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Re:Costco Capitalism by cold_fact on Monday February 10, 2020 @10:34PM (#22295814)
that's cool and all. but you don't understand how much the membership pays for itself with just gas alone

Right now my Costco has gas 50c less than any place around me

Re:Costco Capitalism by baddox on Monday February 10, 2020 @10:40PM (#22295850)
How does that work? From what I’ve heard, gas stations don’t get anywhere near 50 cents of profit per gallon. Even with massive scale and logistics I would be surprised that they can pull that off.
Re:Costco Capitalism by genocidicbunny on Monday February 10, 2020 @11:14PM (#22296008)
In my area Costco gas is usually the cheapest, but it's not always the cheapest by amounts like 50 cents. Its usually more on the order of 20 cents cheaper. The next cheapest stations share some similarities with Costco though -- they all tend to be unbranded gas stations. These don't usually have the agreements that branded stations have, where they have to buy a certain % of their supply from the brands refineries. So Costco tends to be buying the cheapest gas available at the time, has no brand-name overhead, and on top of that, purposely keeps their profit low to get more people joining. Another thing that Costco does, not just with gas but with everything, is they only accept their partnered credit cards. Their merchant fees are likely much lower, and as Costco does, they just pass that onto you.

So Costco is paying less, and keeping less (if any) profit. The net result is that their gas is appreciably cheaper.

Re:Costco Capitalism by lotsofpulp on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @04:29AM (#22297179)
I don’t know where they get it from, but Costco gas is supposedly same quality as other branded gas stations:

https://toptiergas.com/licensed-brands/

Re:Costco Capitalism by cortesoft on Monday February 10, 2020 @10:47PM (#22295872)
Oh man, I would pay more than that to avoid the parking lot. It would take an extra 30 minutes to get gas there.

And in our case, we already have electric cars anyway.