Will my complaint do any good?

Image by Anthony Quintano via Flickr

This Hackensack sky suggests God is watching customers who touch fruit.

I called Costco Wholesale's Customer Service line on Tuesday and spent four or five minutes complaining about fellow shoppers at the Hackensack store who engage in a forensic examination of the fruit.


I passed along a suggestion from a reader of Do You Really Know What You're Eating? that the store supply rubber gloves to customers who want to touch, squeeze and get up close and personal with tomatoes, cherries, peaches, nectarines and other fruit.


I feel a visual examination is enough, especially when the fruit comes in a plastic, see-through container that allows you to examine the bottom, sides and so forth.


The woman at Customer Service said maybe better packaging is needed. 


I replied even closed boxes wouldn't stop someone determined to examine every orb, every sphere and every globe in order to get perfect, ready-to-eat fruit.


She took my customer number and said she'd pass along my rubber-glove suggestion.


H Mart coupons


At the H Mart in Fort Lee today, I picked up a box of 16 champagne mangoes from Mexico for $9.99 -- three dollars less than the same box I saw at the Little Ferry store on Sunday.


I also bought the addictive sushi roll Koreans call kimbap -- made with seaweed, rice, vegetables, egg and crab for $4.99 (16 ounces, including a few Korean pickles). 


Two pounds of mussels from Maine were on sale for $1.89. Normally, they are $2.99, compared to $5.99 for the same amount of Canadian mussels at Whole Foods Market in Paramus.


When I got home, I found another H Mart coupon book in the mail. 


I started getting the coupons after I applied for a store card, which rebates 1% after you spend $1,000. 


These coupons are good from July 23 to Aug. 21, and on the back of the booklet, I see that a second, smaller store, called H Mart Fresh, has opened in Fort Lee at 1379 16th St. I'll have to check it out one day.


Update: When I cooked and ate the mussels, I found a few with sand in them, an unpleasant experience at the table. The Whole Food Market mussels were perfectly clean, so they might be worth the extra cost.