Returning at Costco

I think that if a store is confident in its products, it should be very willing to accept returns, figuring that there won’t be too many!

Costco is one of those companies: the return policy was modeled after that of Nordstrom’s, famous for accepting any returns (apparently even products purchased elsewhere!).

https://customerservice.costco.com/system/templates/selfservice/costco_en_us/#!portal/200500000001002/article/200500000040287/Costco-Return-Policy

My family has not had the need to return many products at Costco, but the few times we have been dissatisfied, it was an easy process. For example, when my brother’s stereo stopped working after a few years, he was able to return it, despite not having the receipt (he did have the box). He actually felt badly that they refunded his money and he immediately replaced it with another stereo from the store. On a few other occasions, my family returned food items. Typically, we do not return food, as it can require more of a hassle to go back to the store for what are usually not very pricey items. However, given the large sizes of the food and the frequency with which we go to Costco anyway, on occasion we have done this. I remember going with my parents years ago to return smoked salmon (yes, one of the products under my favorites). Generally extremely high quality, this lox was not up to par.  Another time, my father returned a bag of pea pods which were not fresh, despite a good expiration date. Although I made fun of my parents on these occasions (to steal from Seinfeld’s quote about returning fruit, “lox/peapods are a gamble…I know that going in”), returning these items was  easy. They simply asked why we were dissatisfied and then refunded the money.

Because I think that returning peapods is kind of funny, it made me wonder what other products people return.

Have you ever returned an item to Costco? What was it? Was it an easy process? Have you ever seen someone return an item that you thought was funny?