When you realize you need to go to Costco, does anyone else experience the same thrill and dread? On the other hand, you have a lot of free samples to look forward to. Oh, the deals.
Every other human in your city is going to be there at the same time, and they will all want the free samples. It’s a nightmare every time.
There are a few reasons why the shopping experience at Costco is unique.
There is a hot dog and soda deal. Try to beat that. Is it good for your heart? Probably not. Is it good for you? Absolutely.
There are ridiculous sizes of everything. If you have to feed a family of eight, or if you have an obsession that rivals a family of eight, chances are you have a membership to the warehouse club.
The other big difference you notice is when someone checks your receipt after you leave the store.
What is the deal with that? This doesn’t happen at Walmart or Target, right?
You would think that it would be about theft prevention, but there are other people on the floor who are responsible for that.
The receipt checkers don’t often give your cart enough of a look to determine what should be there and what shouldn’t.
When comparing it to an arm-length receipt, what can a four-second glance tell you?
It’s not about theft prevention, but looking for cashier errors that fall into two categories.
There may be an inventory to consider, for one.
The inventory can easily be thrown off if the cashiers don’t correctly scan everything that crosses their belt because they’re trying to get those huge lines down as quickly as possible.
Whether you’ve been overcharged or undercharged is one of the big cashier errors they’re looking for.
Always double check your receipts! I almost threw this away when I noticed. Costco accidentally charged me $99.99 for Turkey wraps instead of $9.99! 😱 pic.twitter.com/YMmZrFQ0XC
— JENN 🌈 (@XUrbanSimsX) July 1, 2019
The receipt checkers could be saving you money because customers are overcharged more often than they are undercharged.
One of the former workers told Consumerist, “I hardly ever saw people that had items that had not been paid for. Literally maybe once or twice in a month of working the door. We would catch hundreds of dollars a week in overcharges, though.”
What happens when the receipt checkers look for something?
“The exit door procedure I would usually follow was to check the receipt for multiples of the same item and make sure they were there,” the former employee said. “If they didn’t have a lot of items in the cart we would just look at the ‘Total number of items shown on the bottom of the receipt, count the number of items in the cart, and make sure that matched.”
You have it! The receipt checkers are on your side.