A Penny For Your Thoughts

- jim Young

“One penny may seem to you a very insignificant thing, but it is the small seed from which fortunes spring.” - Orison Swett Marsden

If I had more faith in the morality of man I would believe more in “free enterprise”. According to at least one definition, “free enterprise” is described as “a component or specific type of capitalism that emphasizes a truly free and competitive market with minimal government intervention.”

“Capitalism” on the other hand can be defined as “the broad economic system of private ownership of the means of production and the drive for profit that exists with varying degrees of government control.”

And again, if I had more faith in our government to properly govern capitalism, I would believe much more strongly in capitalism as well.

Unfortunately too many greedy and unscrupulous advocates of free enterprise and capitalism break the rules. Then, there are those that may not technically break the rules, but often push the limits.

Costlo Liquidators are an example of the latter. You can be certain if using the name “Costlo” and taking it even further by designing their logo to look similar to the Costco name and logo were breaking any laws, Costco would have filed a “cease and desist” order against Costlo from the beginning.

At first glance a consumer might be given the mistaken impression that Costco has set up a sister company to liquidate their returns or end-of-line products.

While Costco does sell many returned items to third-party liquidation warehouses and some of the items you may find at Costlo might even be some of those items, Costlo itself has no direct association with Costco.

Nevertheless, the consumer might reasonably assume they will find exceptional cost-saving deals at Costlo.

Our first visit to Costlo in North Bay recently was for the sole purpose to determine if there was any truth to that assumption.

From our perspective it wasn’t, at least not enough to have us travel off the beaten path on our usual visits to North Bay even though it wasn’t really that far off our beaten path.

First Impressions

Our first impression of Costlo, before even looking at prices, was not favourable. The rows and variety of items was impressive but the entire store looked sloppy and messy. However, I’m willing to overlook this in exchange for a real bargain price.

For the most part, when we looked at Costlo’s prices, nothing seemed to be jumping off the shelves at us. It didn’t help that more than a few of the items that we might have been interested in, did not have proper signage indicating their prices.

Cheez Whiz

The first item that did catch my eye was a 900 gram jar of Cheez Whiz for just $8.99. That seemed like a good price so I added it to our cart.

Later that day while doing our regular shopping at Independent, I noticed Independent's price for a 900 gram jar of Cheez Whiz was $11.49 so it certainly seemed like a bargain at Costlo.

When I got home I compared it to the jar of Cheez Whiz we had previously purchased at Costco to compare the pack size. It was then that I first noticed the jar of Cheez Whiz that I had purchased from Costlo had an expiry date that was over a year old. Now I don’t have a problem with purchasing expired goods, but when I do, I like to know I am doing so at a reduced price. A savings of $2.50 would certainly justify my purchase of an expired item.

Except I wasn’t charged $8.99 when I got to the till. Costlo charged me a total of $10.16 for the Cheez Whiz when they rang it through as a taxable item. This reduced my savings of $2.50 to $1.33. And to add insult to injury, that’s $1.17 more in taxes the government will receive on my already over-taxed behalf!

Then, I checked my past receipts to discover the 900 gm jar of Cheez Whiz that I had purchased at Costco had only cost me $6.99. So why would I pay $2 to $3.17 more for an expired item at Costlo? I wouldn’t. At least not again.  

Caramels

A bag of the caramels at Costlo seemed to be priced at 99¢. The signage was unclear but we decided to take a chance on it being at least reasonably priced.

The 2 bags we purchased were rung through at 2 for $2.98 or $1.49 each. While not what we were really expecting, it still seemed like a fair deal. That was, until we got to the Dollar Store where the caramels were priced at $1.50. The difference being, that the bag of caramels from Costlo contained 150 gm of caramels compared to the 269 gm bag of caramels from the Dollar Store that cost only a penny more. Gram for gram that “penny more” at the Dollar Store saved us $1.17.

To be totally fair, I should point out the caramels were not the same brand. There are some products that I will pay extra for to purchase a brand name, but caramels aren’t one of them. Suffice it to say the Dollar Store caramels were manufactured by a well known brand where the Costlo caramels were manufactured by a lesser known but also very reputable brand.

Benjamin Franklin said, “Watch and pennies, and the dollars will take care of themselves.” Now that pennies are discontinued, we are obligated to watch our dollars in the hopes that our budget will take care of itself.

These may be just a couple of examples and you might want to check Costlo out for yourselves but from our experience, we will not be likely to give them another shot.

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