My main beef with Costco is exiting the store, where they insist on checking your receipt as a loss-prevention measure. The presumption of guilt irks me way more than it probably should.
Costco has 95% lower shrinkage compared to retail average; hard to say how much is due to the receipt checks though; some of it probably comes from lower employee turnover as well since a non-trivial amount of retail shrinkage is from employees.
Here's a Reddit posting from a Costco worker from 5 years ago:
"So, as someone who's done this job, I gotta be completely honest to those of you bagging on us and calling us liars.
If a receipt shows under 20 items, we count. It's a very quick count to 20. Most people who work at the exit are actually counting your cart before you even hand the receipt over. So by the time the receipt is in your hands...they already know there's 15 items in your buggy. They look at the receipt for a split second, see the 15 at the bottom, mark it and hand it back. Easy.
Now, for carts with over 20 items...even packed with 100 items. The main things we check for are stuff on the bottom. Cases of water, TP, pop cases, etc. All those extra things that maybe a cashier misses. We're not gonna catch EVERYTHING and that's fine, we also don't want to keep you there all day long. Ideally the people at the register are doing their jobs right, sadly that's not always the case. 99 percent of the time, it's not due to theft. If you were genuinely trying to steal something, you wouldn't just leave it sitting in your cart. We also check for big items, bluetooth speakers, electronic items, etc. Also gift cards. Basically anything that requires a second check to make sure either the cashier got it, or the member has to pick it up."
I’ve heard that explanation a few times but I find it very hard to believe that's the primary reason. I can't imagine Costco would devote two workers full-time to that -- it’s simply against their lean philosophy.
That's the second reason I find the practice so irksome: on top of requiring customers to wait in line to prove their innocence, they pretend that the practice is for their customers' benefit. And people believe them!? Maddening.
