Costco - Worth Joining? (merged thread)

silvercar

Free coffee and cake every morning and the cheapest coffee shop I've seen. Pays for itself before you start buying any goods.

System

Aye and Pizzas are fab and fabulously cheap also

Lychee

Membership is available to qualifying individuals of 18 years and over.

How does an individual 'qualify' to be a member?

Chriswil

I was there last week with one of my colleagues from work. Just to give you an idea of what they had on offer:-

20 x Gillette Mach3 Blades £9.99 + VAT
2 x 12 Packs Diet Coke Cans £2.12
1.8kg Jelly Belly Jar - £10.99
2 x 900g Hellmans Mayonaise - £3.60
12 x pint bottles Magners - £12.49 + VAT
30 pack Wrigles Extra - £5.99 + VAT

Ended up spending £90 at lunchtime!

mintymoneysaver

Apparently if you bought all your toilet rolls there, you would recoup your joining fee within the year!

I love it, great if you're having a party etc.

mantisgeek

With everyone else, definitely recommend joining Costco. Their goods are generally cheaper than your local highstreet store. The food in the canteen is really cheap - £1.25 for a jacket potato with lots of topping. Ooh, and try the chicken bake - their delicious!

Anthony_MK

Been to their website and it seems members of the public can't join.

http://www.costco.co.uk/Membership_home/Trade_memship/trade_membership.htm

I doubt this is actually the case, but do they ask for any of the items listed on the link above?

mantisgeek

Yes, they do seem to only allow people with professional jobs or those with their own business to join. However, when I joined (that was over 5 years ago), we went through the list and I didn't apply to any of them. But the guy behind the counter asked me if I was a member of the AA and I was! That was how I joined! Don't know if they still have any affiliation with the AA though.

JohnG

We joined Costco last April and first impressions were very good. Very clean and pricing clear which makes a change.

On the down side, we feel there is limited choice in certain areas and more often than not you can only purchase household items and food in very large quantities which obviously keeps the costs down but presents a problem when it comes to storage - we simply don't have the room!

The worst part though is you can't use credit cards so it's cash, cheque or debit cards only which is a problem for us.

We are also MAKRO customers, there you don't pay for membership, their prices are also very good, they seem to have more choice, you can normally buy in smaller quantities then Costco and you can use Credit Cards. They also post details of their regular special offers so you can decide exactly what to buy before you go.

MAKRO's meat is very good value and normally excellent quality too. Must say though the fresh food at Costco looks far more impressive than MAKRO but again you need a big fridge/freezer for much of it due to the quatities it's sold in.

Downside of MAKRO is that sometimes certain items are not in stock, pricing is a bit poor and it's very easy to select wrong items as opposed to the special offer item which causes a bit of grief after payment.

Also, the place was less clean and as well organised as Costco, though they seem to of greatly improved this area just recently.

Often you have to queue at checkouts and checkout staff normally appear pretty miserable. Like many places they struggle to get the staff!

Anyway, we've decided not to renew our Costco membership as we didn't find it worthwhile in the end - we will stick with MAKRO for all it's faults.

Cheers :beer:
John

Chrome_2

Hi Moneysavers

I've recently joined a company that offers membership of the Costco wholesaler.

I'm asking for opinions, good or bad, from any other members. The deal seems to be
you pay an annual fee (£30?) in return for access to their wholesale outlets.

What kind of stuff is on offer? How great are the potential savings? Some years ago
we used to have a Makro card which we used to stock up on 'catering' packs of staple
foods etc, is this similar?

Thanks

Chrome