Costco Wholesale — Local services in Maplewood

Yes there are some rude people check in staff out at this Costco, I understand why they can be jaded though as this store has always been packed with people Saturday Sunday and Weekday nights. When you are checking membership cards daily it gets to be demanding to always look happy when dealing with all sorts of people with membership cards out and wanting to shop. When you have one or more that don't have membership it throws the greeters off so they will tend to not handle this as some customers might want. If you were in there shoes waiting just inside the warehouse door for 6 to 8 hours a day dealing with all sorts of customers members and non-members just trying to go inside it's the revolving door syndrome. People get tired and they have there off days so they tend to take it out on staff and they seem to be rude with people. These greeters are people also if you treat them as you would want to be treated most employees will also treat you as you treated them. If you are rude, they will be rude. If you are polite they will be polite. Just use some common sense and you can see that most if not all these employees enjoy doing there job there at Costco Maplewood. These employees are exceptional when compared to other warehouse clubs. I myself would love to work there. I myself have been there at least 3 or 4 times a week just to eat there and shop and everyone there is doing an exceptional job there as it pertains to customer service. Costco doesn't make much on every item they sell they make it on annual membership dues over a billion dollars annually. If customers find the shopping experience terrible then they wouldn't renew there membership. I myself if I had a bad experience there would just bring it to the managers attention or just call customer service up on the 1-800 number Costco does care about the customer they will respond to a customer complaint. Posting a complaint on a website is not where this should happen. Bring it to the attention of somebody who works at the store. I'm more than happy with all Costco employees from all the stores in the USA. If they weren't doing there jobs this company that relies on customer service every single day for the repeat business wouldn't still be operating. It's a telling story that a small single store would grow into a national chain worth Billions of dollars. It's not the products that sell a store its the employees that makes or breaks the store. Costco stores are just buildings without the staff, so please understand if you do have a complaint bring it to the attention of staff and they will make the changes accordingly. I do so...

This review is for the bakery specifically. The store overall is fine.

Long story short: If you plan to order a cake from the bakery, they expect you to pick it up on the exact date that you write down or they will toss it out.

2 stars instead of 1: Thankfully they don't ask for a deposit or pre-pay on the order, so you're not out the money if you don't get the cake.

Long story long: About 3 weeks ago, I put in an order for my kid's 13th birthday. I was very much looking forward to this cake being made, because they now make a design with the iconic giant Costco teddy bear! So cute! Plus Costco cakes have always been the best tasting store-bought cakes I've ever had.

On the order form, I wrote down the date for pickup to be 11/28. Having made the order 3 weeks ago, I completely forgot on the day of and went in the very next day, on 11/29 to pick it up. The day of my kids bday, btw. The cake isn't there when I go to the case that stores the orders.

I ask a staff member at the bakery what may have happened to it, and they said if a cake is not picked up on the date specified, they toss it the next morning. The case they had for cake orders was practically empty. It only had 3 other cakes stored in it, so it couldn't be a storage issue. They said it had something to do with contamination/health guidelines. I lied and said I understood. It doesn't make sense to me when it was only one day.

So why does the order form ask for a phone number of the member if they aren't going to call and ask if they still plan to pick it up? What a waste of product and time to not even give the courtesy of doing that.

The staff said the best they could do would be to write a custom message on one of the pre-made cakes already on display for sale. Of course none of them were the one I had wanted. I don't blame the employees at all. If that's the store policy, then they have to uphold that.

This bummed me out so much that I left my cart of stuff and walked out. I went somewhere else for another cake.

Costco, please consider changing your policy/procedure for cake ordering. If the member doesn't pick up their cake on the date specified, call them and ask if they are still planning to pick it up. Maybe give a 2-3 day grace period rather than one day? If there isn't time to make phone calls, or if storage is an issue, put a sign up or a note on the order form stating if the cake isn't picked up on the day of, it won't be available? This would save a lot of grief...

EMPLOYEE COMPLAINT : Nicholas

Today was the worst shopping experience I have ever had at ANY Costco. We were in the self check out line, where multiple people were ahead of us. As we stepped up to begin scanning our items, a man approached us and began inappropriately raising his voice and telling us that we were not in line. Because of this, it brought unwanted attention to us and situation causing a scene. Super unprofessional. We asked to speak to a manager as the person we were talking to (Nicholas) obviously wanted to argue and yell at us. Unprofessional again. We were then scolded for calling the person him when his name is Nicholas. The entire time we were speaking to him he had a crazed look in his eyes which was frightening. He started screaming for a managers yelling “IRATE CUSTOMER” while we were calmly speaking to this man. We were in line for about 5 minutes, and other people were ahead of us, so I feel profiled and singled out. Anyway, we spoke to the manager and she apologized and let us check out. As we were leaving the store I heard yelling from behind me and looked back and Nicholas was screaming at us as we were walking away badgering us after we already paid and checked out. Very unprofessional. I feel sad and disgusted that employees in customer service think they can get away talking to their customers in this way. I will never return to...