Actually I thought the set was nice, too. I would have just replaced the bolts, but my neighbor is anal retentive to the nth degree. My point was that Costco accepted the return, 2 years after the warranty expired, and gave her a full refund. Not a great policy for the vendor, undoubtedly, but a kick-ass policy for the consumer.
Actually, they originally sent her 2 replacement chairs. 2 1/2 years later, they refunded her money. In full. The way I look at it, she got 5 years use of a patio set for free.
I’m going to go one better. The first time around, she produced a receipt. The second time around, she couldn’t find it. They refunded her money anyway.
In my experience, if you do nothing more than buy booze for a party and/or stock your home bar, you’ll save that membership fee in one session. The cost of liters and handles of liquor are usually $4 - $8 cheaper than grocery stores or liquor stores. Cases of beer are generally $2 cheaper. I’ll recover that $35 fee in one trip on booze alone.
I agree that if you’re planning on buying clothes, books, DVDs or software there you’ll probably not save enough to justify it.
However, aside from booze, if you’re buying items like bulk toiletries, paper goods, cleaning supplies and anything else that is not perishable and used frequently you’ll probably find it to be a good investment, not only monetarily but because buying a 500 count box is easier than making 4 trips to buy 100 count boxes.
The meats and bakery is generally of high enough quality (a important consideration when you live in a city like Chicago with crappy grocery chains) that even at a marginal discount the value in quality is certainly worthwhile.
Also, it can be a good place to make a big-ticket item purchase. While they usually aren’t a good place to comparison shop, you’ll often see them carry a piece of electronic equipment that you’ve been planning on buying anyways and you can capitalize on a sizable discount. Probably not ideal for impulse buys, but on the occasions where your needs and their supply line up it works great.
Obviously I’m in the camp that says they are a good value at $35 a year under the assumption that it isn’t located so inconvienently as to be a hassle, and that you don’t intend to use it as your primary shopping venue. You will save some money, but not enough to justify altering your lifestyle around.
I’ve not seen this mentioned yet (it may be in someone’s post, though), but the price for gas (regular) at Costcos in my area is often quite a bit less than the average price I see driving around (sometimes 10-20 cents less per gallon, it seems). While it is too far for my wife or I to drive to just to fill up on gas, we always stop and think if our errands are going to take us near one, and we make sure we fill up there.
Many “loss control” type positions have incentive bonuses based on reducing inventory shrinkage.
This is also part of why RFID is so popular with the big box stores. Eventually they will be able to track any given piece of merchandise through the entire supply chain, sales floor, and out the door.