E-commerce & Dropshipping Half-true — works only if you do the unspoken work

By the Income Reality Check Editorial Team · Updated 2026-08-15 · 7 min read

Costco returns flipping: the $10K-in-10-days pallet pitch, checked

Verdict: Half-true — works only if you do the unspoken work. The pallet math is real, but the sprint leaned on a business account, a garage full of space, unpaid help, and nearly two weeks of grinding.

In “Costco Made This Guy Millions! Can I Make $10K in 10 Days?”, Chris Koerner of The Koerner Office Podcast brings in a friend named Shannon Jean — who Koerner says has “made millions of dollars doing this” — to buy Costco return pallets on a liquidation auction site and resell the items on Facebook Marketplace. The stated goal is blunt: $10,000 in profit in 10 days flat. Is it real? Mostly yes, as a method. But the video quietly redacts the final profit figure, the clock ran to 12.5 days, and the “anyone can do this” framing skips a few load-bearing details.

What the video actually claims

The pitch is that Costco sells its customer returns and excess stock “for pennies on the dollar” through liquidation auctions, and that a beginner can flip those goods locally for several times the buy price. On camera, Koerner and Jean win two pallet lots on a platform they call “Betock” — that’s B-Stock, Costco’s official liquidation channel. One appliance load lands at roughly $243 per unit including freight; a patio-furniture load comes in near $200–$222 per unit. They point at a $3,400 gazebo bought for $200, LG wash towers grabbed for $243 against a $1,300 Lowe’s price, and $3,000 garment steamers.

Jean’s rule of thumb is “tripling our money is pretty conservative,” with 2x as the worst case. The workflow is simple to describe: buy graded pallets (“used good” is the sweet spot), test the electricals, photograph everything, write listings with ChatGPT for SEO-friendly titles, post on Facebook Marketplace, reply fast, and cut prices when items stall.

Here’s the part worth holding onto. At the end, Koerner narrates that it “took 12 and a half days to make a total of that much money” — and the actual dollar figure is bleeped and blurred out. He adds they “easily could have hit our goal within 10 days” with faster listing. The headline number, in other words, is asserted but never shown.

What the method actually requires

Start with who’s allowed to bid. The video makes it look like you log in and go. You don’t. To buy on Costco’s B-Stock marketplace you have to register as a business and provide, per B-Stock’s own onboarding, a valid state resale certificate (U.S. buyers) or proof of business (international buyers). That’s not a formality — it means registering for sales tax collection in your state and, functionally, running this as a business from day one. The closing line of the video (“all you need is a credit card, a garage, and a Facebook account”) isn’t quite true. You also need to be a registered reseller.

Then there’s the labor, which the video is actually honest about in passing (“this is not hands-off work… it’s a simple business, but it’s not easy”). Independent reselling write-ups put the real workload at roughly 25–50 hours of sorting, testing, cleaning, listing and coordinating pickups per pallet. In the video you can see it: a Blackstone griddle needs a new handle ordered from Amazon and a re-season, a wash tower arrives with the door off, sheds have “a thousand screws” to verify. One load was “18 pallets of appliances.” Two people worked it, plus shout-outs to several named helpers (“especially those last two guys for stepping in”). That’s a crew, not a solo garage hustle.

Margins are real but thinner than the on-camera 3x-to-4x talk suggests once you net everything out. Experienced resellers report gross margins around 30–60%, and seasoned buyers budget 15–20% of every pallet as dead loss — items that arrive broken, incomplete, or unsellable. The video shows exactly that risk (the doorless wash tower, the missing griddle handle) and even reframes it as a feature (“this is a problem-solving business”).

Who actually wins this game?

Look closely at the cast. Jean has been doing this for years and can price a Blackstone or an LG Styler on sight — that pricing instinct is the whole game, and it’s not something a first-timer has. Koerner runs a large podcast and paid communities (he pitches tkowners.com and TKOs.com in the same video). The DFW market they’re selling into gets “2,000 people moving here every day,” which is a genuinely favorable demand pool for used appliances.

So the people who clear real money flipping liquidation loads tend to be the same four types who win most reselling: operators with product-category expertise, people with space and a vehicle (or a delivery partner), sellers in high-turnover metros, and anyone who already has an audience or community to amplify them. A beginner in a small town, with no truck and no resale certificate, is playing a very different game than the one on screen.

What you’d realistically earn

For a true beginner, treat the first pallet as tuition. Realistic net profit per general-merchandise pallet runs from a loss up to a few thousand dollars, and many first-timers lose money learning to grade loads and price. NerdWallet’s guidance on arbitrage reselling is blunt about the trap: “you need to do the math to make sure you’ll actually turn a profit after fees,” and “it takes money to make money.” A part-time reseller across platforms often nets a few hundred dollars a month, not thousands, especially in the early months.

Could a motivated person clear meaningful money in a couple of weeks like the video? With the right high-ticket appliance load, a metro market, space to store it, and someone who already knows the categories — yes, the mechanics support it. But notice everything that “yes” quietly assumes. The video’s own timeline slipped past 10 days, needed extra hands, and the profit number was hidden. Would you accept a business plan that won’t show you the bottom line?

Two related reality checks on this site are worth a look: our breakdown of offline side hustles that promise $10K and what actually happens when you collect cash from a physical machine business. Both share this one’s core lesson: the money is in the boring operational grind, not the buy.

The parts nobody films: tax and claims

Once you’re flipping for profit, U.S. readers are running a business in the IRS’s eyes, not a hobby — the agency weighs whether you keep books, depend on the income, and operate to make a profit (hobby vs. business guidance). Payments you take on Venmo, Cash App, or PayPal for goods can trigger a Form 1099-K, and the IRS is explicit: even without the form, “if you received payments for goods… you must report your income,” on Schedule C as a sole proprietor. The video takes Venmo and cash on camera and never mentions this.

One more note for anyone selling a course off this method. The FTC has proposed a new Earnings Claim Rule that would require sellers of money-making opportunities to hold written substantiation for any income claim and hand it over on request. A blurred-out “we made this much” number is exactly the kind of unsubstantiated claim regulators are circling.

Who this is (and isn’t) for

This makes sense if you have a garage or a cheap storage unit, a vehicle or a $50 delivery partner, a few thousand dollars you can afford to tie up in inventory, the patience to test and clean returned goods, and a metro market with steady buyers. It also helps if you’ll actually register as a reseller and handle sales tax. It does not make sense if you’re expecting passive income, you’re short on space or transport, you can’t float inventory for weeks, or you want to skip the paperwork. This is a physical, hands-on flip business — closer to running a small warehouse than clicking “publish.”

What to remember

The method is legitimate and the pallet arbitrage is real — Costco returns genuinely sell for a fraction of retail on B-Stock, and skilled flippers do triple their money on the right units. What the title sells and what the footage shows are two different things: a redacted profit figure, a 12.5-day clock, a business account requirement, unpaid helpers, and 25-plus hours of grind per pallet. Real business, real work, real reason the number stayed off screen.