Disclaimer: US readers will forgive me for my little knowledge about CostCo.

I think CostCo is one of the largest retailers in the US or something like that. I’ve certainly heard US folks and US acquaintances praising it.

CostCo exist in the UK, there are few physical shops in the outskirt of London (see Google Maps) and an online website to take online order. Unfortunately it’s not really a thing here in the UK like it is in the US.

Well, maybe it’s not a thing because their website never ever worked!

I’ve tried using it for the first time maybe two or three years ago. I was able to run a few searches but most pages would not open. Clicking filters or most button didn’t do anything.

I’ve tried using it yesterday for the last time. The website doesn’t load.

There were a few times in between. To the best of my knowledge the CostCo has never been usable in the past years. It’s entirely possible it has never been usable for as long has it has existed.

This is the experience for people trying to order online with CostCo in the UK. I am using Firefox, on Windows, ad blocker disabled.

Try opening some of the main pages like “Grocery Delivery” https://www.costco.co.uk/Grocery-Household/c/cos_6 or “Grocery Delivery – Shop All Grocery Delivery” https://www.costco.co.uk/Grocery-Household/Grocery-Delivery/c/cos_6.16?sort=relevance&q=:price-desc

For the avoidance of doubt, the screenshot is a large image, that’s blank background. There’s nothing to see because the CostCo UK website doesn’t load. It’s been like that for years.

I’ve enabled the debugging tab to see network requests. There are some HTTP requests completed, some more pending.

Notice the timeline in the network debugging tab, showing 35.84 seconds scale, however the page has been blank for longer than that. The scale is only adjusted when requests are completed, which can takes a while with very slow requests.

Wait for some time…

The headers are finally showing up. The rest of the page is still missing or broken (missing navigation menus, weird spaces, missing images, etc…). I can’t easily screenshot the whole page in full height unfortunately, to show bits are broken here and there.

Notice there are multiple HTTP requests all taking exactly 9 seconds to complete.

Wait for some time.

Screenshot after 4 minutes on the page. Still trying to load.

This is loading more content, notice HTTP requests about products. Having a look at the history, it’s noteworthy that many requests are exactly 0 seconds or 9 seconds.

This may or may not complete at some point in my lifetime. I do not know. I gave up at this point.

Conclusion

This has been my experience every time I’ve tried using the CostCo website over the past few years. I give up because the website does not work. It does not load.

If I eventually manage to open a page with some products, maybe a category from a navigation menu, clicking on any product does not open the product. It’s impossible to view products.

If I eventually manage to run a search, the search page is broken, clicking filters or sorting does nothing. It’s impossible to search.

It’s not possible to navigate and complete any order with CostCo UK. The website doesn’t load or it loads so slowly as to be considered entirely non-functional.