I was recently perusing an online forum where someone asked the question ‘can you return stolen items to Costco?’ I thought it was a strange question to ask at first, and then when I started thinking about it, I considered the mountains of implications which this process can lead to. So here we’ll have a bit more of an in depth look at what this entails.

Of course, someone acquiring stolen items is dealing with crime, and no crime should ever be encouraged, but forgetting all of this and taking a look at the basic question ‘can you return stolen items to Costco,’ we find the response is in fact yes. In their goal to do the best for all their customers and appease their every need, Costco allows its customers to return products to their store without a receipt. The goods don’t have to be in perfect condition and in fact don’t even need to have a box or even labels still attached –Costco will give you a complete refund for the product if the item is unwanted, damaged or broken.

The first crisis that arose from this practice occurred a couple of years ago, when department stores were using wholesale liquidation services that had a contract with Costco returns to purchase salvage goods that had been returned to the store by customers.

The general theory of this process is that the wholesale liquidator will sell on the goods at discounted prices and the retailer or end user will be very happy with the purchase they made, although the goods may not be perfect.

In actual fact, what was happening a lot of the time was that people were taking full advantage of Costco’s lenient returns policy and were in fact returning goods that they had purchased in bulk at discount prices back to the store for a full price refund. Costco lost a massive amount of money from this practice and therefore created big changes to wholesale liquidator’s contract with Costco so that they would not be exposed to this process.

So you can see how stolen items would facilitate this sort of fraudulent behavior, which is likely” why Costco have started to be a little more stringent about their practices. For example, currently if you are returning electronics items you need to do so within 90 days of purchase. This would indicate that you do need a receipt to prove the purchase date, although that’s not something that they overtly say in their returns policy.

Customer returns that are sold to wholesale liquidators are additionally marked to indicate that they are non-returnable. It’s a strategy that has saved the business millions and has allowed the law-abiding public to keep being able to buy products at Costco’s incredibly low prices.

There will always be some criminals out there that try to get round the process, but Costco is definitely trying its hardest to make its shopping experience the best it can be for its loyal shoppers.