Costco is a rare example of a large company that’s actually pretty well respected for not doing shady things.
I doubt customers have much standing here. They were free to not buy items if they didn’t like the price. And I do believe Costco will use this to lower prices vs just pocketing the money.
Nothing like the 'free to not buy items' argument against a tax illegally levied by the government on most consumer goods.
I think people are missing the forest for the trees here and immediately defending a corporation reflexively. The point here is to try and recover money that was illegally gathered by the government. Costco offloaded the tax burden onto the consumers and now they can collect said taxes back from the government.
> They were free to not buy items if they didn’t like the price.
Customers (had to) accept prices under the assumption that the money went to the government, who are supposed to use it for the public good. You can easily argue that they would not have accepted the same price, knowing that it would benefit a for-profit corporation.
Yes, once I would have agreed. But lately, I'd prefer my money to be going to Costco by far over the us government, and I imagine quite a lot of Costco's members (they are known for being Democrat donors, and a well liked company) feel the same.
Massive caveat that I'm not American, it just seems like public sentiment doesn't broadly think that all the money going to the US government is used for "public good "
Sure, you could argue that counterfactual, but how is Costco actually implicated? Does Costco have a contract with its members that sets a limit on the margins they can charge? If so, then I suppose they could get sued for breach of contract. If not, as I suspect, then on what grounds could you actually sue them? Just because you feel like a business charges too much doesn't mean you get to sue them.
Did your receipt say anything about a government tariff?
The government was busy telling the hoi polloi that foreign companies were paying the tariff. They fought US companies that wanted to list the tariffs on receipts. They were actively suppressing clarity on the matter to end buyers. Your claim that customers assumed the higher prices was going to the government is specious or simply misinformed.
> They were free to not buy items if they didn’t like the price
Customers are buying many goods at Costco one might deem as essential (food, toilet paper, etc) in bulk to save on cost. An illegal tax was being collected everywhere and likely at an even higher cost.
Costco does shady things all the time. They just don’t get called out by customers for some weird reason. For example, they often copy some other company’s product blatantly and make it for dirt cheap in places with no labor or environmental laws, and use their retail power to quickly eat into that market. And they’re powerful enough that product manufacturers can’t afford to fight them for stealing designs or IP.
As a Costco member and customer, I’d actually trust the leadership more than most companies. Use the tariff money and keep that $1.50 hotdog ~ enough avg Americans can use that break for lunch, even if not the healthiest.
If Costco had miscalculated its tariffs and was on the hook for some additional tax, they wouldn’t be passing it on retroactively. So it is not reasonable to expect any kind of refund either.
Haha, pretty clever. I have to say it is quite impressive how people in law find ways to be the beneficiary of interactions between others. Well played.
This has obviously no merit as clearly Costco didn't "make customers pay" the tariffs. Customers freely accepted an offer to purchase as normally happens whenever someone visits a shop. Either you accept the offer or you don't but how the price is set is irrelevant.
I think that this is a standard play to seek a settlement to make the pain in the backside disappear.
IANAL, nor political expert - but should Costco have just said "this is an unprecedented situation, the US Gov't is still figuring out how it'll work, and there's a lot of uncertainty - so we'll make our decisions after we actually get the check"?
One could imagine a scenario where this is a political action group response to defying the administration. I have no evidence to support that, just could imagine it because the potential individual return to customers is minuscule.
wouldnt the average refund come out to basically a free year of membership? the easiest thing for them to do might be just check who was a member during the tariffs, and credit their membership fee for the 'tier' they were buying
people using costco as basically a small-business depot would be lifetime non-transferable free members, and typical family/consumer gets some extra years, which they'll turn around and spend in the store anyway
win/win? costco members are sticky, and refunding cash is hard
There is nothing wrong with a taxpayer who paid taxes later ruled illegal filing a request for a refund. This lawsuit is likely a shakedown opportunity for lawyers to enrich themselves. How Costco allocates the money they get back is up to them.
> Instead of reimbursing the customers who paid more for goods, Costco said on a March 2026 earnings call that it plans to use tariff refunds to lower future prices.
> That plan enraged customers who joined Costco based on the proposition that Costco would operate on the slimmest possible margins to ensure they never pay more for goods than Costco can afford to sell them.
I feel like Costco is generally a pretty good company, but this is a wild fantasy when dealing with any commercial entity with a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders.
This article and these lawsuits both seem like manufactured outrage designed to either enrich a few lawyers or blame and distract from another more fundamental injustice, which is the tariffs themselves.
Almost everyone on this forum buys retail products, and every American’s purchases were affected by tariffs.
This article claims the victims feel “rage” about this. Have you ever felt rage for prices going up due to goods becoming more expensive? I could believe that. If so, was that rage aimed at the retailer who was forced to pay more for the imported goods, or to the person who imposed them? Weird, but okay.
If so, assuming the retailers were the target of your “rage”, did you become further enraged when you learned that the unconstitutional tariffs collected were being sought to be refunded by the people who were forced to pay them? What political Venn diagram are we in now?
And lastly, do you shop at Costco or were marketed to by Costco? If so, you would be the single person in the world that might be able to claim you are the enraged victim here. It doesn’t make sense.
I’ve talked to plenty of people who are mad about tariffs, or mad at capitalism, and certainly mad at Trump. But it’s rare to find a Costco member that thinks Costco is treating them unfairly. They’re kinda famous for the opposite in a sea of exploitive retailers. (They are “famous” for never doing loss-leader shenanigans or charging more than limited markups of 11-14% on any product.)
Hell, Costco is the only retailer that wouldn’t surprise me if they turned around and gave ME a tariff refund if they are successful.
To literally sue a company for seeking refunds to levied taxes that were declared illegal, appears to be some combination of victim blaming, political distraction, or more likely: convenient enrichment for class action mills.
89 comments
I doubt customers have much standing here. They were free to not buy items if they didn’t like the price. And I do believe Costco will use this to lower prices vs just pocketing the money.
I think people are missing the forest for the trees here and immediately defending a corporation reflexively. The point here is to try and recover money that was illegally gathered by the government. Costco offloaded the tax burden onto the consumers and now they can collect said taxes back from the government.
> They were free to not buy items if they didn’t like the price.
Customers (had to) accept prices under the assumption that the money went to the government, who are supposed to use it for the public good. You can easily argue that they would not have accepted the same price, knowing that it would benefit a for-profit corporation.
Massive caveat that I'm not American, it just seems like public sentiment doesn't broadly think that all the money going to the US government is used for "public good "
The government was busy telling the hoi polloi that foreign companies were paying the tariff. They fought US companies that wanted to list the tariffs on receipts. They were actively suppressing clarity on the matter to end buyers. Your claim that customers assumed the higher prices was going to the government is specious or simply misinformed.
Kind of like assuming tariffs are used for public benefit.
> They were free to not buy items if they didn’t like the price
Customers are buying many goods at Costco one might deem as essential (food, toilet paper, etc) in bulk to save on cost. An illegal tax was being collected everywhere and likely at an even higher cost.
Still, seems kind of hard to argue that retail sales are not an offer and direct acceptance of that offer.
This requires an assumption of actions that might be performed if a condition in the future is met.
That is not a solid basis for a lawsuit.
I think that this is a standard play to seek a settlement to make the pain in the backside disappear.
people using costco as basically a small-business depot would be lifetime non-transferable free members, and typical family/consumer gets some extra years, which they'll turn around and spend in the store anyway
win/win? costco members are sticky, and refunding cash is hard
> That plan enraged customers
There is nothing wrong with a taxpayer who paid taxes later ruled illegal filing a request for a refund. This lawsuit is likely a shakedown opportunity for lawyers to enrich themselves. How Costco allocates the money they get back is up to them.
> Instead of reimbursing the customers who paid more for goods, Costco said on a March 2026 earnings call that it plans to use tariff refunds to lower future prices.
> That plan enraged customers who joined Costco based on the proposition that Costco would operate on the slimmest possible margins to ensure they never pay more for goods than Costco can afford to sell them.
I feel like Costco is generally a pretty good company, but this is a wild fantasy when dealing with any commercial entity with a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders.
Almost everyone on this forum buys retail products, and every American’s purchases were affected by tariffs.
This article claims the victims feel “rage” about this. Have you ever felt rage for prices going up due to goods becoming more expensive? I could believe that. If so, was that rage aimed at the retailer who was forced to pay more for the imported goods, or to the person who imposed them? Weird, but okay.
If so, assuming the retailers were the target of your “rage”, did you become further enraged when you learned that the unconstitutional tariffs collected were being sought to be refunded by the people who were forced to pay them? What political Venn diagram are we in now?
And lastly, do you shop at Costco or were marketed to by Costco? If so, you would be the single person in the world that might be able to claim you are the enraged victim here. It doesn’t make sense.
I’ve talked to plenty of people who are mad about tariffs, or mad at capitalism, and certainly mad at Trump. But it’s rare to find a Costco member that thinks Costco is treating them unfairly. They’re kinda famous for the opposite in a sea of exploitive retailers. (They are “famous” for never doing loss-leader shenanigans or charging more than limited markups of 11-14% on any product.)
Hell, Costco is the only retailer that wouldn’t surprise me if they turned around and gave ME a tariff refund if they are successful.
To literally sue a company for seeking refunds to levied taxes that were declared illegal, appears to be some combination of victim blaming, political distraction, or more likely: convenient enrichment for class action mills.