I don’t intend on taking advantage of this policy for ethical reasons.
This point is not meant to encourage abusing or taking advantage of the return policy (like this one) by any means but rather to show that Costco’s very liberal return policy can encourage you to consolidate your purchases more towards Costco and/or reduce a risk of purchasing an item that you’re unsure about.
My understanding is that Costco has a lot of power over its vendors (I wasn’t able to find hard facts on this but here’s a Reddit link related to it) and there are specific terms and conditions that Costco holds its vendors to.
If a product is actually low quality and you end up returning the product, chances are that other customers are finding the same thing and returning their purchased product, and this will lead to Costco holding the vendor responsible in some way – not working with them anymore, not carrying the product any more, asking them to take back a certain percentage of the returned products per their terms and conditions, etc.
So, my advice is don’t feel bad about returning products to Costco because this is one of the reasons you are paying for the membership fee and spending your hard-earned money at Costco in the first place.
If you’re not satisfied with the quality of the product and it’s not your fault, return it guilt-free. I’d say you should not purchase a product with the intention of returning it unless there’s a good reason for it (e.g., trying it out).
Warranty
One other the less talked about benefit of Costco is that it extends the manufacturer’s warranty up to two years from the date of purchase on many large electronics like TV, computers, and kitchen appliances (see Costco’s website for further details)
The extended warranty used to be even better if you purchased with the Costco co-branded credit card, but this benefit apparently went away in early 2023.
Even outside of the products covered under extended warranty, my experience is that Costco will try its best to guarantee your satisfaction as a customer, so it’s worth reaching out to Costco when a product purchased from Costco breaks or malfunctions.
Costco will either try its best to resolve the issue itself or redirect you to the manufacturer/vendor for repairs, replacement parts, or a new product.
Insurance
I learned by happenstance shopping at one of the warehouses that Costco members can get savings on insurance policies for auto and home.
While its partner American Family Insurance does not cover CA state, I got a landlord policy in WA state and was able to lock in additional savings as a Costco member.
While the savings weren’t that large (I recall it being around $100 per year), I think it’s worth including it as an option when you shop around for insurance policies.
Buying in-store
Something that might not be obvious when you’re shopping on the Costco app or Costco.com is that Costco has different prices online vs. in-store (Costco’s explanation here).
My understanding is that this is one of the ways that Costco has been embracing e-commerce without significantly impacting its business/pricing model – Costco is protecting its margin on its online sales and incentivizing its customers to shop in-store as much as possible.
Next time you check out online or on the app, pay close attention to whether the item is available in-store and limit your online purchases to items not available in-store.
Extras that didn’t make it on the list
Buying coffee beans in bulk
If you make coffee at home either with ground or whole bean coffee, I haven’t come across a better bang-for-the-buck place to purchase coffee from.
While I have certainly enjoyed sophisticated single-origin coffee beans from boutique coffee roasteries, it’s hard to beat the price for value of Caffe Vita at Costco in my humble opinion.
For my semi-automatic espresso machine, I like to use Caffe Vita Coffee Caffe Del Sol Blend Whole Bean, Medium Roast, 2 lb (this used to be light-medium roast). I could purchase a 2lb bag in-warehouse for as low as $23.99 but usually somewhere closer to $28.99. At $28.99, the price per oz translates to 90c.
In contrast, coffee beans from boutique coffee roasteries range in price I’d say from $15 to $24 and bag sizes range from 10 oz to 16 oz. So the theoretical price per oz ranges from 93c to $2.4 using these ranges.
Having said that, it’s hard to find 16 oz bags selling for $15 (a recent delivery of the first free bag from Anchorhead was a 10 oz bag selling for $19, which translates to $1.9 per oz).
I haven’t found any good whole bean coffee at Costco in-store and online that’s better than Caffe Vita, yet. If you’re willing to slide the quality scale a little bit and shave some dollars off of your coffee purchases, you should give Caffe Vita a shot.
Loyalty doesn’t pay
I noticed that Costco gives out promotions for new memberships but didn’t notice any benefits for signing up for autopay or renewing its membership every year.
While this isn’t surprising (Amazon, Netflix, Spotify, and other memberships don’t reward loyal members), I set out to see if I could take advantage of the $20-40 promotion by cancelling and signing up again.
I wasn’t able to find a way around this as I was able to find online that there is an 18-month window for an old member to be eligible for a new membership bonus.
An idea is to have another member of your household apply for a new Costco membership to get the promotion and switching this back and forth for every 18-24 months.
I wanted to confirm that this was possible by speaking with someone at the membership desk or over the phone (I’m planning on updating this post once I have a conclusion).
Appendix/Additional Resources
9 Ways To Maximize Your Costco Membership