After closing all of its physical Photo Centers last year, Costco has announced that it is fully exiting the business and shutting down its online Photo Center service as well, pointing customers to Shutterfly instead.
Costco has announced that it will be closing the Photo Centers in all its locations by February 14, 2021. The announcement was made known to Costco Photo Center patrons via email early this morning.
I received a letter from Costco that the location I frequent for my 8 pounds of ground beef and jumbo bottle of vodka is closing their photo department. Why? Because in spite of more pictures being taken now than in any time in the history of photography, people are simply not printing their snapshots and, because of this rapid decline in printing volume, it makes no financial sense to keep the photo department open.
Costco's wholesale warehouse stores used to be an ultra-affordable place to get film developed, as it charged less than $2 a roll while competitors often charged several times as much. But film processing started disappearing from Costco locations a few years ago (to the dismay of many). Now the entire in-store photo departments may be the next to go.
Last week we reported that CVS's photo printing website had been taken offline in response to a possible breach of credit card data at its third party vendor. It turns out that same vendor powers many other huge photo printing service sites out there, and those sites are now down as well.
I recently stopped into the Costco in Mountain View, California with 164 rolls of Kodak Portra 400. You should’ve seen the look of the staff -- it was a look of confusion, awe, and amazement.
They were surprised that all that film I brought in was all shot by me. They were also partly worried that they would have to process all of it. I reassured them by telling them to take their time. I wasn’t in a rush. After all, I had been sitting on my film and letting them “marinate” for nearly a full year.