Costco customer throws away his receipt before leaving the store — instantly regrets the move
A TikTok creator shared his experience with Costco’s 'receipt of shame' policy after losing proof of purchase.
Aug. 12 2025, Published 12:46 p.m. ET
Costco may be a trusted supermarket brand, but some of its policies can annoy customers at times. A lot of people felt that way when a TikTok creator by the name of Jake (@_jake.mp4) shared his experience with one of the store’s policies. Getting some things off the shelves and getting checked out doesn’t end the process of shopping at their stores. One must get the receipt checked by a worker or scanned to exit.
Jake figured this out the hard way, as he had thrown away one of the receipts after shopping and was given what he called the “receipt of shame.” He uploaded a picture on TikTok of himself holding the folded 8.5 by 11-inch piece of paper, as per a report in The Daily Dot. The text overlay on the image read, “Guys don’t throw your receipt away before you leave Costco or you’ll have to wait 8 years for the receipt of shame.”
In the caption, the creator mentioned that he had only purchased a few items, like chicken nuggets, chocolate croissants, and breakfast sammies. Viewers shared their discontent with this policy in the comments section of the post. “I crumble mine up accidentally so many times and then go oh s***,” one user wrote. “Just walk out. If you paid, you paid. They can't hold you in the store lol,” wrote another.
“My receipt for cut off in the machine, and I had to go all the way back for my ONE 'easy in and out' trip to Costco. Apparently, they won’t let you exit without the whole receipt,” a third user wrote. Even the creator shared his thoughts in the comments section. “Waiting shamefully for them to come back with a fully grown 8.5x11 that is literally waving a white surrender flag,” Jake noted.
As far as Costco is concerned, it’s a good way of double-checking whether a customer has truly paid for those items and that they have been charged the correct prices. “We do this to double-check that the items purchased have been correctly processed by our cashiers. It’s our most effective method of maintaining accuracy in inventory control, and it’s also a good way to ensure that our members have been charged properly for their purchases,” the company website states.
However, there are some who refuse to show the bill of purchase at the time of leaving the store. One person who does that is also a TikTok creator with the handle @KernelDump. He said that he avoided having his receipts checked by the people at Costco or any other store, for that matter, since he scans and logs all of the details himself when he gets back home, per another Daily Dot report.
However, at Costco, one has no choice but to do it, and the creator is never comfortable when that happens. “That just eats me up inside, because I still don’t want to do it on principle,” he said in the video.
For more of such content, follow @_jake.mp4 on TikTok.
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