Costco Canada Last Chance: How the Online Clearance Section Works

It's a label Costco puts on online items it's clearing out, mostly discontinued products and overstock. Costco picks what goes in it, so it isn't a keyword search for "clearance." Every item carries a Last Chance note, and many add "Item previously sold at" with the old price, which saves you digging up what it used to cost.

Smaller than people expect. When ShelfAware started tracking it, the section held around 200 items for all of Canada. Items drop off as they sell out and new ones get added, so ShelfAware reads the whole list again every day instead of assuming yesterday's is still accurate.

No. Last Chance items ship to your door at one national price. They aren't tied to a warehouse, so there's no store to check and no reason to drive anywhere. If it's listed, you can order it. Once it sells out online, it's gone.

No, and this is the part that trips people up. Each warehouse runs its own markdowns on its own floor, and that stock never shows up in Last Chance or anywhere else on Costco.ca. If a friend found a deal on a pallet at their warehouse, Last Chance won't tell you whether yours has it.

Yes. ShelfAware checks each warehouse near you, but Costco only reports in stock or out of stock, never a count. It also leaves out warehouses that were never sent the item, which is why a rotating treasure-hunt product might show up at one or two warehouses and nowhere else.

Most items come back in one check across the warehouses near you. Products sold in several sizes or colours, a mattress model for example, take a little longer, because ShelfAware checks those one warehouse at a time.

Sometimes it isn't. Costco.ca lists one online price per item, but each warehouse has its own price too, and it can be higher or lower. When ShelfAware finds an item in stock at a warehouse, it shows that warehouse's price next to the stock result, minus Costco's instant-savings coupons when we can find them. Some warehouse-only discounts and markdowns don't appear in Costco's data, so the price on the shelf can be lower than what ShelfAware shows. Warehouses that don't have the item show no price. Last Chance is the exception: those items only ship, at the one national price described above.

A Costco product link points at the whole product family, like a mattress model, rather than one specific size or colour. Price and stock belong to the specific item, so ShelfAware asks which one you mean before it checks anything.

If the current price is already one you'd pay, buy it. Last Chance stock is finite and there's no second warehouse to fall back on. If it isn't there yet, set a free price alert at your number and let ShelfAware do the waiting.

Today's Costco Last Chance deals are updated daily, and the Costco page covers warehouse stock checks and price tracking for everything else.