Drop Keycap Club

Learning and discussion Keycaps
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In reply to Costco memberships. The basic one is $60 but the executive one is $120. However, with the executive one you also get 2% back on all purchases, even if you don’t use the Citi card. So if you go to Costco like me once a week and have a huge family like me it makes sense to have a Costco membership. Like when it was just me and the wife we barely used it, but 3 kids later it makes so much sense (diapers and eggs, my kids inhale eggs). Plus I live like 2 minutes from one so I get my gas from there too. Right now I have $390 in rewards from just my Citi card, and probably will get another $150 from the executive membership.

Also, the cool thing about the rewards is that its basically a check that you have to cash at Costco. I remember paying for my stuff and then cashing the check and the cashier was like why don’t you just pay with the check, and I was just like then I don’t get cashback that way and she just did the meme:

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22

I love Costco and shop there myself, but there are some aspects of it people don’t often talk about.

First, they absolutely require a vehicle and things are sold in large sizes and quantities. Costco was built for the US model of buying weeks worth of groceries at a time. If you have no car, a lot of the utility of Costco is lost.

Second, the prices aren’t much lower than Walmart (in fact Walmart will often be cheaper on non-bulk items).

Third, the $60 to $120 membership fee has a secondary purpose of keeping the very poor out of the store. People that live week to week cannot afford $60 on a store membership or to buy 40 rolls of toilet paper at one time.

So the combination of forcing you to buy in large quantities along with a gatekeeping membership fee guarantees that Costco will be a “middle class only” discount store. Yes the prices are lower, but poor people are largely kept out. People who would never step foot in a Walmart will gladly shop at a Costco.

It is a dirty secret to their success.

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23

Came here for keyboards, stayed for a takedown of the middle-class american lifestyle.

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Outside of obvious accessibility, unless you’re a family who goes through a ton of products at a consistent rate, Costco’s bulk package is often a bit too much.

They also don’t have a lot of variety. An easy example would be pasta sauce. A grocery store would easily have 20+ options. Costco offers at most 3-4 options.

Just completely different experiences. I love Costco, but if my goal is groceries, my go to is Wegmans.

Edit: I joined the Drop Keycap Club, lol

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i need to get your tips lmao bc i barely made $45 on the membership cert/check and who knows what my citi card reward will be! …dare i ask how much you spend on average per costco trip??

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Costco is also great for businesses, especially small businesses (and especially Business Costco).

If y’all haven’t seen this great breakdown of the Kirkland brand, you should check it out: How Costco Convinces Brands to Cannibalize Themselves - Napkin Math - Every

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I use my CC for everything and just use my cash to pay it. Like there’s no point in using a debit card if you have a CC with rewards. Like for example, I had an insurance payout of $15k that had to go to the company that fixed my condo, so I just charged that on my CC instead of paying the $15k outright, easy $150 there. Like I have a friend that has a random bank account in Detroit because they pay like $40 a month on interest as long as he keeps $1,500 in there, makes like 4 transactions a month (he just buys Amazon gift cards) and log into their website a few times. Literally free $40.

I can see the the negatives about Costco, but like I said you have to be smart about it. I have a family of 5 living off 1 income (mine, as teacher, so not a lot) and it works. We only ever buy toilet paper/paper towels when they go on sale, same with laundry detergent and other basic needs. Like we only buy the major shit there, most of our food comes from other places. It makes sense now more than it did when it was just me and the wife. Like, don’t buy bread at Costco or shit that expires easily.

I feel like a keyboard community is the wrong place to talk about financial management lol. Just be smart about other shit so you can spend more money on what you really like.

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This is the key reason I go exec. I make at least $60 in cash back per year, so it’s worth it even on a slim year.

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People without ADHD be like “Just gotta be smart with money.”

Cheers, I hadn’t thought of that!

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And McDonald’s is a real estate company. Corporations are weird.

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31

I already have too many sets in this colorway, but this ABS MT3 colorway (MT3 Dusk) is totally my jam:

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I was looking at the Skiidata one myself. Both are very nice.

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Yup, agreed

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Too many cool MT3 sets… this is one of those good-to-have problems.

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I really wish these Drop MT3 Ortho sets included two 2U spacebars, but other than that, the profile and quality is really nice for the cost.

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When Skiidata popped up, I started to seriously consider the keycap club. My thinking went like this; if I buy four keysets a year, the membership pays for itself - and let’s be honest - I buy at least four sets a year from them between my own love of MT3 and my customers’ love of their in-stock colorways.

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It’s soo cooool… it also matches my bright orange NK65… They really do have an almost constant flow of new MT3 sets, almost all of which I think look great and that I want in my collection. I already have certifiably too many MT3 sets, and looking in my heart-of-hearts, I have no intention of stopping. :grin: So, heck it, Keycap Club here I come.

I’m about to go on a mild rant here but before I do I’ll say that thinking is still basically true and the membership has plenty of potential to be totally worth it - IF you go about it in a certain way. It’s not a rant about the program itself, which I actually think is fine, so much as a rant about specific language used on some of their pages.

There is some pretty misleading language on the sales pages - only down in the FAQ is there real clarity - at least for an ADHD habitual skimmer like myself.

Each keycap listing has the language,

Drop Keycap Club Members save a minimum of $20 on this item with their annual membership.

On the FAQ page it details that the “$20 minimum” does not apply to “this item” so much as include “this item” if it’s part of an order that meets some basic conditions - the discount applies to the whole order together. So - if you buy three keycap sets that all say “$20 minimum on this item” you’ll get $5 off two of them and $10 off another. Not a bad deal - but not exactly what it says on the item pages, either.

The discount includes artisan caps, too, which is cool - but that’s another potentially misleading situation; say someone wants a $35 artisan, and sees the language “…save a minimum of $20 on this item…” with the $100 minimum not mentioned anywhere on that page or any other between it and payment unless the user specifically side-steps to the FAQ page.

It’s the words “minimum” and “this item” being in the same sentence together and without any qualifiers that’s rubbing me the wrong way here.

Don’t get me wrong - I don’t think the actual way it works is a bad deal at all, especially for someone that buys as many keycaps as I do. I’m happy with the membership and what I expect to get out of it now that I’m caught-up with how it works - but hoo boy does that language on the cap listings strike me as intentionally misleading.

I want to like you, Drop, but all too often I walk away from an interaction feeling like I’ve just dealt with an Amway down-liner moonlighting as a used car salesman. You know - with lots of gold jewelry and/or wiry chest hair poking up from an unbuttoned collar.

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Hey. Want some Holy Pandas™, kid? They’re epp-ick.

Crazy idea - a little less priority for the lawyers, a little more for writers that actually like the products?

IMHO, this information should be at the bottom of any page that mentions the deal - or hey, crazy thought - maybe just clearly worded in the first place. Like, I dunno:

With their annual membership, Drop Keycap Club Members save a minimum of $20 per month, once per month on any single keycap order over $100.

or even

With their annual membership, Drop Keycap Club Members receive one coupon every month with a minimum value of $20 for any order of keycaps of $100 or more.

Yes, it’s less immediately attractive - but it’s also accurate and totally avoids that uncessarily bad feeling a customer can get when they feel they’ve been purposefully mislead by technically, legally true language. It’s also not unattractive. Had I read that language, it would have been a simple calculus for me to jump on-board and be totally happy about it.

Now I’m just kinda happy about it, but I also feel kinda myeh and yucky about it. :stuck_out_tongue:

Y U LIEK DIS DORP

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37

Ahh now I see why the Dorp in house MT3 sets have come down to $85 a pop…

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You could message them about it. They’re really receptive on this kind of thing. I immediately got what they meant, so it wasn’t misleading to me- especially with it reiterated in the FAQ. Alex in particular is very open to feedback. If you don’t want to, I can forward him the thread so he can take a look.

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I’d be happy to, and was actually planning on it. I’m sure it’s not intentional, but they probably wouldn’t mind avoiding folks like myself interpreting it that way.

Edit: I sent them a message detailing my experience and what led to my temporary confusion, and how alternative language on the keycap pages might help avoid it altogether for folks like myself. Hopefully that’s helpful to them. :slight_smile:

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To be fair for Drop, their previous preorder MT3 sets were also discounted to $85 for the base set before the Keycap Club was a thing, so it looks like the pricing hasn’t necessarily ‘changed’ to reduce the value of the club.

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