Emmeline Chang likes shopping at Costco in Burnaby, so she was even more excited when the shopping giant recently introduced same-day delivery service.
But it’s not what she expected and includes “hidden markup fees” that are not transparent for shoppers expecting to pay in-store Costco wholesale prices.
“This is an unethical way of running business,” said Chang, who recently purchased chicken through the new same-day delivery service, which is a new partnership between Costco and Instacart.
“I ordered a pack of chicken through the same-day delivery service,” she said. “When the chicken arrived, Costco's price sticker marked a different and lower price per weight than what Instacart charged me. We called Costco about this, they said they don't have anything to do with Instacart and can't help us. However, I bought the items through Costco's same-day delivery service, showing Costco’s own logo. So we called Instacart, and they said that all items that require weighing to calculate the price was subject to a 20% markup.”
Chang says this isn’t made clear when shopping on the website. Chang says the site has Costco’s logo all over and so she expects to deal with Costco customer service, policies and in-store prices. She said the Instacart logo is only a tiny part of the website pages, but is seems to be leading the pricing because Costco referred her to Instacart.
“Essentially, Costco advertised for a same-day delivery service, tricking customers to believe they're ordering through Costco and getting Costco service, where, in fact, customers are dealing with Instacart and getting Instacart's terrible service with markup fees (that aren’t transparent). Sounds kind of like a scam, doesn't it?”
The NOW contacted Costco for comment Thursday, but had not received a reply by the story deadline.
The NOW did receive a response from Instacart, saying there are Instacart logos on the website pages letting customers know the service they are using.
“Costco’s member website includes Instacart branding, both when the customer selects same-day delivery from the homepage, as well as when the customer adds items to their virtual grocery cart,” read a statement from Instacart. “All Instacart retail partners, including Costco, set same-day delivery item prices. The prices that customers see on items at http://sameday.costco.ca reflect the online delivery price and may differ from in-store pricing.”
Instacart said there is additional information that can be found here on Costco’s website under “customer service” about how there can be differences in pricing between Costco stores and the online service.
But Chang says those price differences aren’t made clear enough for shoppers at the purchase point.
