Costco Wholesale — Local services in Garden City

I know this from having working at Costco — Costco barely marks of their prices in order to offer the best deals. For instance, the markup on bananas is only 5 cents! So how do they earn revenue? Well, they make most of their revenue from memberships, which start at $60. I live by myself and even though I do not buy a lot of food in bulk, even the $120 membership more than pays for itself because of how much I save with their amazing deals.

I noticed that this location, compared to the Nampa Costco, likely has a wealthier target audience. (Yes, items may vary from store to store and online. For instance, this location has a wider range of beauty/skin care products which are luxury items. By the way, I also shopped around for many skin care products, including via the internet, and by a landslide they had the best prices/deals.

Here are a couple of other tips:

An asterisk on the price means that they are discontinuing that item; however, sometimes it is just seasonally.

If the price ends with a “7”, that is their clearance price.

All of their bakery items can be frozen, which is wonderful, for example, when you live alone and may not want to eat 12 croissants in a short period of time. I freeze them in packs of two and space them out.

They have a great credit card; however, one of its best features, the extended two year warranty, recently ended. 😭 We all need to contact Citibank and maybe even Costco, and make our voices heard in attempt to get them to restore this VALUABLE feature.

They take cash, check, all debit cards, but for credit, only Visa. Most, if not all, locations have an ATM.

You don’t need a membership to use the pharmacy and in many cases, save money!

Their food court, now to members only, offers a hot dog & fountain drink for only $1.20. Because some locations have self-service ordering and payment, you will need a Visa credit card or any debit card.

They take back most things, (see the store or website for exact exclusions, but certain electronics have a 90 day time limit), for any reason without time limit; however, I highly suggest that you not abuse that privilege.

Many, if not all, of their Kirkland brand supplements are 3rd party tested! This is a huge deal because the Food & Drug Administration does not...

I went on a Wednesday 3/8 around noon. This is the one on Entertainment avenue in Boise. I was horrified at how many people were in there buggies hitting, jostling with people to get to the shelves, prices were, to me for sure higher. My son said that it was usually more busy than it was when we were there. I can't even imagine going through that again for food. I thought mid-week would be a good time to go but at this point I have no idea. People get paid and Fridays and Mondays are super busy but why in the middle of the week I don't know. They had all their same stock maybe a few less items in each category but sameo same old. I went in to get a pair of glasses and buy some charging cables for my Android phone and they only sell Apple charging cables... Big store like that only sells Apple charging cables... How ridiculous.

But the very very best thing that I can say is that the Costco Optical department made me the best pair of glasses I've ever had ever and I'm 75 and they were inexpensive. I've been to 6 opticians in Boise who did not do a good job with either the prescription or the fit and charged me $600 more than Costco. I did use my newest opticion's prescription and brought in my own frames. But the lenses from Costco were perfect. And that's what I wanted.

The service people were very nice but they started this 'take a number' like a bakery process because I guess they are on overload too. But I would definitely by another pair of glasses there. They have an optician associated with them but I would take a prescription in from my own optician that you like. Their frames are standard frames and if you have a different one they'll put your new lenses into your frame which is great. The whole Costco experience was excellent from the optical...

I am a big fan of Costco and have a great experience every time that I go there. However, today was a different experience for my family and I and we are upset. Apparently answering the phones is not a top priority for the Boise location of Costco. We were calling in because we wanted to place an order for pizza. My family and I attempted on three different phones and phone numbers to get ahold of them. When we tried the food court extension, the phone would be picked up and there was dead silence. We would keep on saying hello to the point of shouting it to no avail. After 30 seconds of saying hello, the phone call would be disconnected. This same experience would happen another 2-3 times on each phone. We then called back and pressed the option for the management line. After pressing the option for the management line, the call would be picked up and then automatically be disconnected. After 6 calls on each phone of that same option with the management line, when we pressed the option for management it would ring until the system looped our calls back to the beginning. This third option happened 3-4 times on two phones. Each phone call on this option lasted eight to ten minutes long. We did just one more phone call to see if we could get ahold of someone. We ran into the same experience where we were looped back into the automated system. When our call was finally picked up and not automatically disconnected or put back into the automated system, there was the muted silence even though we would keep saying hello. We finally decided to no longer call since no one wanted to answer the phone. Again, I am a huge fan of Costco. I am disappointed that answering phone calls is not...