Costco, a well-known American wholesale retailer, has opened its new store warehouse at 21 Parramatta Rd, Lidcombe, in Sydney’s Western suburb. It continue to attract thousands of Sydneysiders with long queues on its shopfront and causing traffic along Parammatta Road and in the M5 motorway.
Costco is basically a membership warehouse club and their store is only available to their members. You cannot go in their shop without your valid membership card. Costco sells quality brand-named and wide selection of merchandise and it is popular for selling their products in bulk giving buyers good savings. Groceries, electronics, school supplies, clothes, wine, frozen good, fresh produce, bakery, butchery, etc.
Costco Shopping Tips
1. Apply for your membership online. Visit their Costco Website (click here) and fill up your online membership. This will cut your waiting time as you only need to present your email confirmation letter, take a photo of you, and then they will give your membership card. Membership cost is $60. Be sure to carry with you your Driver’s license or passport.
2. Go there early. Expect long queue for people applying for membership cards. Parking is somewhat a nightmare for now with huge number of shoppers going there. It’s been traffic along Paramatta Road since Costco opened Thursday (July 21) last week.
3. There are available street parking near Costco. There is also a shopping center accross the road and probably you can score a parking space there.
4. Expect a lot of shoppers insideCostco. Shopping Trolleys are everywhere bumper to bumper. If you have kids, it is not the best time to go there.
5. Buy only what you can consume. Once you’re inside Costco, you are likely to be tempted to buy because their prices are really good!
6. Be sure to get a trolley before you go in. The warehouse is huge.
Is it Worth to Pay $60 Annual Membership fee?
Costco‘s marketing style is probably one of the best technique there is. If you want to buy their prducts, pay a membership fee. That means, to make most of your membership, you need to shop as often as you can and in the process you get your membership expense back in form of savings! It really means repeat business and loyalty of customers for Costco. Really clever.
$60 is not that much compared to the savings you will get from just few trips to Costco. And yes, their products are really of quality.
Rival stores like Wollworths, Coles, Aldi spend a lot on their catalogue and TV advertising. Costco actually relies on word-of-mouth and they are far more effective with thousands of shoppers going to their store everyday.
Costco Customer Service
Have you been to a grocery store where staff unloads your trolleys at checkout and put it back again? Costco does! They have staff all around serving busy shoppers around. Be sure to stop by their product demonstration stalls and taste their product samples for free. And if you didn’t have brekkie, they have a take-away cafe with affordable meals.
Costco Auburn
Location: 21 Parramatta Rd, Lidcombe, NSW 2141
Email: auburn@costco.com.au
Trading Hours:
Monday – Friday
All members: 10 am – 8.30 pm
Saturday
All members: 9.30 am – 6.30 pm
Sunday
All members: 10 am – 5 pm
Tags:
Costco Sydney, Costco Store Sydney, Costco Auburn, Costco Warehouse, Costco shopping, Costco Membership Club, Costco Products, Costco Membership, Costco Groceries
esspee419
I have been to the stores in the US and everything from the car park to the actual shopping area in the store is bigger and well orgnaised. It took us 20 mins to park, 30 mins to get the card (which could have been avoided if you order online). Once at the top level, there were no trolleys so i had to brave the crowd and go back down. Inside the experience was even worse, there were thousands of people and you could barely push your trolley around. The checkout counter had 100 people in line to pay!!!! Claustrophobia struck and guess what… you cannot even find the exit correctly because there were so many people waiting in line! I promptly cancelled my membership card as i have better things to do than to wait in ridiculous lines. I am not sure what has gone wrong with the design and location of this store. Or maybe people in Sydney are flocking to Costco as Harvey Norman, Coles and wollies have been over charging us for years. If they fix the space issue, it will be awesome…