[Closed] Costco, worth it?

For bog roll , kitchen roll , washing up powder ( box twice the size of tescos special offer for 2 quid more at full price its like twice as much for half the price.

And for quality meat to split and freeze or a big dinner.

How ever as we dont tend to buy brands it aint a great deal for us for a majority of stuff but we save our joining fee each year.

Like trail rat....we buy all our washing powder and toiletries from there. Much cheaper than the supermarkets

Great sausages. They must come from the same factory waitrose use. Taste exactly the same.
Inexplicably they don't sell salad cream.

The massive bottles of Tabasco are four quid(ish)! We have one constantly on the go at work, and one at home.

we do all of our shopping there. The price and quality we find worth it

Well worth it, but on your first visit make sure you take someone sensible as otherwise you walk out £300 lighter wondering why the hell you just bought 50 duck spring rolls and 2 kg of salad leaves.
It is well worth it, but some stuff is actually not cheaper than the supermarkets

Their food, especially meat, is great value for the quality.

We let our membership lapse after figuring out that impulse purchases were exceeding our savings.

And beware the packs of Giant Muffins!

Ah the muffins! And the Pizza!

Used to work for them years ago, if I'd had the money for some of the bigger stuff it would have been good but never did. Unfortunately unless you are a trade member the truely bonkers stuff is usually gone by the time it opens to the plebs and the vultures have been round.

We call it the £200 Quid Shop as that seems to be our minimum spend.
As has been stated already, many things are cheaper than you can get elsewhere and the [url= http://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/i-love-costco ]customer service is the best I have experienced anywhere ever[/url] (oh and I did have to hand some of the old TV back!) - [url= http://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/i-still-love-costco ]more happiness here[/url].
Trade membership is fab if you can get it if only for the free coffee and muffins in the morning!

I can only go with my dad because I can't get a membership because of my lowly working class profession... I like the giant trays of Danish pastries though.

It's pretty good, but like everything if you are trying to save money shop around (we get the 5l fairy liquid, however asda have starting selling it, and is cheaper).

The meat is phenomenal value if you have a lot of freezer space.

If you are an impulse buyer you won't fare well in Costco - it always feels like you are getting a good deal but I'd always check the Internet for big ticket things).

Its easy to get a membership if you know a member.
Each current member will have a guest membership. Then after a year they can get their own

The muffins are the size of dinner plates 🙂

muffins are the size of dinner plates

Belgian Chocolate shortbread is horribly addictive.
The trays of pain au chocolat, and chocolate twists are dangerous too

Don't mention the big tubs of pretzels either

.....or the Carrot Cake !

It's pretty good, but like everything if you are trying to save money shop around (we get the 5l fairy liquid, however asda have starting selling it, and is cheaper).

Costco is normally that before VAT or sometimes £11 on offer. Shows how much they make on the smaller bottles.

Our regular purchases which save us quite a bit compared to supermarkets and can be easily stored things like are:

Fairy non-bio (5L)
Breads :Ciabatta packs (5x2 for £2.60), Wholemeal pitta, Mission wraps
Lavazza coffee
Tinned chopped tomatoes
Meat (British, not the American stuff) + Salmon + Black pudding
and also when having BBQs etc the big pots of humous and other dips and sausages etc are excellent.
Cereal bars and Porridge etc etc

A lot of other stuff is not that cheap or the packs are simply too big we cannot store them.

Then occasionally things like clothing (they do berghaus and north face quite often, the kirkland siganture are good quality materials suitable for working outdoors and some of the wool jumpers are good), the large packs of microfibre dusters (buy one and never need to buy any again!), shelving, electrical items (cooking, toothbrush heads etc).

Oh and when family are down the trays of croissants and pain au chocolat.

Try and ignore the large packs of shortbread, muffins etc. It is hard and they are so cheap but we try and save buying them for when we have family or friends down.

Just to disagree.

Everyone thinks "it's Costco, it must be a bargain". But, the missus bought garden furniture from there (or rather phoned me up to aske me to bring my car and I ended up paying for it too) and the next week the same stuff was about 30% off in Homebase. Same with the huge TV's, not much more than you can get them online, the meat wasn't much cheaper than going to the butchers, and again you have to buy steak in >1kg packs, fine if ou regulalry tuck into 1lb steaks, not so great as even on high it took 30 minutes to cook it rare!

We also have a ****** 6ft teddy bear.

What steaks did you buy Spoon? Sounds like you bought a joint of beef.

Use to a member and they very good but you do need to be controlled, I wasn't so I let my membership go.

We also have a ****** 6ft teddy bear.

So do we!

What steaks did you buy Spoon? Sounds like you bought a joint of beef.

I've bought smaller joints!

So do we!

echo much of the above. we let ours lapse after a couple of years. some stuff was seriously cheap BUT you can't do a full supermarket shop there so it doesn't fully replace a weekly shop. unless you're very organized and have storage space, the quantities can be stupid - and supermarkets are sometimes cheaper for some stuff. also - they were hundreds cheaper on a TV - but then I just got a electronic shop to price match...

We had membership when we lived in the UK and never really tried to justify it in terms of savings vs. supermarkets, some of the things were cheaper but overall we just thought the price vs. quality was better than the local supermarkets. We bought the usual bulk stuff, loo rolls, razor blades, nappies, washing powder (Kirkland stuff – which is generally pretty good), meats, tins etc. I loved the fruit cake and if you take a tray of the muffins in to work then everyone comes to your Monday morning project meeting! The lamb and mint shanks were great for emergency roast dinners and the birthday cakes were great value for money.

I'll agree with everything above. We also buy the big bags of dog food. One of our dogs has quite a sensitive stomach and this is one of the few foods that agrees with him.

Sausages, pain au chocolat, huge croissants. They all freeze well. A lot of stuff is not much different to supermarket price but you get lured into buying because it's in a comedy huge pack. I bought my cousin a 2lb bag of crisps once and challenged him to eat them in one sitting 🙂 He nearly made it.

We tried the lasagne & shepherds pie from the deli counter, they tasted nice but were VERY oily. Never tried the fresh meats although people always recommend them.

Booze is generally not worth buying there IME. Wine is always in cases of six bottles and not especially cheap, and you need to be absolutely sure you want six bottles of it. I'd rather buy a mixture. Supermarkets [i]always[/i] have offers on booze.

Coke & lemonade is worth stocking up on though.

I offered to buy my daughter one of those huge scary teddies but my wife reckoned it would give her nightmares ! She was probably right.

I've bought smaller joints!

They would be steaks. I see what went wrong now.

didn't know Asda did Fairy 5L for £13

Wilknsons do Fairy 1Ltr for £2

Large Tubs of Haribo for about £3, Saturday morning hot food samples, large cheap slices of pizza, larger cheaper hot dogs, belgian chocolate and more bog roll than you'll need (until you have kids).

It's great if you want a 4kg tub of Hellman's Mayonnaise!

Coke & lemonade is worth stocking up on though.

It used to be but not any more.

24 tray of Coke zero is approx £9 in Costco.
A 24 box of coke zero is now £7 in Tescos.

We used to go regularly, but go rarely nowadays. The only reason I will probably renew is for my Contact lenses, which I only ever buy on the 4 months for the price of 3 deals as that saves me about £90 a year.

to make it worth your while you need to:

mentally add VAT to the price you see
know that the (VAT added) price is cheaper than Aldi/lidl/morrisons/asda
be able to eat the food you buy and not chuck it away (this is as much about organisation as having a chest freezer)
not be morbidly obese after eating those danish pastries that are the diameter of a small planet !

happy days if this works for you but it didn't for us

Worth it just for the massive mince pies topped with a sponge lid... (dont knock them til you've tired em) and the excellent chicken nuggets

mentally add VAT to the price you see

But they've always also displayed the inc VAT price?

Drac, this stuff: http://www.wilko.com/laundry-consumables/fairy-non-bio-liquid-2l/invt/0351265

That's only 2L for £10. Asda and Costco much cheaper per litre.

We go there once a month, the £1.50 footlong hotdogs in the cafe that come with a gallon a fanta for free, oh man are they good, last time we went "would you like chilli and cheese on that", "hell yeah I would". Also, filling up on that BEFORE walking round the shop probably saves me about a million pounds at the checkout.

We live on a tight budget as we are saving for a deposit for a house so I tend to be quite on it with regard to not losing track of the value due to scale, we tend to buy....

Bacon
Mince
Chicken drumsticks and thighs
Ribs
fish fingers for the kids
cartons of juice
squash
butter
yoghurts
ham
cheese
peanut butter
marmite
spices
chopped tomatoes

as they are all cheaper than they would be at the super market, then we get

Sausages
chicken nuggets
flaming chicken strips

which you could definitely buy for less at the supermarket but would be no where near the quality.

If you can do some fairly basic maths then you should be able to save money by shopping there, like others have said the problem is that when you lose track of things in there the sheer scale of everything makes it very expensive.

[quote="andermt"]

Coke & lemonade is worth stocking up on though.

i worked out that the impulse buys would end up costing me more in both pocket and waistline. I just keep an eye out for the offers at the supermarket and stock up then.

Never get out of there without spending £30 but more like £100.
I grab a hotdog and coke for £1.50 or jacket potato and chilli for £1.75.
On my list
Thai fragrant rice, gyozos, asparagus, haribo, Sour cream pretzels, pain au chocolat ( when they make them), Chocolate bar cake 🙂 , levis 501s, oastries, car tyres, skippy peanut butter, jelly beans.

So my answer is YES!

Not that great as a shop IMO. Meat is good, but the cakes are utterly grim things and the own brand coffee horrid. Rest can all be a bit meh. Sometimes the odd piece of clothing can be a good buy.

Have you seen the size of the people pushing trolleys around Costco, not buying in bulk to save but buying in bulk to eat!