10 Discontinued Costco Membership Perks That Deserve A Revival

If you're coming back to Costco after a membership lull or thinking of using a perk you once used, you might be surprised to find that some of them just aren't available anymore. Costco has had all sorts of membership perks beyond just having deeply discounted products in the store, like all the discounts you can get from other companies and from using its branded credit cards. In fact, some of these perks are good enough to justify membership by itself. But when benefits that customers expect disappear, it can leave more than disappointment behind — especially when these are services customers use often.

We believe certain benefits deserve a comeback, including certain return policies, reimbursements, purchase protections, in-store services, extended warranties, discounts, and product availability. The discontinued benefits applied not only to in-store purchases but also to purchases made with partner companies or with Costco-branded credit cards. Now, these perks are just memories of what once was possible, with Costco's membership offering fewer extra advantages than before, compared with memberships at other warehouse clubs like Sam's and BJ's.

We like to be positive about the possibility of these Costco membership benefits making a comeback. After all, the chain discontinued its Disney Resort packages in 2025, only to bring them back in 2026. While some returns aren't likely, we can still dream. Here are 10 discontinued membership perks we'd like to see return for Costco members.

The fact that Costco has an unlimited, 100% satisfaction-guaranteed return policy on many products is great. Unfortunately, as of 2007, that unlimited return policy no longer includes electronics.For years, you could return anything you bought from Costco and expect a full refund, no matter how long ago you'd purchased it. The only exception until the crackdown was computers, which were still guaranteed for six months. So, you didn't have to buy extended warranties on anything you got from Costco, knowing that if it conked out on you, you could just bring it back.

Unfortunately, such a generous return policy was ripe for customers to take advantage of. If there were a sale on a more advanced or larger model of a big-ticket item like a television, customers would sometimes bring back their old items of similar cost and switch them for the newer version. Such customers found they could potentially use it as a way to continuously upgrade their technology without ever having to actually purchase new technology. So, sadly, those who were gaming the system ruined it for the rest of us.

Considering the declining quality of so many electronic items these days, it would be nice to be able to buy them from Costco and know they are guaranteed for life. But, alas, that's no longer a reality. Instead, you only have 90 days, which really only covers lemons that show their flaws quickly.

Once upon a time, the Price Rewind program allowed you to price-match items you bought with a Costco Citi Visa card if they were available at a lower price anywhere else within 60 days. This membership perk allowed you to take the risk of buying a big-ticket item without remorse, since you could be reimbursed for the difference between what you paid and the lower sales price you found elsewhere later. Even better, you didn't have to buy it through Costco; you just had to use the Costco Visa card to make the purchase and then initiate a City Price Rewind search within 60 days to find lower prices. Unfortunately, the Price Rewind program ended in 2019.

Citi isn't the only credit card company that has gotten rid of this perk. Companies like Chase and Discover have gotten rid of it as well. Customers who often took advantage of this perk were upset because they enjoyed using it alongside other features of this card, such as the percent back and extended warranties. Removing this benefit left some customers scrambling to find a new card that offered price-match reimbursements.

Costco does still offer price match refunds, but it's only for items you buy from Costco that change prices within 30 days of purchase. Unfortunately, the price matches don't carry over to include items purchased from other stores, like the City Price Rewind program once allowed.

The Costco Citi Visa card lost another perk in 2019: trip cancellation and trip interruption protection. Before 2019, you had peace of mind when making travel purchases with the Costco Citi Visa because you knew that if you had to cancel your plans for a covered reason, you wouldn't just have to eat the cost.

Unfortunately, 2019 was the year that Citi canceled a lot of its travel benefits for many of its card types. The company gave customers three months' notice that most of these perks were going away, and then stopped offering them altogether.

Yes, the card still covers a lot more travel-related situations than many other cards, but if you need to cancel your plans, you're at the mercy of your booking's refund terms and any separately purchased travel insurance. After losing travel plan protection, the only remaining travel benefits are roadside assistance, travel and emergency referral assistance, 3% back on Costco Travel purchases, no foreign transaction fees, worldwide car rental insurance, and worldwide travel accident Insurance. Unfortunately, the travel accident insurance only kicks in if you end up dead or dismembered.

Back in the good old days, when you wanted photo or video services, you could go into a Costco to order them. Getting a Costco membership no longer includes this option. Instead, photo services have been available exclusively online since 2021. With this switch to online photo services came the discontinuation of the company's in-person VHS-to-DVD-or-USB video transfer services and its custom framing and plaquing services.

For a while, Costco had its own online platform for photo and video services. However, in 2023, it closed these down, too. It made a deal with Shutterfly to offer discounted photo services to Costco customers, who could even transfer their information and photos over to Shutterfly. It offers all sorts of photo-centric products, such as photo books, calendars, and greeting cards, that you can order online and receive by mail. However, customers haven't been impressed with how Shutterfly's quality compares to Costco's and say that the company seems to inflate its prices before adding the Costco discount. In addition, Capture began offering video transfer service discounts for Costco customers through Costco Next until Costco dissolved that program in 2026 (more about that later).

There was a time when Costco was the go-to place to get passport photos. However, Costco's passport service ended in 2021, along with the closure of all its in-store photo service centers. When Costco discontinued its passport photo service, it was offering them for $4.99. This was a great option because if you opt to have your passport photo taken at a participating U.S. post office, you end up spending at least three times as much as you would at Costco for one.

Back in 2021, when the services ended, there was nowhere you could walk in and get them cheaper. Everywhere that still offers passport photos charges much more than Costco did, with prices ranging up to around four times what Costco once charged. Granted, you could certainly take your own photos and print them at home for cheaper. However, by having them done professionally, you avoid the problems of rejection due to the wrong size, wrong paper type, incorrect background, or other logistical image issues. It's already enough of a hassle to gather passport documents without also dealing with passport photo challenges. So, we miss that Costco made the process more convenient and cheaper than it is now.

Something else that you might fondly remember from your Costco membership in years past is being able to get printer ink refills from the store. This was another service that the photo centers offered, which makes sense since it was using a lot of printer ink to produce high-quality prints in the photo department. Unfortunately, when the photo center closed down in 2021, so did the printer ink refill service. It wasn't just photos that people were buying less of by 2021; they were also refilling their ink cartridges less often. So, these services departed at the same time.

Customers used to be able to leave their empty printer cartridges up at the refill center while they shopped, and come back by the center to pick them up when they were done shopping an hour or so later. While Costco currently sells new printer ink, the discontinued refill service of yore gave you ink at about half the price of a new cartridge. Plus, the service included testing and cleaning the cartridges. With even the cheapest printer ink costing around $60 at Costco these days, those cheap and convenient in-person ink refills are certainly missed — even if we're all collectively doing less printing.

One unusual service that Costco once offered was a marketplace for mortgage lenders. However, Costco discontinued this program in 2022.

Even non-members could use Costco's mortgage lender marketplace to shop for a lender. However, if you were a Costco member, you could also get a discount on the lending fee when you used the service. It had a select list of approved and vetted lenders, and bulk negotiations meant the rates could be very competitive. The type of Costco membership you had dictated how much you'd have to pay for origination fees. Regular members never had to pay more than $550. However, it paid to be an Executive member if you wanted to use this perk since the origination fee was capped at $250 at this tier. In fact, some people got memberships just for these discounts.

Costco decided to exit the mortgage lender marketplace business in 2022, and speculation pointed to a couple of reasons. One was that higher interest rates meant fewer people wanted to refinance their homes, and lenders couldn't make as much money, so they couldn't offer bulk discounts or deals that were as good. Costco had also received customer complaints about certain lenders and processes, and it didn't want these bad experiences to tarnish its good name.

Costco Citi cards lost a few perks in 2019, but customers could still get extended warranties on purchases they made with them up until 2023. While Citi continued to cover previous card purchases under an extended warranty, any purchases made with the card after January 22, 2023, were no longer covered. With this perk gone, the prospect of getting and maintaining a Costco credit card is a little less shiny, especially for those who used it for the extended warranty benefit.

Previously, you could use this card to buy something and count on the credit card company to extend any warranty from the manufacturer. It gave you a full two years extra beyond the original warranty. However, there were a few limitations, such as not covering it for more than seven years after purchase, allowing Citi to decide whether to repair, replace, or reimburse the cost of a covered item, and not reimbursing more than $10,000 for repair or replacement. Even with those limitations in place, it was a stellar deal ... until it wasn't available anymore.

It might seem like a little thing if you didn't use them, but when Costco removed its in-store coffee grinders in late 2024, customers certainly noticed. Costco has a lot of high-quality coffee beans, including some priced under $10 a pound, making it a go-to place for many customers to buy whole beans. However, for those who didn't have a burr grinder at home or who had just gotten used to the convenience of using the one in the store, finding the grinder gone was a big shock. Costco doesn't even sell coffee grinders to make up for what it took away, which was salt in the wound for those who found themselves suddenly with no way to grind their favorite beans.

For years, you could count on finding coffee bean grinders in Costco stores, but not anymore. While there's no exact information out there about why the coffee grinders disappeared, we have a good idea since customers in many locations seemed to abuse the privilege. According to people on social media claiming to be Costco employees, the machines' burrs often clogged due to misuse, such as putting grounds into the machine instead of beans to double-grind, or even dropping the cleaning brushes into the machine. Unfortunately, some people report that they've even seen customers put non-coffee items in the machine, like dog food or nuts, turning grinders into a source of contamination and an allergy liability. So, although we'd love them back, it's no wonder they're gone.

There have been lots of Costco changes that have made customers angry, and discontinuing the Costco Next membership perk in 2026 is definitely one of them. The Costco Next program started around 2017 and felt integral to membership as a whole. It turned Costco into a mega buyer's club, allowing members to shop with around 60 outside vendors for discounts of up to 40% on a wide variety of items Costco itself didn't carry. Especially if you planned to buy a big-ticket item, it was worthwhile to use your membership to shop with these partner vendors rather than pay full price to buy elsewhere.

The bizarre thing about the discontinuation of the Costco Next program is that Costco had been bragging in 2025 about how much better the program was doing in sales each year and how it was planning to add more vendors. So, what happened? On September 24, 2026, Costco executives explained during the company's fourth-quarter earnings call that they wanted to integrate popular Costco Next products and brands directly into Costco's website and app. The company believed this would improve the shopping experience and increase sales. Unfortunately, neither Sam's Club nor BJ's has anything like Costco Next to fill the gap ... yet.