The Costco membership card is a sacred talisman of suburban adulthood. It grants you access to dollar-fifty hot dogs, five-pound tubs of hummus, and the sweet, sweet sensory overload of the sample aisle. But for small business owners, that card isn’t just a perk because it is a lifeline. One baker on Reddit just found out the hard way that adding family to your business account is all fun and games until they start treating the return policy like a free rental service and nearly get you flagged for fraud.
Our narrator is a 31-year-old woman running a baking side gig. Her Costco card is a business membership, which means it is tied to her livelihood, her taxes, and her ability to buy fifty pounds of flour without batting an eye. Years ago, she did a nice thing and added her mom and aunt to the account so they could grab cheap gas and bulk staples. It was a chill arrangement until this spring when her family apparently lost their collective minds.
The descent into madness started with an air fryer. Her aunt bought one, used it, and then returned it. Her reason? It was “too loud for podcasts.” I am sorry but what appliance is quiet enough for a podcast? It is an air fryer, not a librarian. But the OP let it slide because family is family. Then her cousin borrowed the card to buy a projector for a backyard movie night. He returned it because the picture looked “yellow on grass.” He projected a movie onto his lawn and blamed the equipment.
Then came the call that every business owner dreads. Costco business services contacted her to say there had been five high-value returns on her account in sixty days. They warned her that frequent returns trigger reviews. For a business that needs vendor receipts for audits, having the account frozen would mean her “flour and butter plan is toast.” She wasn’t just annoyed because she was rightfully panicked about her income.
So she did the responsible thing and called a family meeting over Sunday lunch. She laid down a new rule: if you buy electronics or appliances on her membership, you keep them. No more rent-and-return schemes. And how did her family react to this very reasonable boundary? They gaslit her. Her mom called her “dramatic.” Her aunt bragged that the manager knows her by name, which is definitely not a flex in this context.
The cherry on top of this disrespect sundae was her uncle telling her to relax and “just bake more cupcakes” to pay any fees. The condescension is blinding. He dismissed her business as a cute little hobby while simultaneously jeopardizing it.
But the final straw broke the camel’s back last week. Her mom texted asking to buy a TV for her brother. The OP said no and told them to use their own cards. So what did Mom do? She went into the OP’s drawer, stole the spare physical card, and bought the TV anyway. And in a twist that surprises absolutely no one, she returned it the very next day because it was “too big.” She even had the nerve to ask the OP for a ride to return it.
Now the family is claiming she is making things “transactional” and the aunt is bringing up babysitting she did in 2003 as leverage. This is emotional blackmail over bulk goods.
So is she the ahole? Absolutely not. N-T-A. You do not get to jeopardize someone’s business license because you are too lazy to measure a wall before buying a television. Her family is treating Costco like a library and her career like a joke. Lock that account down, change the membership number, and let them pay full price for their gas until they learn some respect.