Costco is on my shitlist!!!

I am in a holiday funk and I don't like it! All thanks to the one place that I can't stay away from...(besides Target and Dollar Tree) COSTCO! It has to do with our Christmas tree. We decided to do the fake tree thing last year, Nic hates the hassle of dealing with real trees (wussy) and we figured that with Brett in the picture, a fake tree might not be a bad way to go for a few years;at least until we are out of the put-everything-in-your-mouth stage. We found a beautiful tree at Costco last year, pre-lit with white lights. We bought it and enjoyed it last year. Present day-we put it up this morning and the top portion of the tree wouldn't light up. After some digging around, Nic discovered that one of the lights had melted and the string of lights no longer worked! No problem I say, they still have them at Costco, and since Costco has a kick-ass return policy, there should be no problem, right? WRONG! We haul the tree back to SR Costco, return the tree, no problem there. They give us a cash card for the amount of 162 dollars;what the tree rang up as since we didn't have the receipt. Ok, so we head off to find our tree. The problem comes from the fact that they don't have the tree we want. They have the freakin 9 foot tree, which wouldn't even fit through our door! So, we head down to the RP target, thinking they might have the 7.5 foot one(the one we need!). We get down there, don't see it there either and decide to talk to Member Services. Apparently the 7.5 foot tree no longer exists. It comes with colored lights in a 7.5 feet and white lights in 9 feet. I DON"T WANT COLORED LIGHTS! Why, Why, Why would they stop carrying this? An average house has 8 feet ceilings, so the smaller tree is perfect. Luckily, Coscto cashed out our store credit and gave us the 168 cash, so we had some $$ to go look for a tree. Home Depot-crap, Wal-Mart-even crapier! We finally went to Lowes since we saw their flier and they advertised one for 148$-it looked decent enough(it wasn't no Costco one, that's for sure!) I decided that I GUESS I could live with it. They rang it up and waht do you know? It's on clearance(yeah, you heard me right) for 78 buckarros. So, I am feeling a tad bit better-more $$ for decorations. I am still majorly peeved at Coscto-I LOVED that tree. It looked SOOOOO real! But, now we have a new tree. I'll post pics soon. BTW-how crazy is it to have clearance on all X-mas items the first week in Dec?