I think my two favorite stores on earth are IKEA and Costco. Today, I'll give you one example of how Costco earns - nay, deserves - my money.
We bought a blender there in November of 2005. It was $75, but had a $20 rebate, and it was a very nice KitchenAid blender. We make smoothies very often and so we decided to splurge on a quality blender. Keep in mind that my only previous blender purchase had a)been made in fact not by me, but by my mom, b)was about 8 years ago, c)probably cost about $20, and d)had recently gone up in smoke during a routine smoothie operation.
We were not disappointed by this blender. It was awesome. Until Sunday night, when it broke mid-smoothie. It somehow derailed itself and then stripped the nubs on the base that engage the pitcher to keep it spinning. A freak accident! Our smoothie may have been ruined, but the important thing is that we survived.
I checked the documentation that came with the blender (I always keep stuff like that) and saw that it had only a 1-year warranty. The blender had been in use for just a little bit over that. I've noticed that about appliances lately - they seem to quit suspiciously soon after their warranty expiration dates (see: our humidifer, Miriam's humidifier, and the baby monitor, which quit one day after the warranty expired).
So I took it back to Costco today to see if they would give me a refund. In my world, when you buy a $75 blender, it had better last a lot longer than one year. The customer service lady took a look at it, listened to my story, and promptly offered to give me a refund on a Costco cash card. Of course, I accepted. As she added the money to the card, I made sure to remind her to subtract the amount of the rebate from the refund total. She just shrugged and said not to worry about it.
But wait, there's more! Not only did they essentially give us $20 for free, when I went to see if they had another one I could buy, I saw they had the same blender but for $20 cheaper than the original price.
Using Jeremy's style of money management, that means we basically made $40 today.
The great thing is that this is far from an exceptional experience at Costco. They have always behaved very generously towards me, their customer. And for that, I thank them.