Why doesn’t Costco have free WiFi for its members? I have spotty cellular reception where I live and can’t use the app to look for deals. It’d be rad if Costco had free WiFi!
Because they don’t need to spend $$ on wifi for customers.
Costcos are crowded enough. We don’t need people hanging out in the warehouse staring at their phones.
Costco IT can barely handle their website and app can you imagine them trying to roll out wifi to all the warehouses?
maintaining that system for every store, which costco would be obliged to provide very high uptime for, would raise prices for very dubious minimal benefit
Because that’s a lot of routers to set up and they know people would primarily use it for price comparison
You answered your question…. Costco does nothing for free. Ever.
InstaCart would like to complain too SO MANY InstaCarters ask why the reception sucks in a big concrete and metal building…
People would be running their office from the food court.
Basically it would cost a looooot of money to implement with no measurable ROI. Would memberships increase if they offered free wifi? Would average sales per member increase if they offered free wifi?
I’ve heard rough estimates that they have 700+ members at any given time during business hours, plus the employees, so you have tons and tons of people trying to connect to the wifi. To support the amount of users, you’re not looking at any consumer-grade equipment. It would be a huge investment where the technology would get outdated very quickly.
Somebody that’s more knowledgeable please correct me, but IIRC you can get a booklet of their sales (or just bring along your book sent to your house) to the store.
This said, what I do personally is I look through the book and put the items we use that are on sale in my phones “reminder” app, and have it alert me on the day the sales start so I get the biggest bang for buck.
it may be expensive to implement wifi properly when you consider all the metal shelving and refrigeration units that can interfere with signal penetration. while many eat in area grocery chains have free wifi, costco needs their eat in area to turn over quickly, so they can’t afford to add wifi that may encourage a “coffee house hangout” environment.
these days cellular data is relatively cheap in usa, with most now rarely exceeding their monthly data caps. if you pay over $40/mo for data, please consider switching to a MVNO or attaching your phone billing to others for a “family plan” discount. the vast majority of us don’t need “unlimited” and can manage just fine with a 5gb/mo capped rate.
It’s an unnecessary expense for Costco and is grouped together with advertising which Costco doesn’t spend money on either. They’re seeing record profits without it why spend the money to incorporate it?
How hard can it be? They SELL routers! /s
I always thought the cell reception was awful so you couldn’t price check items to see if you were really getting a deal.
You ‘live’ at a Costco, which has spotty cellular service for your carrier?
You want free Wi-Fi in a warehouse? Even 5g isn’t gonna work well for that lol
A femtocell for each of the big 3 cell networks is all they need. Put them above the cell kiosks.
I mean, they SELL CELLPHONES and have trash reception in every Costco I’ve been to (probably 15 locations) and people complain about it all the time.
It’s neither expensive nor difficult.
I wish they would have WiFi! I have Verizon for what it’s worth. I get no signal at the gas pumps. Barely load the app or a web page in the warehouse. My costco is maybe 0.2 miles from a busy enough hospital and shopping center that Verizon put a little of their Ultra Wide Band 5G in (the fastest 5G with the most bandwidth but not much range). I would definitely appreciate the WiFi since Verizon still can’t handle the amount of people.
Yes, I would like this. As much as I like Costco, they really are behind the times in a lot of areas. No Scan and Go, no inventories listed in their app. Hard to tell if they even carry something in-store from the app without putting feet on the ground.
Half the time I just end up going to a different store for something specific because they at least tell me if it’s in their store or not.
Recently it was a pressure washer with that issue. The app was telling me some were available in store possibly. I go there and none to be found. I get angry and don’t want to wait for Costco.com to ship it to me in a week, so I look at Home Depot’s app and they say what exactly is in stock and available a mile away and get it there instead. I guess it’s just pure psychology to get people in the doors but major inconvenience to members.