Washington Costco Customers Want Canadians To Shop On Their Own Side Of The Border
We don’t like to be alarmist, but we sense the next huge international skirmish brewing on the border between Washington state and the Canadian province of British Columbia, where discount-hungry Canucks (is that an insult? We’ve heard it is, but then there’s the hockey team, so…) are apparently making the border crossing to shop at Costco — and where some locals are all “Hey, stop buying all the dang Huggies!”
Some Costco shoppers in the town of Bellingham are so peeved at the Canadian invasion that they have created a Facebook page with the on-the-nose title of “Bellingham Costco needs a special time just for Americans.”
From the page’s About section:
You all been there. The main stay of this town “guide meridian” is LA freeway at rush hour. Its hard to find a parking spot. The lines are crazy. The overcrowding is causing some to be rude. We just want to go shopping like everyone else, not go on an adventure. Costco and other big box companys in this area need to be allowed to expand or move to larger areas. Bellingham Coscto is in the top ten profitable Costcos but is still top ten smallest stores. What are your ideas? lets make this known so that the city/county officials know that the people want change so we can better accommodate our Canadians neighbors and our own shopping situations.
And while there is all sorts of bacon-slinging going on in the comments on the page — “Get out of the Pacific Northwest!” “To us it’s the southwest!” goes a completely imaginary exchange of sass-talking that we just made up — Steven Zussino at GroceryAlerts.ca (yes, that’s right… “.ca” They even have their own, more polite version of .com) calls for his fellow Canadians to reconsider their trips to Bellingham.
He points out that while the prices might be cheaper on some items at Costco, people need to figure in the time and cost to drive all the way to Bellingham and back — not to mention having to wait while crossing the border along with your fellow bargain hunters.
Additionally, Zussino writes that though Canadians might be able to pick up a less expensive car seat for their baby at a U.S. Costco, it isn’t certified by Canadian safety authorities. So you wouldn’t even be allowed to leave the hospital with your newborn until you got a proper Canadian seat.
“If you do plan to shop across the border, try alternative stores like Fred Meyer or Safeway or Albertsons,” he writes. “They all have great deals and take coupons.”
We’re just going to go ahead and predict that this is all doomed to escalate into a diplomatic nightmare that will ultimately result in something resembling the beginning of Red Dawn (the Swayze original; not that remake junk they still haven’t released), but with enemy invaders parachuting in to take advantage of deep savings.
And when that happens, where will the people of Washington go to stock up on supplies? Costco, of course.
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