10 Costco Foods That Shoppers Return The Most

If you've ever tried to make a Costco run with a borrowed card and been cut off at checkout, then you know Costco doesn't play around with store policy. Cards can't be shared willy-nilly, members are only allowed a couple of tag-alongs while shopping, and absolutely no sales unless you can produce a coupon at the very least. One place where you won't find such austere measures, though, is the refund line.

Costco's returns policy is famously loose. While many stores deny refunds unless there's a glaring quality issue, Costco will take back pretty much anything. Your grounds for returning a product don't even have to be that serious. If you, for instance, buy 40 chicken nuggets on a whim, then get home and realize that 40 chicken nuggets is actually... 40 chicken nuggets, Costco might just give you a refund, almost no questions asked.

One category where shoppers really push the boundaries is food. The breadth of latitude you can take isn't infinite — Costco is known to revoke memberships for abusing the returns policy — but it's pretty up there. Almost anything's fair game (at least, when it comes to food). A half-eaten salad? Yes! A bag of crackers that turned out too salty? Yes! Fountain soda that wasn't chilled just right? Absolutely! But egregious returns aside, some foods do have legitimate, persistent quality issues that make them frequent flyers in the returns line. So, which foods end up boomeranging back to the warehouse the most?

A hot little nugget of advice: If you're ever unsure where to bulk up on produce for cheap, check out Costco. Not only is there a wide selection of essentials, but many of Costco's offerings are a steal considering how marked-up produce tends to be elsewhere. There's almost no looming danger of disappointment with Costco produce, either. Where else can you pick up a two-pounder of strawberries and find nary a sour one in the bunch?

That doesn't mean Costco produce is always a safe bet. In fact, it tends to make its way back to the warehouse pretty frequently. Reddit is littered with posts from loyalists who've had to return produce that went bad quickly after purchase. One user brought back a bag of plums that turned moldy almost as soon as they got home. Another returned a vegetable tray and a batch of tomatoes after discovering bugs and rampant mold.

Produce returns are so common that some members suspect a broader issue with Costco produce altogether. "I can look at any pallet of produce and spot several bags with visible mold. We used to search for a good bag, but [it] always turned rotten within a couple days," one Redditor griped. Barring a complete boycott of Costco produce, returning spoiled batches is a surprisingly effective way to nudge the chain into turning things around. In the same thread, a Redditor claiming to be a former Costco employee pointed out that Costco treats returns as a barometer for product performance. So the more returns a product racks up, the more likely it is to get swapped out of the rotation.

You can't buy seafood from just anywhere; ask anyone who's survived a bout of food poisoning from a bad batch of salmon. Getting a good cut of fish isn't guaranteed, even at lauded chains like Publix or Walmart. Costco's fish, however, comes vacuum-sealed for freshness, the selection spans a wide range of categories — sashimi-grade included — and, as a bonus, most of it is sustainably sourced, backed by MSC and ASC certifications.

But while you're likely to have a stellar experience with Costco fish most of the time, sometimes you might have to nip back to the warehouse for a refund. Spoilage is, of course, a frequent culprit. One shopper took to Reddit frustrated about a cut of salmon that, despite being five days out from its sell-by date, was slimy once opened and smelled rancid even after they rinsed and cooked it. That's not the only time Costco fish has gone bad unexpectedly. One Redditor took back a salmon fillet that gave off a strong odor once opened. Another thought they'd scored a good cut, only to return it after getting sick.

To be fair, the frequency of returns doesn't necessarily make Costco an iffy-ish place to buy fish. Fish is a pretty delicate product. Fresh fish typically has a shelf life of a day or two, even under strict, temperature-controlled refrigeration. In Costco's case, if bulk supply isn't matched by bulk demand, a few cuts of bad fish can slip through — something that, considering how much of Costco's grocery inventory goes unsold, might happen more often than the chain would like to admit.

If Trader Joe's is the frozen food king, then Costco is probably a finger-steepling noble with serious throne‑snatching ambitions. And throne‑snatch it might. It's a rare thing to find a frozen food section so devoted to broad appeal that it stacks industrial‑sized bags of chicken nuggets right next to fancy‑schmancy multi‑pound bags of wild Chilean sea bass. But while it has plenty of freezer crowd‑pleasers — some coming in a little under $15, mind you — there's also no shortage of disappointments. And because Costco lets you return pretty much anything for almost any reason, frozen foods end up at the returns counter surprisingly often.

Quality issues top the list. One Redditor returned a pack of red bean and rice burritos that were not only truly awful, but also didn't even resemble the box. And since frozen food can deteriorate in transit, delivery orders also end up attracting refunds quite often. Costco product reviews are littered with shoppers griping over delivery orders arriving in downright awful condition. One shopper ordered Giordano's Chicago Frozen 10" Deep Dish Stuffed Pizza only to have it show up at room temperature; soggy, limp, and with zero signs that anyone even tried to keep it frozen in transit.

Though pervasive, quality issues don't account for every frozen food return. It's not unusual for shoppers to check the ingredients after the frozen food's already home, only to realize they can't touch it either due to allergies or dietary restrictions. Case in point: The one shopper who brought home a Kirkland Signature Beef Lasagna before noticing it had a non-kosher ingredient: red wine.

Costco does a great job of holding the line on quality, even under pressure from those ridiculously thin price margins. But that doesn't mean it always hits the mark. The wholesale giant has dropped the ball on a lot of fan-favorites over the years, one of which is its Kirkland Signature Bacon. There was an era when Costco bacon was cut thick, meaty enough not to burn on contact with the pan, and just fatty enough to churn out some seriously enviable crispy edges.

Now, slices come almost see-through, overwhelmingly fatty, and seriously prone to charring. The drastic drop in quality has made this one a frequent visitor to the returns counter. The low meat-to-fat ratio has gotten so out of hand that for some shoppers, sending the stuff back to Costco is the only move left. In one Reddit thread, a user admitted to returning a bag of Kirkland Signature Bacon Bits that turned out to be nothing but bits of fat.

Spoilage also comes up a lot with bacon returns, with some packs going off long before the sell-by date. One shopper hit Reddit contemplating returning a bag so far gone it was already sprouting mold. A separate thread had a shopper mulling over returning bags of bacon that were not only improperly sealed but had also turned a murky brown in all the spots meant to be pink.

But it's not just run-of-the-mill quality issues driving up bacon returns. A few shoppers have flagged Costco bacon arriving with a weak or failed vacuum seal, not ideal for a product that goes funky really fast without a tight lock.

Costco might not be your one-stop shop for everything, but it definitely should be for meat. The wholesale giant is almost unmatched on this front, and not just because it sells cuts of steak so cheap it feels like they fell off the back of a butcher's truck. It's also got luxury cuts like USDA Prime beef and some under-the-radar goodies, like the boneless pork loin, all going for well below standard market rates.

That said, it's best to step carefully here, because it's just as easy to come by a bad cut as a good one at Costco, and it might just be the reason you end up knowing Costco's refund policy by heart. The range of reasons is vast, most of them not as flimsy as "I just didn't like it anymore." One Redditor was forced to take back a bulk pack of beef short ribs after they went bad a day before their sell-by date. Another thread had a shopper mulling over returning a pork loin that sported an aggressively low meat-to-fat ratio.

To be fair, this might not be just a Costco problem. Meat quality has been declining across the board, as persistent drought in the country's prime cattle belts forces cattle to subsist on nutrient-poor forage, undermining carcass yield, growth, and marbling. With these key metrics dragged down, quality guarantee is more or less out of the question. So keep those inspection goggles on in the meat aisle; else you might swap a great steak night for a tedious shuffle through the refund line.

If Costco's ultra-cheap rotisserie chicken's got you hooked, then it might be worth checking out the meat aisle for raw cuts. It's stocked up, at least partly, with the same birds used for the rotisserie, only you get free rein with preparation.

But while there's a pretty great selection on there, there's a category you might want to approach with caution: chicken breast. Reddit is littered with shoppers griping over buying chicken with a hard, rubbery texture. Naturally, this is common ground for return.

This issue isn't exclusive to Costco. The broiler industry has been breeding chicken for super-fast growth so aggressively that broiler growth rates soared by over 400% between 1957 and 2005. Birds bred that fast develop muscle so rapidly that blood circulation can't keep up, leading to a condition where the muscles degenerate to the point of developing fibrous tissue. And while woody chicken should ideally be filtered out, the breeding practices that cause it are so pervasive that roughly one in 10 breast fillets is affected, meaning it's all but guaranteed you'll run into chicken breasts with texture issues at just about any grocery store.

But woody chicken isn't the only reason shoppers have enough gripes with Costco chicken breast to return it. One user took to Reddit unsure of how to return a pack of chicken breasts that were already showing tell-tale signs of decay days after purchase. Another user purchased multiple packs of chicken breasts, and all of them emitted a foul odor once opened. Yet another hit Reddit debating whether to return a bag of chicken breasts that were just a tad too generous with the freezer burn.

What to do when your dairy needs border on dire? Make a Costco run, of course. There's a wide selection of essentials — half and half, sour cream, milk — but there's also some pretty high-ticket stuff on its shelves, like entire wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano. That's right: bulk gourmet cheese. Who said Costco can't be your one-stop shop for assembling your own charcuterie board?

But before you get too lost in the reverie, it's worth noting that dairy shows up a fair number of times in the returns line, mostly due to spoilage. Milk, for instance, is frequently returned after deteriorating rapidly post-purchase — as it did for a user who bought three bags of 4-liter milk and watched two go bad before their sell-by date. Another user returned a 52-count bag of Tillamook cheddar after spotting blue-green mold on over half the pieces. Why so many dairy returns, you ask? Well, dairy's a pretty fickle commodity, prone to deteriorating at the slightest provocation. Handling issues like temperature abuse and improper packaging can introduce bacteria, which multiply with gusto in the nutrient-dense environment afforded by dairy.

Costco and its suppliers aren't the only ones to blame. Lugging dairy through Costco's winding aisles might be a bigger culprit than shoppers realize. Dairy reacts viscerally to temperature fluctuations. Going from a warm-ish stretch in the cart, to the trunk, to getting re-chilled at home is a pretty huge swing; one that's bound to accelerate spoilage. And while you can try to get around it by hitting the dairy section last, the margin of error is pretty thin, so there's no real guarantee you won't end up with a bad batch.

You never know when your sweet tooth might come calling, so it's always a smart move to stockpile your candy stash from time to time. That could run you up a fortune anywhere else; but not if you know where to find those enormous Costco candy pallets. Even just walking by them is pretty gratifying: mega jars of M&Ms, packs upon packs of all your favorite gummies, 50-ounce variety packs stuffed with Snickers, Kit Kats, Reese's, Twix... it's a full-on candy extravaganza, and you're more than welcome to go a little wild.

Don't overdo it, though. Otherwise, you might end up with a candy mountain situation not even a hundred ravenous sweet teeth could get through. Sounds bizarre, but it's actually pretty common at Costco, especially around Halloween. Some shoppers bulk up on candy, eyeing a flood of trick-or-treaters, only to end up with just a trickle of kids. One Redditor, for instance, stocked up on enough Halloween candy to satisfy a flood of 600 trick-or-treaters, only to be left with three whole bags untouched. Yet another user, also likely a casualty of a weak trick-or-treat night, was left with a full Kirkland Signature All Chocolate variety pack.

Unless you're really motivated, eating that much candy isn't realistic. Returning it to Costco is pretty much your best bet for salvaging the situation. The silver lining is that, except in the case of recalls, there's almost nothing actually wrong with the candy that gets returned. And unless it's been partially eaten, there's a pretty good chance it'll end up back on the warehouse floor.

Sometimes, just weighing the idea of a full meal seems like a hassle and a half. Thankfully, Costco's got a pretty impressive lineup of quick snacks. Some of them are widely beloved, with devout fanbases to back them up. Others are so polarizing you'll either hate them passionately or fall in love on the spot. A standout in this category is the Kirkland Signature Protein Bar — it comes in a variety of flavors, and according to a great chunk of loyalists, every single one tastes horrible. One Redditor admitted to returning the bars three times over the span of two months, unable to stomach the rancid taste. Another tried just one, hated it, and figured the only move left was returning the entire pack of 40.

With such visceral reviews, it should come as no surprise that these end up on the returns counter quite a lot. In fact, returns for this product have become so frequent that, according to another thread, Costco staff have come to expect them. And it isn't just taste issues driving up the returns. The ingredients list has spurred a few returns. Kirkland Signature Protein Bars, like all processed foods, pack a fair number of additives. For some shoppers, that list can be intimidating. One Redditor, for example, returned a pack of Chocolate Brownie bars after spotting erythritol in the ingredients.

Some shoppers have stumbled on issues far graver. One Redditor, for instance, found a piece of metal embedded in their bar. They reported no injuries, but eating these bars doesn't always turn out so rosy, as can attest the handful of shoppers who suffered digestive issues after eating them.

For a wholesale giant that stocks everything including gasoline, Costco's got a pretty solid baked goods section. It's the place to get lucky, whether your summer picnic needs are as serious as feeding four dozen people or you just want a hunk of cake to chip away at straight from the fridge. But, of course, that good fortune doesn't extend to everything; otherwise, there wouldn't be an overwhelming number of people lugging baked goods to the returns counter.

Like many perishables, baked goods often end up getting returned due to spoilage. The bagels get returned for spoilage all the time, but they're not the only offenders. One shopper turned to Reddit for advice on how to return a pack of rye bread that, despite being days away from its sell‑by date, was already sprouting mold.

Spoilage isn't the only reason shoppers take baked goods back. One Reddit user happened to witness someone returning an apple pie in truly ruined condition. "It looked like they went off-roading in their vehicle on the drive home. They told the customer service worker that Costco really needs to work on their packaging," they wrote. Another hit Reddit contemplating returning a pack of muffins that were completely raw in the middle.

And with Costco's 100% satisfaction guarantee, you can bet there are always a handful of shoppers who'll return an item simply because they didn't like it. Reddit's got no shortage of these. Case in point: the one consumer who returned a pack of Kirkland cookies that absolutely bombed at a family gathering.