Here's What Happens To Returned Kitchen Appliances At Costco

Nobody likes returning purchases, especially for big-ticket items like kitchen appliances. But once the hassle is done, the customer is often just happy to take their refund or store credit and walk off, freed from whatever they didn't want anymore. But that's hardly the end of the appliance's journey. At Costco and many other stores, it may just be beginning.

When someone returns an appliance at Costco, the store first evaluates the item to see if it can be donated or, ideally, resold. Any appliances that don't make this cut are packed onto pallets and sent to a specialized return depot, which evaluates them again, including some appliances that the depot sends back after concluding they actually can be donated or resold.

But these outcomes don't cover every single Costco return. If the appliance is too damaged for donation or resale, Costco may return it to the vendor or manufacturer for a credit, much like a customer might get store credit for the same return. In other cases, Costco might auction the returned appliance to third-party resellers, who then publicly list it again. Only in the rarest of cases, particularly if hazardous materials are involved, will Costco simply take the financial loss and trash a returned appliance.

Costco's generous appliance return policy is better than the competition, but still stricter than its general return policy. The 90-day window is much shorter than an infinite one, yet shoppers can still return appliances for any reason, opening the door to Costco's myriad ways of dealing with appliance returns. For the store, it's all about salvaging whatever money it can from returned sales, helping keep the overall bottom line afloat.

If, for instance, you're returning a chest freezer because you found out that many stores actually sell cheaper chest freezers than Costco, that boxed and unused item will likely just be resold to a new customer. A used one in otherwise great condition could plausibly be auctioned off, but don't think you can snag a great deal this way — such auctions are limited to licensed resellers and closed to the public.

However, there are many returns that the store struggles to turn any kind of profit on. Some of the food items that Costco members return the most include fresh produce, milk, and liquor — opened consumables, especially perishables, are unsafe to resell or donate and likely just thrown away or, depending on the store, perhaps composted. But this is less of an issue with undamaged appliance returns. Whether it's resold, auctioned, or returned to the vendor, someone somewhere will do something with it.