Costco gives you cash back on a debit return.

Costco's return policy is famous for being generous about what you can bring back. The part that gets less attention is how they actually hand you the money, because it comes down to how you paid, and a couple of payment types get you cash at the return desk.

Pay with a credit card and a return goes back to that card, the way it does everywhere. Pay with a debit card, though, and most warehouses just give you the refund in cash at the register rather than reversing it to your account. Cash and check purchases come back as cash for the same reason. Prepaid Visa gift cards usually land in the cash bucket too, since the register runs them like debit.

The prepaid one is the tip worth filing away. Those cards are a pain to spend down to an even zero, and if you end up returning something you bought with one, you are not left waiting on a refund to a card you may have already tossed. You walk out with cash instead.

Two caveats. This is the warehouse return desk, not Costco.com, where online orders go back to the original method the usual way. And it can vary by location and whoever is ringing you up, so treat it as the normal behavior and not a promise. But it is a nice thing to know. Most places quietly push a debit return back to your account and leave you waiting a day or two for the bank to catch up. Costco tends to just hand you the cash.