That reminds me – the Avocado Oil they sell is almost half the price of other stores, and it’s one of only two popular brands sold in the US that is fresh and unadulterated (per this study).
Last I checked the Kirkland pods were considered better (in performance and for environment) and cheaper.
Tuxedo cake dinner for a week! 
I typically don’t shop at Costco for electronics, but I saved $70 on a Ring doorbell.
The coffee beans are pretty cheap and good quality compared to (my) local alternatives. Same for Kirkland wine and spirits if you entertain a lot.
In the West they are expanding the Business Costcos and I may shop there more for food because they have a much wider selection (relatively speaking).
I went to Costco yesterday for the first time in a while and noticed a few things…
They now have self checkouts at our local store, and this has made things significantly better in terms of the speed. The people that can’t leave Costco without a cart full of random stuff gravitate towards the cashiers and the handful of items folks (like myself) can speed through a self checkout. This is a massive improvement for one of my biggest bones to pick with Costco, imo.
The bakery in our location has been cut back a bit in terms of size - it’s been chipped away at by the adjacent wine department which is now larger. I’m not surprised, given that I had heard they were halting sales of sheet cakes and their bakery’s product sizes are geared towards events that need cookies, cakes, pies, etc. I understand that Costco is a warehouse and thus sells in “bulk” but I would have rather they decreased the sizes of, say, their cookies, cakes, and pies to allow normal households to actually buy them. Their baked goods are excellent and I would happily purchase them at a higher unit price, but I never do unless I’m hosting an event because I can’t get rid of the surplus.
Paper products are still difficult to come by. Both toilet paper and paper towels were picked over, with the Kirkland paper towels and Charmin toilet paper being the only two choices in those categories. Pallets of bottled water occupied the remaining space. I would have figured by now that the paper product shortage would have resolved itself, and to some extent it has in the grocery stores and discount retailers, but apparently not at Costco.
Agree on sizing. It’s sometimes still cheaper than alternatives even if you throw half of the cake or bag of onions away, but it just seems wasteful to me.
Sam’s is even better in this regard with their app. Scan as you go using your phone, pay in the app, and then you can walk right to the exit. They even recently added the capability to purchase alcohol, which was a major sticking point. Only drawbacks remaining, and they’re relatively minor, is that it doesn’t accept gift cards for payment and you can’t add something after you’ve hit the checkout button (not that any FD’er is susceptible to impulse purchases…).
When I bought Kirkland TP a few weeks ago, my store had a lot of them in stock, from the floor all the way to the top shelf.
It often seems to be Kirkland OR Charmin TP. Not both. Same with the paper towel brands. Also, tofu used to be at all the Costcos but now are hard to find.
Even before Covid, tofu was not a constantly stocked item. The came in batches. Safeway has plenty (O Organics) in the S.F. Bay Area.
Thats a great idea. I wonder why other stores aren’t adopting that kind of app checkout?
One of two things probably ( or both ). Not ready to embrace the technology or not willing to accept the inevitable losses from unscanned items vs. not employing checkers.
Kroger’s Scan/Bag/Go is basically this. You scan using a handheld reader available at the entrance of the store (or using a phone app), then you go to self checkout and scan the barcode there, which automatically adds all items you scanned to your tab. You pay at self checkout which means you can use any method of payment that they normally accept. It is pretty intuitive, although I saw people get hung up on the produce scale procedure pretty frequently when it first debuted.
It still involves waiting in lines, but it removes the laborious task of removing everything in your cart, only to load it back up. It does save a lot of time, although I wonder what kind of shrink they get from it. It makes it extremely easy to steal, although perhaps the amount of money they save in labor cuts into some of it.
That may be true of Kroger, but it appears that Walmart has removed all self-checkout machines that accept cash. 
A 2+% card is a great way to pay, but when buying some things, lye, rubbber gloves, gas masks, etc., I prefer to pay cash … and wear a cap and Groucho Marx disguise.
I figured you have a stack of prepaid debit cards. That you purchased with another prepaid debit card. That you purchased from eBay. That you had delivered to someone else’s address and stalked their mailbox to intercept. Using an ebay gift card. That you purchased from craigslist.
Don’t you know cash is traceable? Serial numbers. They scan them all before giving you your withdrawal at the bank. And there’s a hidden scanner in cash register drawers so as every bill goes in and out they read the number.
groupon has discounted Costco memberships going now. Also there is a big discussion on the slick deals site that probably isn’t worth reading.
After signing up, you have to log into the account and register for auto-renew with a Visa card - this instruction is not given by the groupon site.
Sorry for not starting a new thread, but it doesn’t seem worthy. Thru the end of August, you can print a coupon that gives $45 off your first purchase at Sams Club for new members.
It was even easier when I brought the coupon into Sams. They didn’t charge me for the membership, so I didn’t need to buy $45 worth of stuff.
Costco January 2021 coupon book is up: Costco January 2021 Coupon Book is Here! | Frugal Hotspot
The reason I post this is that the last few months of coupons have been the weakest offerings I’ve seen from them in some time. Paper towels and toilet paper have been absent for some time, for obvious reasons. The Cascade tablets haven’t been on sale in what seems like ages. It’s the same story for a number of other things that we usually zero-in on at Costco.
Meanwhile, Kroger-owned QFC and Fred Meyer are throwing really good coupons at us like candy. The best of the bunch are these mailers that get sent which offer $15 off a $100 purchase, which we’ve been able to use every week for the last 8-10 weeks or so. We typically get another 2-3 coupon packages a month that target things we regularly buy each week instead of the random offerings Costco pushes.
There are two things that still make me hold onto our Costco membership. We travel to Hawaii once a year and the gas at Costco is a good 70-80 cents per gallon less than the cheapest rival station. With the amount of driving we do, this is an easy way to recoup $15-$20 worth of membership fees. The other is the Charmin that Costco sells. It’s 4.5" wide and a product made specifically for Costco. My wife loudly complains when any other kind of toilet paper finds its way into the house, and so Costco has our tp business unless 4.5" rolls find their way back into other big box retailers.
In my family I’m the complainer 
There’s a costco in iceland as well if you ever make it there. Not like I actually bought much there last year (at least not that I needed). The food court was nice, though. The food court had massive waffle cones with “gelato”. And of course hot dogs with the iceland condiments.