Went into Costco today hoping to score three sets: Toughs Guys Collection, Film Noir 3, and Adventures of Brisco County. Would you believe none of the above were there. Sigh.

I mentioned this in the weekly Costco bargain thread, but my Costco in Boise, Idaho cut their DVDs on hand by at least half. There used to be 2 full aisles and now there's less than one. Someone mentioned that it was happening at a lot of Costco's nationwide, but nobody seems to know what prompted it.

I can verify that the Milford, CT Costco has also reduced their DVD inventory. They used to have trays of DVDs stacked one on top of the other. They are now down to a single tier.

My local Costcos have also reduced their DVD section by roughly a third within the few months. Maybe their margins on DVDs are not worth it anymore?

Same here in Long Island went to Costco today they hardly had anything, infact they put the dvds mixed in with the cds. What a mess.

dvds are not profitible for them. They are probably using the space for to sell higher margin items.

They are getting less and less DVDs in the longboxes too, they're just plain DVD's in shrinkwrap like you see at BB or CC.

That is complete BS. I know for a fact that even though the margin is low, DVDs are profitable to them directly and indirectly. Sometimes they will use certain promotions on DVDs as loss leaders, like many B&M do, to attract customers, who will most likely leave the store with other items. What a local Costco GM told me was that many distributors were increasing the prices on new DVD releases, and Costco bosses have decided to not bring all new releases at the same time, just the big name movies during the first week. Then, they will buy whosale of recently released Box Sets and old films at a lower price, like WB ones and make promotional sales.

Thats what I saw mostly box sets, tv series. I was looking for The Hulk but no where insight only a ton of copies of Leave it to Beaver & Amazing Stories.

I think you just said the same thing. A loss leader is not profitable in itself. All I was saying is they appear to be taking a different strategy.

So it appears they are getting away due to price/profit issues.

Well, my Costco (in Eugene, OR) also cut it down. Not that I buy regular releases (they tend to be $3-5 more than CC or BB), but while they had The Benchwarmers, no Final Destination 3.

Hopefully they'll get more stuff in toward Christmas, but this sucks as they usually have some nice sets at reasonable prices...

Over this last year, all three of the CostCos near me have reduced their dvd selection by at least half.

Good

So did anyone make it to Costco this Tuesday (August 1st?) Anything worth visiting the place for?

Not I. Too freakin' hot. I did venture out for the BB exclusive "V" set..

If the famous Costco return policy applies to DVDs, I can see why they wouldn't want to stock them. Imagine the bozos that routinely go in and buy a movie, watch it, then return it for full price.

It does apply to DVDs and they give you a full refund, not an exchange. I returned a defective DVD in the past and just wanted to exchange it, but they gave me a refund because of their high turnover of inventory.

Yep, I was in Costco in Chicago and DVDs seem to be on the way out. The Clybourn store never got their act together regarding sales on DVDs so I wasn't too surprised.

They are selling a lot more clothes though

I think the problem at Costco is that they mostly don't use new releases as loss leaders, virtually every major new release is cheaper at CC or Best Buy, sometimes as much as $3-4(often $18-19 at Costco vs $14-$15 elsewhere). And that also applies to a lot of catalog items, there is never anything at Costco like this week's $3.99 CC sale. Every once in a while, on box set deals(which the major retailers generally haven't emphasized), Costco will have a killer deal, but it is generally only on those ones where they have some unique deal or got some deal from the studio that Costco has the best prices. But even those deals tend to be sporadic and badly promoted(very little signage for rebate deals)...

Still, Costco is my go-to store for the HBO box-sets.

They always have them on release date, and they carry all the releases.
And most importantly, they have the lowest prices on them than anywhere else.

If you really want to let Costco's upper management know how disappointed you are in the reduction in the DVD department:

Costco General Member Service:
800-774-2678

I called today (I did have to wait on hold for a few minutes) and got a CSR to document my concerns about the DVD situation at the Eugene store (approx. 25% it's previous size and a complete mess,) and I also made it clear that our company (I'm part of a family business membership) was strongly considering switching to Sam's Club if the situation did not improve.

My Costco is basically out of the dvd business. Too much plastic furniture to sell I guess.