TLDR: Costco is using a new battery tester to prove your old battery is fine then they won’t honor the warranty or give you any credit for battery swaps

For ten plus years now when you are having a battery problem, you go to Costco Auto Center. You purchase a new battery. You swap it in the parking lot. Then you return the old one. They give you partial credit.

NEW POLICY – They just fucked all of that up by now pulling out a special interstate battery tester with a printer. They test your OLD battery and if it prints out a “good” report, then they give you $0 for your old battery. That’s obviously designed to stop all the people (including myself) who wait until the last minute of your warranty, then swap the battery out to get a new 4+ year run. So far all of my batterys have been bad but people do that.

SO anyway, I swap out my battery. The dumb battery won’t stay charged for more than 2-3 days. People say, oh there’s a battery drain but that’s not the case. When I swapped in the new battery it was fine. But the dumb interstate testing machine says my OLD battery is good. But it’s not good at all. Their little printout says it’s good and tested fine. So the fuckers won’t give me any credit for my old battery, despite it being a $220 battery! It’s 18 months old. So at first what I did was tried to turn my old “good” battery in for $15 credit. Then I realized that’s a horrible idea and got it back. However, what are you going to do, just store this old battery in your garage? You have to maintain it. I do have 3+ battery maintainers but that’s a super pain.

So then I just returned the NEW battery and went back to my old one, rather than spend $220 for a fucking battery. My dad said maybe you can go elsewhere and test the battery and prove it’s bad somehow.

https://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/threads/costco-is-testing-batteries-now.401708/