Costco Customer Service is #1-Another Entry Into my Hall of Fame
I have a customer service Hall of Fame. My first entry was Publix Supermarkets. Now I add Costco to the Hall of Fame. Costco has a very simple purpose-to bring name brand high quality goods to consumers and businesses at extremely low prices. The highest margin Costco has on any item is 15%. Many items have a lower markup than this amount. You do have to pay a yearly membership fee of $50.00 or more, but if you are a smart shopper you can save that amount on a single trip to the store. In todays’ Wall Street Journal the CEO Jim Sinegal the no frills executive mentioned how he would not change any of his pricing strategies in raising prices. He stated that the customer trust of Costco having great pricing is critical to the success of the company. How correct he is about that! Wall Street investors wonder how he pays above average wages and benefits and yet price margins remain the same. This is the formula that has brought the company to one of the largest retailers in the world. Their customer service is SUPER. They accept returns with no hassles and almost no limits. They guarantee 100% satisfaction on everything they sell. Plasma TVS and electronics have a 90 return period. Laptops and computers are limited to 6 months. Everything else has a lifetime policy. If you lose the receipt they can look it up on their computer. I have never had a problem with them and you can see that their employees go the extra mile. I had a problem with a computer monitor at Best Buy after only 19 days. best Buy told me to pound sand and send to the manufacturer for repair. This would not have happened at Costco. They do a fantastic job. The past few years they have added luxury goods to the mix which have
January 3, 2009 at 1:47 am
Costco customer service is good, as long as you’ve got lots of time on your hands to wait on line. When a Costco opened in Manahawkin, NJ, there were lots of people behind the counter to enroll new customers. Less than a year later, we went to make our first return and there was one lone woman working behind the counter and she only handled people enrolling as members. Four of us trying to return items waited on line about 15 minutes until a second person came back from her break. No one was ever called as we all waited and the line to make returns started to extend to 8 people. Once we were waited on, the return with the receipt went quickly and hassle free.