The Fake “Costco Kirkland 6-Burner Gas Grill” Email Is a Hidden Subscription Scam — Here’s Exactly How It Works
Verdict: CONFIRMED SCAM. This email has nothing to do with Costco. Scammers are using the Costco and Kirkland Signature brand without any authorization to lure people into a fake giveaway that quietly enrolls them in recurring charges of up to $150 per month — hidden inside terms and conditions nobody is prompted to read. If you fell for it, contact your bank immediately.
I want to be clear about something before anything else: Costco has nothing to do with this scam. The company’s name and its Kirkland Signature brand are being used without authorization by scammers who are counting on that borrowed credibility to lower your guard. Costco is a victim of brand fraud here, just as the people who fall for the email are victims of financial fraud. Keep that in mind as you read through exactly how this operation works.
I went through the entire scam from start to finish so you don’t have to — and what I found buried in the fine print is genuinely infuriating.
How the Scam Starts: A Fake Costco Email
Everything begins with an unsolicited email that uses Costco’s branding to make it look like an official promotion — a chance to claim a Kirkland Signature 6-Burner Gas Grill for almost nothing. If you’ve seen a deal that sounds too good to be real in your inbox, this is why that instinct exists.
Clicking the link in the email routes you first through a domain called appointment.de.com, which is there purely as a redirect layer — designed to obscure where you’re actually being sent. From there, you land on a site called axletreepleasingness.shop. That’s not a typo, and it’s not affiliated with Costco in any way.
The Survey: Rigged From the Start
Once you’re on the scam site, you’re walked through a series of survey questions. The questions feel like they matter — they’re checking your “eligibility,” verifying your “entry,” doing something. They don’t. It doesn’t matter what you answer. The outcome is predetermined.
After the survey, you’re shown a set of boxes and invited to pick the one containing your prize. Here’s what I noticed watching this play out: the second box selected is the one that “wins” — consistently. The entire selection mechanic is theater. You were always going to win. The point isn’t to create a real contest — it’s to create the emotional experience of winning something, because people who feel like they just won something make worse financial decisions in the next thirty seconds.
The Hook: “Pay Only $11.95”
After you’ve “won,” you’re taken to a checkout page that announces you can claim your Kirkland Signature grill by paying just $11.95 for shipping. The page displays a fake scarcity countdown — “5 in stock,” dropping to 4 (in yellow), then 3 (in red) — to manufacture urgency and push you toward an impulsive decision before you slow down and read anything carefully.
At this point, the page looks like a straightforward shipping-cost transaction. You’re paying a small fee to receive a high-value prize you just won. That’s how it presents itself. That’s not what it is.
The Real Scam: What’s Buried in the Terms and Conditions
Here’s where I want you to read slowly, because this is the actual mechanism of the fraud.
Buried in the terms and conditions — not displayed prominently anywhere on the checkout page, not shown in any summary of what you’re agreeing to — are two recurring monthly charges:
- $73.54 per month for an unnamed subscription
- $76.33 per month as a potential additional charge
That’s a combined exposure of approximately $150 every single month, automatically charged to the card you entered to pay the $11.95 “shipping fee.” For a product or service you never intentionally signed up for, never wanted, and in all likelihood will never receive.
The first price shown, by the way, even flickers between figures — the page initially showed $11.95, then the terms reference $14.95, before revealing the real monthly charges underneath. The inconsistency is deliberate. It’s designed to keep you focused on the small number while the large numbers hide in the fine print below.
No Checkbox. No Consent. No Disclosure.
This is the detail that, to me, confirms this isn’t just aggressive marketing — it’s outright fraud.
I went through the checkout page from top to bottom looking for any mechanism by which a user would be made aware of — let alone affirmatively agree to — the monthly subscription charges buried in the terms. There was no checkbox asking you to confirm you’d read and agreed to the terms. There was no disclosure of the recurring charges displayed anywhere in the visible checkout flow. The page is designed specifically so that you can complete the transaction without ever seeing the fees you’re being enrolled in.
That’s not an oversight in the page design. That’s the scam. You’re being enrolled in a $150-per-month recurring charge through a checkout flow deliberately structured to hide that fact from you until it’s too late.
From axletreepleasingness.shop, the final checkout eventually routes through a second scam domain: fastmarketzonefresh.com — another disposable URL in the same operation.
The Full Scam Flow, Step by Step
| Step | What Happens |
|---|---|
| Fake Costco email arrives | Uses Costco and Kirkland Signature branding without authorization |
| Email link redirects through appointment.de.com | Obscures the true destination |
| You land on axletreepleasingness.shop | Fake prize claim website with no Costco connection |
| Rigged survey and box selection | Outcome is predetermined — you always “win” |
| Fake scarcity countdown (5 → 4 → 3 in stock) | Manufactured urgency to prevent research |
| “Pay only $11.95” shipping hook | Small visible amount to lower your guard |
| Hidden terms: $73.54/month + $76.33/month | Real recurring charges buried in fine print |
| No checkbox, no visible disclosure | Consent to monthly charges is never actually obtained |
| Checkout completes through fastmarketzonefresh.com | Second disposable scam domain |
If You Fell for This Scam, Act Now
Speed is everything here. The longer these charges run unchallenged, the harder it becomes to recover the full amount. Here’s exactly what to do.
Step one: Call your bank or credit card company immediately. Tell them you were enrolled in a recurring subscription without clear disclosure or your informed consent, and request that the charges be disputed and your card number be canceled and reissued. Do not simply dispute one charge and stop — the monthly charges will continue on a new billing cycle unless the card number itself changes.
Step two: Gather every piece of documentation you have. Check your bank or credit card statement for the merchant name, phone number, and any other identifying information that appears on the line item for the charge. A phone number I found associated with this operation is 888-681-3576 — if this appears on your statement, include it in your report. Collect any emails you received, the URLs of the websites you were taken to, and screenshots of anything you can recover.
Step three: File a complaint with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center. Go to IC3.gov and submit a detailed report including every piece of information from step two. Every detail matters — company names, phone numbers, mailing addresses, email addresses, website URLs, dates of charges, and how you originally encountered the email. Reports like yours are how these operations eventually get traced and shut down.
Step four: Consider placing a fraud alert on your credit report. If you entered personal information beyond just your payment card number, a fraud alert through one of the major credit bureaus adds a layer of protection against new accounts being opened in your name.
What To Do If You Receive This Email But Haven’t Clicked
Delete it. Do not click any link in the email regardless of how official it appears. If you want to verify whether Costco is running any legitimate promotion — they aren’t, but if you want to confirm — go directly to costco.com by typing it into your browser, never through a link in an unsolicited email.
Report the email as phishing through your email provider’s reporting function. If you received it through Gmail, use the “Report phishing” option in the three-dot menu on the message. This helps email platforms identify and block the sending domains for other users.
Final Thoughts
What makes this scam particularly effective is the combination of a trusted brand name, a believable prize premise, and a checkout flow that’s been deliberately engineered to obscure the actual financial commitment being made. The $11.95 shipping fee looks like the whole transaction. The $150-per-month recurring enrollment is invisible until the second or third charge hits your statement and you start wondering where it came from.
Costco didn’t send you that email. No one is giving away a Kirkland Signature grill for twelve dollars in shipping. And the fine print you weren’t shown at checkout is the real product this operation was selling all along.
Trust your instincts when something feels too good to be true — because in cases like this one, it always is.
Did you receive this email or end up on one of these checkout pages? Drop the details in the comments below — especially any merchant names, phone numbers, or domains you encountered that aren’t listed here. Every piece of information helps protect the next person who finds this post.
