Why Does Costco Check Receipts at the Exit?
My wife and I love Costco. We frequently shop there. Well, we shop there as frequently as you need 800 rolls of paper towels and a five-gallon bucket of Tide pods. If you have ever shopped at Costco you know that after you have wandered the entire warehouse, sampled the finest cocktail weenies, and discount crab meat, you hit that mile-long check-out line. Then, after you wade through the hordes of shoppers at check-out, you enter the longest queue of your life: the line where they check receipts. In this article, we will cover why Costco checks receipts because you might be surprised that thieves aren’t the only thing on their minds.
Why Costco Checks Receipts
Most people, myself included, have always assumed the reason Costco checks receipts is that people steal. Well, according to the Costco website, loss prevention has nothing to do with it. Now, we all know that is not totally true. Companies are well aware that people steal things and want to minimize the losses. However, there are a few other reasons why Costco wants to look at your receipt.
The first reason Costco claims they want to look at your receipt is for inventory purposes. At a normal grocery store asking an employee to look at every receipt that went out the door for errors would be absurd. Imagine a mother of four standing at the door of an Aldi waiting for someone to check her two weeks’ worth of groceries. The number of individual items an employee would have to look over would take forever. At Costco, this process is easier because most products are sold in bulk. It is much easier for an employee to quickly see if there are two enormous jugs of mayonnaise or just one.
The other reason that Costco wants to take a look at your receipt is to make sure you were not overcharged. Costco trains its cashiers to be swift ringing you up. This helps ensure that the massive line you’re standing in keeps getting shorter. The equipment they use to scan items is very sensitive and can easily register twice. This results in even the finest of Costco employees making the occasional mistake.
For the same reason mentioned before, Costco is selling things in bulk and a shopping cart is only so big. So, it is a simple task for employees to glance in the cart and see how many hundreds of gallons of almond milk you bought. If for some reason the cashier made a mistake or charged you twice for something, the door person will quickly get someone to help you get your money back.
With all that being said, despite previous conceptions that Costco assumes everyone is stealing, the “real” reason Costco wants to check your receipt is to make sure that you didn’t get overcharged. That just goes to further show Costco’s dedication to customer satisfaction, not the fact that they don’t want you walking out the door with a pallet of televisions.
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Drew Blankenship is a former Porsche technician who writes and develops content full-time. He lives in North Carolina, where he enjoys spending time with his wife and two children. While Drew no longer gets his hands dirty modifying Porsches, he still loves motorsport and avidly watches Formula 1.