3 Discontinued Costco Perks That Used To Come With Your Membership

Costco sells a wide variety of goods, including electronics, clothes, groceries, kitchen appliances, furniture, jewelry, and so much more. Part of the appeal of shopping at Costco is the retailer's offers on bulk items that make shopping for weekly essentials, especially for a big family, less expensive. However, the best way to take advantage of Costco's discounts is to sign up for a membership. But, of course, you can still shop at Costco without a membership. Nonetheless, Costco offers many useful perks to its members, such as exclusive savings on big-ticket items and an excellent return policy. While all of these perks are amazing, the retailer used to have other benefits that are nothing but a memory these days. 

If you think that the current Costco membership perks are the best, wait until you hear about the different benefits that have since been discontinued. While the big box retailer might try to sweeten its membership by adding perks, that's not always the case. The retailer has shown that it isn't shy about removing or limiting certain benefits. Here are three tech-related membership perks that Costco used to offer but has since discontinued.

At this moment, Costco offers a pretty attractive return policy for electronic products, which allows you to take back any items that don't meet your expectations. Costco limits returns to 90 days from the day of purchase, which is great when compared to other retailers like Walmart and Amazon that offer much smaller return windows. For example, Amazon offers a 30-day return window on most items. Costco's 90-day window might sound impressive today, but this is a more restricted version of its previous return policy. Previously, Costco allowed its members to return electronic items freely with no time limit.

So if you bought a TV from the retailer and it failed on you, or you weren't happy with it after months or years of use, you could take it back and Costco would offer you a refund. That also meant that you could upgrade your gadget at any time by simply returning the old one and using the refund to get a newer model. That was an amazing perk, but unfortunately, it seems some people abused it, which led Costco to limit the return window to just 90 days, which is still generous compared to other retailers and enough reason to always buy your tech at Costco.

Another Costco benefit that was previously part of the membership was access to the retailer's physical and online photo centers. Costco used to have in-store photo centers that you could access to print your photos or even create items that are personalized using your photos, like calendars. It also offered passport photo prints as well as canvas prints at pocket-friendly prices. Similar to in-store photo centers, the online version also allowed you to print images or use them to personalize different items like Christmas cards. 

However, Costco shut down in-store photo centers in 2021, perhaps because it wasn't the best use of space in its stores due to the arrival of camera phones and social media, which led to a steep decline in demand for printing images. Its online photo centers lived on for about two more years after the closure of in-store centers. However, the retailer finally pulled the plug on its online photo center in 2023 and redirected its members to an alternative.

Costco members also used to enjoy an extended warranty on items. The extended warranty was one of the benefits of using the Citi Costco credit cards, which automatically offered 24 months of coverage on purchases in addition to the manufacturer's warranty, with a total protection limit of up to seven years. This benefit essentially meant you could return any troublesome items to the retailer, even if the manufacturer's warranty had expired, and you could receive a free replacement or repair. The extended coverage was a great perk for Costco members because while many items do come with a warranty, some offer shorter periods. 

The Citi Costco credit card's 24-month warranty meant that, regardless of the manufacturer's shorter coverage period, the retailer had your back for a little longer. Besides that, if you noticed the item you wanted to get had a shorter warranty period, you could simply use the card for longer coverage. Unfortunately, this perk was discontinued in 2023, and Citi notified the affected users as early as November 2022. Consequently, you can't get the extended warranty on new purchases via the card, although it still offers some other benefits like cash back on purchases at Costco.