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CostCo is a communist enterprise, designed to weak the American spirit and rob this great nation of its hard-working go get'em attitude to life. At least by German standards.
I recently returned a two-month old Home Theater System and a large LCD display to a CostCo store. The clerk asked me what's wrong, and when I launched into a long explanation of what I had thought it would do but doesn't, simply cut me off by saying "oh, so you don't like it." And then proceeded with some paperwork at the end of which I got my money back.
In Germany, the customer experience is quite different. As described elsewhere, I almost ended up in a fist fight with a supermarket clerk who wouldn't let me into the store because she thought I wouldn't be out by official closing time. When I canceled my German cell phone five days before the deadline, Vodafone argued it had got the letter one day late and therefore kept billing me for another whole year. And when I bought a new Bahncard (a one-year rebate card for using the German train system), a month later I received a bill for the next year of my prior Bahncard which Deutsche Bahn was not willing to cancel despite my new second (and identical) Bahncard. Of course they had added 40 Euros of dunning fee for an invoice I had never received. And on (1) and on (2) and on (3) as I've described at various times.
Had I tried to exchange electronics like those above in Germany, I would both have been ridiculed and arrested for indecent conduct in public. Honestly, in Germany the only way to get my money back would have been to pry it from a store manager's cold dying hands. Which is why any public sale, use, or display of shotguns is strictly prohibited in Germany.
It certainly makes German consumers hard. If you can't give something back, you are always shopping for the best deal. And if someone offers customer service, it must be a fraud. Remember Walmart? In France, they got ridiculed because they forbade black pantyhose at work. Germans couldn't care less. Here, the first public uproar was about singing at work: Too close to home, that is, too close to Nazi-behavior. Next up were the guys who put stuff you just bought in paper bags: In the German consumer's eyes, once you paid for something, it is yours, and anybody else touching it is an attempt at stealing it or doing something to it. In the cut-throat German consumer market, Walmart didn't fare well, and last year it left by selling out to a German supermarket chain at a $1B loss.
The German market seems closed to U.S. chain stores. I wonder about the other way. How would U.S. consumers react to tough love from Germany? Would they welcome the abuse? Imagine this: When coming into the store, you'll first have to get on your knees, begging to be let in. Next you sign away any rights to ever returning an item. Then you may be allowed to buy something, most likely at prices that Walmart and CostCo can't match.
Interestingly enough, this kind of sado-masochism is not the way German companies are trying to make their way into the U.S. market. They probably are smarter than I think. Aldi, the proverbial German discounter, first bought Trader Joe's and now is building up its own operation. (Only in the East so far.) Well, I wish them good luck. I just hope they won't get near me any time soon.
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