If you ever want to learn about consumer behavior, walk through a grocery store. Look at all the labels, how things are positioned, how sales are organized, and you’ll get tremendous insight into how we consume. Ever wonder why grocery stores have sales where they limit the number of products you can buy? You can get five cases of Diet Coke for $10 but you are limited to five cases. If you really wanted ten, all you need to do is buy five, drop them off at your car, and then buy five more in another “trip” five minutes after the first. The reason they “limit” your order is because it creates a scarcity and you’ll end up buying more.

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Many thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts on the best places to buy checks online (62 comments as of this writing!), sounds like I was right to think that $20 for 50 checks was absurd! It appears that there are plenty of affordable options for buying checks and none of them come close to the 40 cents per check that Bank of America’s printers were asking for.

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My initial supply of personal checks, a checkbook worth, is coming to an end soon and I’ll be needing a fresh new supply. I don’t use checks very often anymore, I think they are antiquated and very insecure, but every few months I have to deal with a company that requires personal checks. It usually comes down to the company not wanting to deal with the headaches of credit cards and me not wanting to deal with the headaches of their 0% same-as-cash-but-not-quite financing offer! Anyway, the end result is that I write them a personal check and my initial stock is dwindling rapidly.

I looked into reordering checks directly from Bank of America, who gets them through Clarke American, now named Harland Clarke; but they want $20 for 50 checks! That’s outrageous! (and doesn’t include shipping) To prove how both absurd and true it is, here’s the screenshot from the order page (to be honest, if I were you, I wouldn’t believe me unless I saw this screenshot):

OK, order checks from the bank is out. It looks like I’ll have to order checks online. I looked at a couple places but it appears that Costco will probably be my best bet. Costco sells checks for pretty reasonable prices, though that option is only available for Costco members. You can get two boxes of standard single checks (400) for $10.59, $8.47 if you’re an executive member. Four boxes doubles the price, so there’s no discount for quantity. Shipping is a reasonable $4.95. That’s 400 checks for less than 4 cents a check – a song compared to the 40 cents BoA wanted!

Have you ever ordered checks online? If so, what has your experience been and who have you used?

Everyone knows about the cheap Costco gas and the wonderful Costco return policy (though on electronics it has certainly lost some of its teeth), but there are a lot of lesser known perks that members should try to take advantage of. Here are just five of them.

Sharebuilder New Account Promotion

Sharebuilder, recently acquired by ING Direct, is a popular dollar cost averaging brokerage. All members can get a $55 account bonus when they open a new account and make one purchase through a special Costco Sharebuilder landing page. Less valuable is the quarterly rebate on automatic transaction fees – Executive Members are eligible for a 25% quarterly rebate while Goldstar and Business members are eligible for a 10% rebate. There are some other terms and conditions that you’ll need to review if you’re seriously considering signing up for their automatic investing program.

Periodically Costco will spotlight a “Service of the Month” and when they choose Sharebuilder, it often comes with some nice perk like a cash card or something like that.

It’s a nice promotion because the $55 beats the typical $50 Sharebuilder promotions that run all the time.

Capital One Direct Banking Member Bonus

There’s another signup bonus available for members and this time it’s with Capital One Direct Banking. Executive members get $60 and Gold Star/Business members get $20 when they open an account and deposit $5,000 within 30 days. Their online savings account is yielding a solid 3.66% APY on balances over $5,000 too, which is a nice bonus. If you’re looking to lock in a CD, they have an 18 month CD at 4.46% APY and a 7-year CD offering 5.55% APY. The online savings rate is certainly one of the better high yield savings account rates and the CD rate is also among the best CD rates.

The eagle eye’d may notice that Costco members also get higher yields on both products. The standard online savings account rate only gets as high as 3.55% APY (and that’s if you have a daily balance above $10,000) while the standard 18-month CD rate is 4.41% APY. It’s important that you let them know you’re Costco members if you decide to bank with them!

Car-Buying Service

I’ve read stories about people having a good experience using Costco’s car buying service. I don’t know how it differs from ones I’ve seen offered at credit unions though I imagine they are similar. The website claims no haggle pricing with “special manufacturer rebates & incentives.”

I chose a 2009 Honda Civic Sedan and it listed a 5 Speed Manual DX for $15,405. I looked on Cars.com and the lowest list price they had on that vehicle was $16,825 – a difference of over $1400. I didn’t compare all the features but that’s looking pretty solid just to start. If you’re a Costco member and looking for a car, you definitely want to check out the car buying service.

Bank Checks

Costco also offers check printing services that are pretty competitively priced versus some of those mailers (and you have the confidence you’re working with someone vetted by Costco). 2 boxes (400 checks) of their singles costs $10.59 ($8.47 if you’re an executive member) plus shipping. The same thing costs $13.92 at Wal-Mart, so you save a few dollars.

I personally try to limit the number of personal checks I use because they’re one of the most insecure methods of payment available. All the information someone needs to steal your identity is available on those checks – your name, your address, your bank, your bank’s ABA routing number, your account number, and even your check number (if you ever wondered why sometimes checks start with 1001 or 501 rather than 1, that’s a “security feature”). But, if you like checks, Costco can get them for you cheaper.

Photo Printing

The fact that you can print photos at Costco is nothing special. What’s nice is that you can orders prints and pick up photos up to 12×18 in size within an hour at your local Costco, while paying Costco prices. Their prices won’t knock your socks off when you compare them with online photo printers but they easily beat any other photo printers you know of. Here are their prices as of today:

* mail order only

What’s your favorite Costco perk?

(Photo: greenwenvy)

Costco has since closed this loophole so you’ll need a Costco Membership to get gas there.

A friend of mine just tipped me off on this trick where you can buy gas at Costco without a Costco membership. All you have to do is swipe an American Express card first, when you would normally swipe your membership card, and then swipe it again for payment. Afterwards, it will let you buy the sweet sweet nectar of condensed dinosaur bones at rock bottom prices without the $50/year membership. It’s that simple.

Normally, you have to swipe your Costco Card or the American Express Costco TrueEarnings card in order to authenticate in their gas station systems. It appears that you can simply use any American Express card in the authentication phase because the American Express Costco TrueEarnings card is just an AMEX with a Costco bar code.

I’ve confirmed that this works in Maryland and others have reported success in other states (except those that require an attendant to pump your gas, like New Jersey and Oregon). Locate a Costco nearby (check to make sure it has a Gas Station) and give it a try, Costco gas is usually many cents cheaper than local competitors.

(Photo by shindohd)

I have an interesting “ethical” question for you all, especially given the fervor over the Costco return policy.

I recently purchased an Epson Home Cinema Projector that came with a $300 rebate and a free bulb rebate (worth nearly as much). One of the quirks about the rebate was that you had to mail it within thirty days, rather than the typical static time limit that was ignorant of when you purchased. As you can imagine, what happened was I got all excited with the projector and forgot to mail the rebate within the 30 day limit. I did exactly what the manufacturer wanted, I purchased the project at the “list price minus the rebate amount” in my mind but I actually paid full price. It’s been a while since I’ve made a $300 mistake like that, one that could be chalked up to carelessness and laziness rather than circumstances that were less within my control.

My solution to this was something that some may find unethical (or at least gray) but I didn’t see a problem with it. I purchased another Epson projector and then submitted that receipt with the other documentation (UPC code, serial number) so that I’d be compliant and the rebate was approved. The only cost to me was shipping the second project back via UPS Insured; it set me back around $60. All in all, the added hassle netted me $240 and a free bulb.

While I feel that was certainly in the gray area (submitting a receipt that didn’t technically match the UPC), I personally found that to be on the good side of the ethical line. I returned the project in exactly the same condition that it was sent to me and Amazon wasn’t out anything (maybe shipping fees) and I received a rebate I was rightfully entitled to (I did buy the projector, I just missed the 30 day window by a few days). And I was certainly on the good side if you consider how quickly rebate fulfillment companies are to screw the consumer at every opportunity!

What do you think?

On a trip into Baltimore this Labor Day, I hit something on the road (never saw it so it must not have been too big) that punctured my rear passenger tire. I brought it into Costco thinking I could repair it but, alas, it was not to be. So, I ordered myself a whole new set of tires to the tune of approximately $550 after taxes. Five hundred dollars sounds like a lot but these tires aren’t your standard tires (they’re 215 widths, for starters) but $550 was a decent price for them after taxes… but there’s a better reason to go with Costco: prorated tread rebate.

One of the best benefits of buying tires from Costco is their prorated tread rebate benefit. If you buy your tires from Costco, they will refund you the value of the tread remaining on the tire when you go in to replace them! All told I had about 43% of the total tread remaining so I was refunded 43% of the total value of the tires, which was close to two hundred dollars! Granted, that two hundred dollars was already mine, but that means I don’t “lose” the value of the tread when I replace the tires – a definite win there.

Now you might ask, why did you replace the other tires when you still had 43% tread left? Convenience and because I don’t lose any money because of the prorated tread rebate. If they didn’t offer the tread rebate, I would’ve kept the two old tires and only bought two new ones, but since they did … I went with four new tires.

There are other reason why I buy my tires from Costco but that prorated tread thing is pretty freaking sweet.

Two days ago, as my fiancee and I were leaving a meeting with a wedding caterer, one of us noticed that my front passenger tire was a little low. I had been noticing a little sluggish handling as of late but nothing surprising but I only a few hundred miles away from when I needed the tires rotated and balanced so I brought it into Costco for some service.

For those that don’t know how tires work at Costco, you might pay a little bit more for the tires but what you get is a “lifetime warranty” against any sort of problems and you get lifetime rotating and balancing. The lifetime warranty means they’ll repair any damage absolutely free and if something bad really happens, then they will prorate you the cost of the tire based on remaining tread.

Also, Costco uses dry nitrogen to fill the tires, which they claim is better. The reasons aren’t good enough to convince me to use nitrogen if it cost any more than regular air, at Costco it doesn’t cost more. In fact, I erroneously though that you couldn’t top off a tire filled with nitrogen and that’s part of the reason why I brought it in. Luckily I did because they found a nail in the tire!

All told, balancing and rotating, including the repair of one tire, took approximately thirty minutes and cost me absolutely nothing. When I priced out tires before, the difference in cost between Costco and another place was less than ten dollars a tire so I saw the increased price as sort of a warranty, a really good warranty.

So last week was the yearly optometrist visit and this week will be the yearly ordering of the yearly supply of Acuvue 2 contact lenses. My choices come down to buying from the optometrist, buying it from some vendor online, or buying it from Costco – where all frugal shoppers, who want to underpay for more than they could possibly use, go.

The “deal” at the optometrist was hardly a deal at all $160 for 8 boxes with a $30 rebate, or, $16.25 per box. I figure with the overhead those poor folks have they couldn’t possibly be giving me the best deal out there so I passed, though I always had the option of going back if I turned out to be wrong. A quick pop over to 1-800-Contacts showed that they also had the $30 deal on 8 boxes and their total was for 8 boxes of Acuvue 2 was $129.60, or $16.20, with free shipping – so marginally better.

I visited Costco today and saw that their boxes of contacts were $13.85 (no sales tax on contacts!) – nearly $2 cheaper per box than any other source. Plus, ending today, there is a $10 off coupon on 4 boxes (but not $20 off 8 boxes). Also, to sweeten the deal even further, if I bought 8 boxes I’d qualify for the $30 rebate for a final price of $80.80, or $10.10 per box. And, as if the bargain basement price wasn’t good enough, I can do the rebate entirely online and save myself the hassle of mailing it. Costco wins again!

When I bought my tires from Costco, I noticed the caps for the valve stems were a flourescent green and asked about them – it means the tires are filled with Nitrogen. After reading a friend’s blog claiming that nitrogen-filled tires get 0.5 mi/gal better gas mileage and have a longer tire lifespan, I wanted to find some “proof” to these claims. The belief, also pushed by Costco in their tire brochures, is that the larger nitrogen molecules don’t react to temperature changes (better tread life and mileage) and lack moisture (won’t corrode the tire from the inside). It doesn’t affect my decision if these claims can’t be proven because there is a miniscule increased cost for using nitrogen (I can only “fill” my tires at a Costco, most gas stations only have air, but the service is free).

The theory is that the oxygen in the air inside the tire, when heated as a result of driving, can oxidize and rot the inside of the tire over time. A nitrogen filled tire won’t oxidize for obvious reasons, no oxygen. This is all anecdotal though and for most people, I think the tread of the tire wears out before the tire does from internal rot.

As for the nitrogen not reacting to temperature as much as compressed air, it’s probably a bit of snake oil magic going on there. At such low pressures, the nitrogen behaves like an ideal gas (just as oxygen and water vapor) so that means pure nitrogen will act just like regular air. A 0.5 mi/gal improvement in gas mileage is 1.6% improvement (on my car, which gets a little more than 30 mpg) which seems way too much.

It sounds like the “nitrogen is better than air” theory is not entirely true but since it costs me very little (if at all really) I won’t be complaining much about it. As long as you don’t pay for nitrogen, fill it with nitrogen; but if it costs you money, ask for regular air.