Wholesale Bliss

I mentioned (lamented) in my last post how we missed Costco. There are Costco warehouses in UK, just not very near where we live. Last weekend we decided to drive 30 minutes to Reading and check it out.

We first went to the membership department and showed them our US Costco card. We were told that we can use the card in UK, though we won't get 2% cashback or the Costco coupons mailed to our home. That was a little disappointing, but still a really good deal since we don't have to fork out £50 for the executive membership. Things are looking good already.

Then we got the giant Costco trolley and entered the store. To our utter amazement and unbelievable happiness, the store looked very familiar since the layout was just like Costco US store - photo, electronics and clothes in the front, fresh produce in the back, groceries on the left and personal care stuff on front left. We already knew were everything was - we went wild and started filling up our trolley. 4x6 photo prints are only 4pence, compared to 13pence everywhere else (you have to print few hundred photos to get this deal). Wife went all estatic seeing all the products you can get in US but not in UK. The young lady you saw in Costco last Saturday holding a pack of Sun-Maid raisins and crying - that was her.

As you can expect, the trolley got full pretty quick and somehow we found space for 10 more things there. Then came the shock at the checkout - the total bill was £280! Some of the stuff we bought - toilet rolls, kitchen towels, salt, sugar, margarine, surface wipes, laundry detergent, dishwashing tablets, diapers - could last till the next recession, but the amount was huge by any standard. Shellshocked, we loaded up the stuff in the car and came home.

We used to have a corner in our house in US where we stored all the big Costco items. We fondly called it "Costco corner". Our new house here has good storage space, but it still looked not enough - we may be needing a "Costco room" at this rate. Having got a lot of time to kill, we looked at the unit price of each item we bought, compared it with the price at Tesco. The results were completely unexpected. Some items were cheap (diapers, wipes, dishwasher tablets, laundry detergent), but bigger is not cheaper for toilet rolls, kitchen towels, the beloved Sun-Maid raisins, salt, sugar and many others. We have decided to return those items (Costco has a great return policy) and save ourselves logistical nightmare storing all these. We will make a trip to Costco this week just to return this. Hope we are not tempted with more goodies when we are there.

So, the moral of the story is - be careful with what you wish (or miss). You may get it and then regret it!