Costco 'bargains'

[funkyg]

Just got a Costco card through work after everyone raving about how cheap they are for just about everything.
Went at the weekend and to be honest I am very disappointed. Yes, everything is cheaper than the high street, but only by a quid or so.
I was expecting massively cheaper prices.

[Little John]

Thats the problem, people go and spend a fortune on stuff so they make reasonable saving on the whole bill. Vary rarely is it worth the expense of the membership if your just a regular household. never mind the trip from wigan to trafford park

[Tommy J]

Costco use to be really good, they're great if you can get VAT back as that's what they were for, Wholesale.

They do great grub, things like joints, cakes etc, but they're more expensive as they're larger, but the quality is great.

We lapsed our membershi about 4 years ago now as we didn't save the £27 a year it cost to join.

However we did buy a great Xmas Sleigh which is pride of the hallway

[jess]

Customer service is also very good. I bought two blow up mattrasses but only used one. 18months later I used the second one and it deflated over night. I took it back without the receipt and they gave me the option of refund or another mattress, no quibble

[TwoPlAnKs]

To me Costco has nothing to do with cost saving, the supermarkets will always beat it on that especially combined with the convenience of having the full range of goods.

The quality of what they sell, and the customer service, are both legendary though. You can take anything back for a full refund. We took an old DVD player back when it broke and they even dismantled it in the shop to get the old disk back, and the full £100 refund as it was from when they cost that much. We bought a new one for £15 and pocketed the difference.

Their massive pizzas are quite good, and their food in general is of really good quality. The one here recently extended their fruit and veg with a big walk-in chiller area and it's top knotch. Spirits are quite cheap and plentiful too, and their boxes of wine are quite handy.

I bought a massive torch from there which is basically a car full-beam headlamp attached to a rechargeable 12V battery in a manly looking rugged case. Not found an actual use for it yet but it's ace. You can also walk in and stroll out with other manly equipment like petrol powered generators and blowtorches. Their needlessly big TVs (34"+) are apparently quite cheap and backed up with their brilliant customer care too, but I wouldn't know about that because I'm not working class and therefore have a normal sized TV.

The tyre bay is really good too, in that they sell good quality tyres cheaply and they fit them really quickly whilst you wander round the store too. The key is the good quality, you could easily get cheaper tyres but Costco do good ones. That's not a comment about winter ones - I don't know if they even do those.

[stimpy]

Their pastries and cookies are worth the membership fee alone. Nuff said.

[prezzy]

Their pastries and cookies are worth the membership fee alone. Nuff said.

The AAA mature steaks from costco are fan fucking tastic

They do tabasco sauce in a massive bottle pretty cheap

atm the bollinger champagne is a quality deal at £45

the wine section is always decent with good deals to be had

with costco so long as you know the prices of what you are getting in other shops you can get some decent deals

[tiggerbiker]

i live within walking distance of the head office,
i have a membership but rarely use it - most of the time i take people there to buy stuff for parties etc.

when i do go i tend to spend a couple of hundred quid - allright, it might equate to £250 quids worth on the high street but filling the house with a few months worth of shopping just to save a few quid doesnt really do it for me.
tyres are a good one though - had an interesting discussion with a tyre monkey there once when he offered to fill my tyres with nitrogen for only a few quid - i am a technical rebreather scuba diver, i understand gas - in particular nitrogen/air and the properties thereof

[casio]

isnt the nitrogen to make sure there isnt any change pressure wise when they get warm/cold?

I've got to say though that their spare ribs are worth the membership alone,

[tiggerbiker]

isnt the nitrogen to make sure there isnt any change pressure wise when they get warm/cold?

in very basic terms air is 78% nitrogen 20.9% oxygen and the remainder various noble gasses and due to normal ideal gas laws all gasses will expand and contract with temperature - its called Charles's law (also known as the law of volumes).
the molecular weight of nitrogen and oxygen is close enough when used to inflate a motor vehicle tyre to not cause a problem, the thermal capacity is largely the same as well.

nitrogen was used in certain aerospace applications as they use high pressure nitrogen in certain munitions (laser guided missiles) and therefore have lots of high pressure nitrogen lying about - saves having 2 gas bottles when 1 will do and with very high pressure and temperature situations having no oxygen in the tyres means if there is a blowout in a aircraft tyre, less oxygen means less chance of fire.

thus, the use of it in road going motor vehicles is a bit superfluous, it wont do any harm - but you wont see any gains and i certainly wouldnt pay for the honour of having pure nitrogen in my tyres!

[TwoPlAnKs]

in very basic terms air is 78% nitrogen 20.9% oxygen and the remainder various noble gasses and due to normal ideal gas laws all gasses will expand and contract with temperature - its called Charles's law (also known as the law of volumes).
the molecular weight of nitrogen and oxygen is close enough when used to inflate a motor vehicle tyre to not cause a problem, the thermal capacity is largely the same as well.

nitrogen was used in certain aerospace applications as they use high pressure nitrogen in certain munitions (laser guided missiles) and therefore have lots of high pressure nitrogen lying about - saves having 2 gas bottles when 1 will do and with very high pressure and temperature situations having no oxygen in the tyres means if there is a blowout in a aircraft tyre, less oxygen means less chance of fire.

thus, the use of it in road going motor vehicles is a bit superfluous, it wont do any harm - but you wont see any gains and i certainly wouldnt pay for the honour of having pure nitrogen in my tyres!

I thought I should research this since I now have the word tyre in my name, and it seems the AA agree with you - various benefits but not actually worth the money or hassle.

They claim nitrogen molecules are bigger than oxygen so in theory your tyre would go flat slower, but I'd say that even if that's true it's still a pointless benefit because car tyres go flat so rarely and the massive hassle associated with refilling a nitrogen tyre totally outweighs the benefits of having to do it less often.

The other claim is that because it's pure nitrogen and not just compressed air it has no liquid or anything that can turn to liquid at colder temperatures. I think that's only relevant to aeroplanes though, where it goes down to -60 in the air then the tyres need to be ready for impact on landing. I've certainly never heard of it causing a problem in car tyres, and I'd imagine the amount of liquid in that amount of air would barely even make visible frost on the inside of the tyre.

Since Costco seem to be lying to us about the advantages of nitrogen tyres this might also be a good time to bring up the fact that their in-store Opticians are apparently a bit rubbish. I also once bought their ownbrand Kirkland Signature shampoo and it was shite.

[Cooleo]

Do you have to have a business to go to Costco or do they do personal memberships?

[TwoPlAnKs]

Do you have to have a business to go to Costco or do they do personal memberships?

In theory yes but in reality you can work for pretty much anybody and they'll let you sign up for membership. I've not heard of anybody having any trouble, it seems they have a deal set up with most companies.

[jaguar982]

I joined through work last year went once very dissapointed at prices not been back since

jag

[Cooleo]

Turns out, theres none near me at all.

[jaguar982]

Your not missin much m8

jag

[Erad]

I personally use Costco for:

Tyres - Usually a 25% voucher flies about once or more a year
Baked goods - Absolutely top not quality, not cheap, but tasty, perfect for catering/small parties
Electronics - No quibbles returns, I had a family member who's camera broke (I think she dropped it, alot), they refunded on the spot despite the camera being bought a year ago, no receipt needed, just looked on their computers.

I think its a great place, mainly for the service, but a few times I've picked up a couple of bargains that were incredible.

[Tim.Lad]

You have to catch the gems at Costco they have some cracking deals but they make no fuss about them, they are on the shelf like everything else..

[Raptor]

Costco in the UK is shit. In the USA it blows away all competition - cheap as fuck !

[Raptor]

You have to catch the gems at Costco they have some cracking deals but they make no fuss about them, they are on the shelf like everything else..

Yes. they have some great deals on Diamonds over here atm