Costco limits toilet paper, paper towel and bottled water purchases again as COVID-19 cases surge

[Jim G.]

https://www.stltoday.com/business/local/costco-limits-roll-towel-bottled-water-purchases-again-as-covid-19-cases-surge/article_29022728-cac7-5ec7-8bca-27c0f5f4f047.html?utm_campaign=snd-autopilot&utm_medium=social&utm_source=undefined_St._Louis_Post-Dispatch&fbclid=IwAR0XcNqB-vR8625YTihHJyhiSZXE7AZA--dlBWF5ARU_kqjv-TTHyLUazeg

Membership-only retail chain Costco Wholesale Corp. said on Thursday it was reinstating limits on purchases of key items including bath tissues, roll towels and bottled water, spurred by panic buying from customers amid rising COVID-19 cases.

A resurgence in COVID-19 cases had led to stocking up of household essentials last year during stringent pandemic-led lockdowns, forcing the company to put limits on purchases of key items.

While there was a shortage of cleaning supplies even last year, transportation issues this year are causing delays in deliveries to stores despite suppliers having plenty of stock, Costco Chief Financial Officer Richard Galanti said in an earnings call.

The pandemic-driven port congestion and labor shortages have forced retail chains including Costco to spend more on transportation and labor, digging into their margins. Costco said it was paying six times for containers and shipping due to price increase on items shipped overseas.

~more at link

[hlthe2b]

1. sigh... I still have a basement storage area pretty stocked, but I don't look forward to having

to waste time searching and trying to arrive at the big box stores among a throng of others--when a new shipment of bulk TP, paper towels, and other things arrived.

There are still some shortages in some other products, but it felt like most had come back.

[Floyd R. Turbo]

2. Yep! We were at our local Costco on Tuesday. A store manager stopped a couple that tried to take

two hand carts loaded with water and toilet paper through the self checkout lane.

[Sherman A1]

3. My last trip to Costco

We came up empty on bathroom tissue and paper towels as they were out of stock.

[Blues Heron]

4. Haven't cases been falling since the end of august?

US daily new cases began rising around the beginning of July, peaking at the end of august, have been falling all of september. Missouri cases peaked even earlier - beginning of August.

scroll down for the graph
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

[Walleye]

5. Maybe panic buying is a lagging indicator

[Blues Heron]

6. Im just curious about the language "as covid cases surge"

"Amid rising Covid cases" etc.

Maybe they just mean the whole delta surge in general?

[Walleye]

7. I think there's a lot of laziness in headline writing these days

[Blues Heron]

11. It's in the body of the article

it's their whole thesis

"spurred by panic buying from customers amid rising COVID-19 cases."

[Walleye]

12. They get a story and they just stick to it. Never mind the facts

It seems that accuracy is not the objective in journalism anymore. I’m not sure what it is

[Blues Heron]

14. Maybe just deflecting from the buried lede further down

I mean how much panic buying is there at this late stage of the game.
This paragraph prob has more to do with it:

The pandemic-driven port congestion and labor shortages have forced retail chains including Costco to spend more on transportation and labor, digging into their margins. Costco said it was paying six times for containers and shipping due to price increase on items shipped overseas.

[marmar]

8. Not this foolishness again.

[Sibelius Fan]

9. Yep. I had three cases of water in my cart yesterday and they let me buy two.

There was no signage indicating the two-case limit. I was shopping at 9am during their Thursday senior hour. Maybe the signs went up later.

[TreasonousBastard]

10. When did Costco and Amazon become the only places to buy anything?

I've had no problem getting paper goods at Dollar Tree and local chains.

Wanna see panic buying-- wait till the first snowstorm.

[jimfields33]

19. It's strange.

Every time I shop I get a case of water, a 24 pack of toilet paper and 12 roll of paper towels. I’m never out. It’d actually take years to run out. I figure the toilet paper for a buck a rolls will be four bucks a roll. I’ll still be using the buckaroll. Lol.

[TreasonousBastard]

21. My next place I will have the French buttwasher installed so won't need

the TP, and I never use paper towels anyway.

But, I once got a 36 roll pack of Marcal TP (1000 sheets a roll) and it was BOGO. Took me over two years to use it all up.

[Sympthsical]

25. Because they're cheap

Plus, it's in bulk. Kind of a set it and forget sort of affair.

My household had a miscommunication of who was getting what last year during the beginnings of Covid. We weren't even panic buying. It was just, "Who's going to stand in line for this?" I went, my partner went, his parents went because they thought we hadn't. We ended up having a bunch of toilet paper and paper towels as a result.

We're still working through it 18 months later. There's something like 40 rolls still sitting in the laundry room. White gold!

[Shanti Shanti Shanti]

13. I dont panic buy, just keep picking up a little extra of those items, for months my closets are full

[Submariner]

15. The 40 bottle flats of Kirkland water were out of stock for 2 weeks

they just returned at a price increase to 3.19, up from 2.99.

[Lemon Lyman]

16. Bummer

We love Costco. It's our favorite store. But the closest one is 60 miles away. In my 20's I'd have KILLED to have a Costco that close. Now, in my 40's, it's such a schlep. So I reluctantly go to the closest Sam's Club, which is less than half that distance.

Costco has great stores, great items, great employees, & great business ethics. I do have to say, Sam's is way ahead of Costco in some ways. The two most important in my book are:

1) They have club pickup. I can place an order for almost anything in their warehouse and have someone else do all the shopping and load it into my SUV. Also, you can get most of their store/online inventory shipped to you for free if you have their more expensive membership. Costco doesn't have store pickup. They did a trial run at 3 warehouses in New Mexico this past January. I've no idea how it's gone. I know both they and Trader Joe's have resisted store pickup. They should just hire more employees and do it. We spend almost all of our shopping dollars at the warehouses. Costco is missing out on lots of sales IMO.

2) They have exclusive early morning hours for their business members and for those who have the more expensive membership. Sure, Costco has the 1 hour for older and immunocompromised folks. But Sam's has 2 hours (used to have 3). It's nice to be able to go into a less populated store in these times.

[dalton99a]

17. Here We Go Again.

[Lemon Lyman]

18. -

What I really miss are gloves (surgical gloves). Costco only allows for 1 two-pack to be purchased at a time. For some reason Sam's stopped selling them months ago. Costco's are slightly better. They charge $20 for 400 gloves. Sam's was $16-something for the same count.

During Covid, Sam's price went up four or five times before finally setting in the high $30's ($36 or $37-something). I know people were complaining. I thought it was illegal to price gouge. Well either Sam's can't get them anymore (supply chain issues?) or they said "F it" to all the complaints and pulled them.

We use them for EVERYTHING around the house. Have for years. It sucks not being able to be stocked up. Amazon sells gloves, as do many others. But nobody sells the quality of gloves Costco does (and Sam's used to) for good prices.

[elias7]

20. We have installed a bidet which took a plumber all of 15 minutes to attach

So much better than TP. And, no TP to need to hoard….

[BannonsLiver]

22. TMI

[DelMar dem]

23. Costco gloves

We use Costco's gloves for everything too, and were disappointed when we couldn't find them in the store. When they did appear not all sizes were available. We finally asked about them at the pharmacy, and found they were keeping them in the back. They were limited to one per customer and the price had gone from $20 to $29. Again, all sizes were not available.

[Vinca]

24. My current rule of thumb is to buy toilet paper when I go to the store whether I need it or not.

The current shortage at our grocery is cat food. There have been days when you could count the cans of Fancy Feast on your fingers and I don't need to tell cat owners about the hazards of bringing home "strange" food. So glad I found Chewy.