Summarizing: Costco paid tariffs on things, and so they raised prices accordingly, passing those increases on to their customers. The tariffs were recently ruled illegal, so Costco is suing the government for reimbursement of the illegal tariffs, and have said they’ll pass the repayment on to customers by lowering future prices. A group is unhappy with that approach and is suing to force Costco to reimburse customers who paid the higher prices in the past, not pass the money through future sales.
I’m guessing it’s much, much harder to figure out who paid the higher prices in the past and how to get the money to them. Personally, I’m just happy Costco is trying to force the government to reimburse the tariff money. I could see them using the refund to lower or eliminate membership prices for anyone who was a member during the time the tariffs were in effect.
It shouldn’t be that hard for them to figure out who paid what because in order to pay/checkout at Costco you’re required to scan your membership card. So (while I’m not sure suing is the right way to go if they are trying to reimburse customers), it’s not exactly accurate to say they don’t know who bought what at a higher price.
The problem would be that not everyone keeps their contact info up to date (I’ve probably moved twice since I became a member), some of the people would no longer be members, if they mail out a bunch of checks, some of them won’t get cashed, etc. Doing that is going to eat into the refund, so there will be less to hand out.
And, personally, I didn’t care that much. Most of the stores who sold things at higher prices because of tariffs have no record of who bought bought what, but I still want to see them go after the government for the money. Reducing future prices seems simple.
Also you can get a guest pass to shop for the day
Oh, that’s a good point too.
Costco is one of the few brick-and-mortar stores that actually could reimburse customers, since they have memberships.
Yeah, I’m sure they have data on sales by membership. But it would be complicated by the number of people whose contact info is out of date, the ones who are no longer members, mailing checks that don’t get cashed, etc. For sure not impossible, just a lot harder and more expensive.
By whom? Who has standing?
Also, how do you calculate what part of the price increase was due to the illegal tariffs vs the other tariffs vs the increased cost of operations due to tariffs.
Like it sucks we’ve all been screwed over, but there isn’t really a path forward except fixing the country to prevent this happening again.
