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The fact that I can trust Costco to have good quality products with low prices and great return policy means that I never have to buy day-to-day items from Amaz

The fact that I can trust Costco to have good quality products with low prices and great return policy means that I never have to buy day-to-day items from Amazon. Amazon is where I go to buy books (and obscure one-off things that I can't buy from anywhere else). When buying from Amazon, I have to read the reviews, analyze them to figure out if the reviews are fake, read the return policy, research the seller, figure out the shipping dates etc. Given how broken the search is, I am not even sure if I am buying the best item in the category. Most of the time I end up reading wire-cutter reviews before buying from Amazon. Amazon has billions of items at this point, and it is on me to figure out the right stuff that I should buy. I don't have that kind of time or patience to read hundreds of reviews before buying every single item. Compared to this, Costco is a breeze. If they carry it, I just buy it assuming that it is going to be good quality. For me, the value they provide is curation of selection and filtering for quality. I am willing to pay the membership fee for this. And this is anecdotally true for almost all of the families in my friends group in the Seattle area. I can see the perspective that if you don't have a family, the savings are probably not a big deal. And I also agree that there are people who don't want to drive to a store to buy stuff. But, I for one, am glad that Costco exists.

techntoke 7y ago
Costco has some nice products, and usually has a good food selection, but there are times when they sell junk products as well. Their health and hygiene section can be hit or miss, and if you're looking for more natural products similar to what may be sold at Whole Foods then your best bet is Amazon. Costco usually have a descent selection of organic foods cheaper than you'll find almost anywhere else. One area that I'm disappointed in is their computer selection. Although you may be getting additional support and a cheaper warranty, they simply don't refresh their hardware enough. Almost all their computers are lower end and still expensive compared to what you'll find on Amazon, especially if you price out the cost of building a desktop with much better and newer parts.
- holychiz 7y ago
  a technically well-versed audience like this HN crowd is not really the customer base for computer equipment from Costco. In keeping with their product offering approach, Costco is catering to the people too busy and/or don't find it fun to evaluate computer equipments. What their customers know is that what Costco offers is good enough and pretty good value. The liberal return policy helps ease customer concerns about making equipments work. Looks to me like Costco is doing it pretty much right.
- colechristensen 7y ago
  Be very careful buying things you ingest on Amazon. The risk is high of fake products from otherwise trustworthy brands or "fake" brands of some guy ordering something to be packaged at a dodgy Chinese manufacturer with little or no QA or basic verification.
  - shiftpgdn 7y ago
    Let's be real. Under no circumstance should you be ingesting anything you buy on Amazon. It's going to take a baby formula scandal like what happened in China before the general public wakes up the problem.
    - anon1m0us 7y ago
      Are you all for real about this? I buy coffee, soylent, various hard to find canned goods, and other things all the time off Amazon.
      - walrus01 7y ago
        If you actually eat Soylent you're in like the 0.0001th percentile of Amazon shoppers.
        wil421 7y ago
        Downvote walrus01 all you want but I’ve never met a person in real life who eats Soylent. If it weren’t for HN or Reddit I’ve never even know it existed.
        OatMilkLatte 7y ago
        I have. He was ... a person of generally questionable life choices. Great developer and a true pleasure to work with though.
        notduncansmith 7y ago
- cfallin 7y ago
  Yes, the electronics/appliance selection, when one needs it, can be slightly lacking. Costco appears to reduce costs by often stocking exactly one option for a given thing. E.g., I'm in the market for a toaster as my old one died (a 2012 basic 2-slot model, $20 at Costco). My local Costco now seems to only have an upscale 4-slot model for $50. I'm considering my options and living a toaster-free life at the moment, but even two options would be nice. It's hard to beat the prices on bulk foods, though, which keeps me going back (and I like voting-with-dollars for well-run, customer-friendly stores). Perhaps it's just the bulk-commodities mindset from the food aisles leaking over into electronics that causes the above.
  - DubiousPusher 7y ago
    This is true. In fact Costco frequently stocks models of electronics that are exclusively sold through them. For example, many TVs you buy there are slight variations of popular models that only Costco sells. They even have distinct model numbers that you'll have a hard time finding info about on Google. The manufacturer makes up costs by defeaturing the TVs. Frequently they reduce the number of ports or withhold smart TV features. This is actually great for me because I seldom want all the bells and whistles. I'd like as much money spent as possible to go to size and quality of the display.
    - creato 7y ago
      If Costco is removing "smart" features from TVs, I might get a membership just to buy one TV there.
      - majewsky 7y ago
        Since the Smart TV shit started, I've moved to just buying large PC monitors and using them with my PC. (It helps that I'm a cable cutter. There's nothing interesting on TV that's not streaming somewhere.)
        nitrogen 7y ago
        That sounds great. How large do computer monitors go?
- philwelch 7y ago
  > Their health and hygiene section can be hit or miss, and if you're looking for more natural products similar to what may be sold at Whole Foods... Whole Foods sells a lot of homeopathic garbage, though.
  - techntoke 7y ago
    Yes, I'm not advocating someone to try a homeopathic recipe for cancer. However, there are times when supplements can be beneficial and you can find actual reports in the NCBI and legitimate references and supporting information on Wikipedia. Multivitamins and probiotics are things that can help supplement nutrients and help with digestion for people that may not be getting enough in their daily meals. Some people choose to be Vegan, and it is nice when you can find options sold by Amazon that don't have a bunch of fillers in their supplements or meat products. I recently had some issues and found that an organic garlic supplement and apple cider vinegar concentrate helped me feel better. Would I still go to the doctor in case of a medical emergency? Absolutely! However, there are a lot of great herbs and extracts out there that provide benefits to a persons health. As always, do your own research and know the risk.
    - mikestew 7y ago
      However, there are times when supplements can be beneficial and you can find actual reports in the NCBI and legitimate references and supporting information on Wikipedia. Parent is not busting the chops of Whole Foods for carrying vitamins and supplements that arguably have some minor benefit for a subset of the population. No, parent is busting their chops for carrying magic water that, AFAICT, has zero supporting evidence. In the worst case, at least your garlic supplement has garlic in it.
projektfu 7y ago
I disagree here. Costco is now often trading on its reputation for getting you a bulk discount, but when you compare them to Aldi, or even to a larger supermarket, you're often getting things in large quantity for the same price or more than you'd pay in small quantity. This is especially true for things like cheese. Meanwhile, you're giving up the opportunity to get a superior product. In the cheese example, Costco stocks Belgioioso mozzarella, which to me is about store-brand quality. Popular because it doesn't taste like cheese. For a decent price, you can buy much better mozzarella which has some flavor. And you don't have to buy 3 lbs at a time.
- simonsarris 7y ago
  I was doing price comparison just yesterday and was pretty disappointed in what I found for Costco prices. I thought they were better. Kerrygold butter is cheaper at Walmart. Organic chicken stock is cheaper at Whole Foods. Organic diced tomatoes at Costco however are very well priced.
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    I shop at Costco despite the prices, because I like their ethos of treating employees well and business model that makes me feel like they wouldn’t cut unnecessary corners on product quality.
  - sureshv 7y ago
    Since this is an item I get regularly - it’s $9 for a 4-pack of Kerrygold butter at the Mountain View Costco ($2.25/ 8oz bar). Same 8oz butter is almost double at Safeway or Whole Foods. The local Walmart is $2.83 per bar. I have rarely found Costco items more expensive than other local stores, at least for my regular items. I discount Trader Joe’s since they don’t carry branded items other than wine and beer.
    - simonsarris 7y ago
      That's weird, it's $11.49 in NH for the same thing at Costco. :( And 2.50/bar at Walmart here (What I actually buy now is the French cultured butter from trader Joe's though, which is v good)
lrem 7y ago
You think Amazon search is broken for you? Try living in a semi-supported country, like Ireland, Poland or Switzerland. There is no "only items that ship to my country" in search. And on top of that, I've hit items that would ship as seen on product details, but only during checkout I would learn that shipping the $20 smartphone-sized item would be $250.
- ryanlol 7y ago
  Does this really happen while using the euro Amazons? It sounds like you might be ordering from .com, in which case the same thing would happen in “supported countries”.
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    Even .co.uk that has a healthy level of UK product, does not let you exclude "Amazon Global" .com items as though you would be quite happy to pay £30 shipping, VAT and import fees on branded £50 jeans. IIRC you can't exclude global marketplace from search either. eBay has a UK only tick box. Mostly there are aren't too many Global items, but in clothing particularly they can crowd out the rest, and seem to intentionally block the exact same item if it's not directly from Amazon UK. It can be quite frustrating, particularly as many are stuff UK used to carry. Though it's not among the main contributors to why I rarely use Amazon much at all any more.
    - ryanlol 7y ago
      Looks like on Amazon UK filtering for Prime (even if you're not in a Prime country) gets rid of the Global items, IME this is the only reasonable way to shop on Amazon anyway. Amazon without the Prime filter is just Ebay with much worse prices and UX.
  - Strom 7y ago
    Yes this most definitely happens with the euro Amazons. In fact, it's the .com Amazon that seems to be running a newer version / experiment lately where sometimes the search only shows stuff that ships to my configured address. The most annoying thing however is when the search contains an item, then the description on the item's dedicated page has text that specifically says that the item will ship to my address, but then during checkout I get an error message saying that the specific item can't be shipped after all. Feels like the description page text is determined willy-nilly and it's not until the checkout that they take into account the package size and weight. However I sometimes do want to see what's available even without direct shipping to me, because if the item is cheap enough or rare enough, it will be worth using a reshipping service in whatever country Amazon does ship to.
mindfulplay 7y ago
I wonder if someone at Amazon can take your comment alone and fix all the problems that are so apparent. Everything you mention is a hugely broken piece. Seems like they have lost their "customer is the queen" mentality a while ago...
- losteric 7y ago
  Amazon's retail experience has been sliding downhill since going public, but that's fine because shareholders are the customer now
sharadov 7y ago
I agree, Amazon just seems to be getting worse, with dodgy Chinese brands, counterfeit stuff, and fake reviews. Costco is a no-brainer and food is top-notch.
Glyptodon 7y ago
I agree with most of what you've said except for low prices. There are a few things that are good deals but lots of food products actually cost more than at my local grocery store. Particularly meat.
Iv 7y ago
Costco is the only place in Japan where I can find decent French cheese. I am not sure how it happened, but there it is.
- greggman2 7y ago
  You must mean decent French cheese at a reasonable price? All the big depa-chika have cheese stands with cheeses from all over the world. Seijo Ishii seems to have some selection as well?
  - bosie 7y ago
    Do you mind quoting some prices? I would be really curious what French/European cheese costs in Japan and what is considered a 'reasonable price'.
    - greggman2 7y ago
      I'd expect 4x+ and wouldn't care about paying. I live in Japan, local stuff is cheap, ingredients for local dishes are cheap. Ingredients for foreign dishes are expensive. That seems like it would be the same everywhere. https://www.fermier.co.jp/products/list.php?&mode=search&search_product_statuses=17 https://www.fermier.co.jp/products/list.php?&mode=search&sea...
ChuckMcM 7y ago
At least in the Bay Area I can pay for a yearly membership just by the savings on gas.
seanmcdirmid 7y ago
Living in the Seattle area, I like not having to drive out to Costco weekly or even monthly and can have a mostly car free life using amazon to provide what we can’t get from the QFC or Safeway down the street. Of course, if our family ever gets another kid, doing the Costco thing might be unavoidable.
- tssva 7y ago
  Costco has same day and 2-day delivery options through their CostcoGrocery program.
perl4ever 7y ago
I had a different problem the last time I wanted to buy something from Amazon. I knew what I wanted, so I didn't care about search. In fact, the item was only available on Amazon. But the seller looked sketchy, so I had to convince myself to buy it from them on Amazon. After looking some more to see if there was anywhere else to buy, including on the manufacturer website, I resigned myself to buy it. But then the total price started increasing while I was trying to check out, so I went away mad. As far as reviews, I believe I have a reasonably foolproof system. I simply look at the worst reviews and see what kind of theme they have. If that is a clear pattern that is a design flaw, then I expect that is a warning I should pay attention to. Good reviews are basically irrelevant except if they describe the product to some extent. Unfortunately, with many consumer product categories on Amazon, I give up because all of the items have dealbreakers in the bad reviews, and sometimes it seems the products may not really be meaningfully different.
speby 7y ago
> For me, the value they provide is curation of selection and filtering for quality Yes, this is huge. They have pretty good buyers in many of their product categories. And while Costco does not always have the lowest price, they often do for many items. And, as you said, you have the benefit of usually being able to rely on them for having picked a set of products that more than "good enough" (and sometimes the best in their categories, too) so you don't have waste tons of time shopping around, reading reviews, and so forth.

techntoke 7y ago

Costco has some nice products, and usually has a good food selection, but there are times when they sell junk products as well. Their health and hygiene section can be hit or miss, and if you're looking for more natural products similar to what may be sold at Whole Foods then your best bet is Amazon. Costco usually have a descent selection of organic foods cheaper than you'll find almost anywhere else. One area that I'm disappointed in is their computer selection. Although you may be getting additional support and a cheaper warranty, they simply don't refresh their hardware enough. Almost all their computers are lower end and still expensive compared to what you'll find on Amazon, especially if you price out the cost of building a desktop with much better and newer parts.

holychiz 7y ago
a technically well-versed audience like this HN crowd is not really the customer base for computer equipment from Costco. In keeping with their product offering approach, Costco is catering to the people too busy and/or don't find it fun to evaluate computer equipments. What their customers know is that what Costco offers is good enough and pretty good value. The liberal return policy helps ease customer concerns about making equipments work. Looks to me like Costco is doing it pretty much right.
colechristensen 7y ago
Be very careful buying things you ingest on Amazon. The risk is high of fake products from otherwise trustworthy brands or "fake" brands of some guy ordering something to be packaged at a dodgy Chinese manufacturer with little or no QA or basic verification.
- shiftpgdn 7y ago
  Let's be real. Under no circumstance should you be ingesting anything you buy on Amazon. It's going to take a baby formula scandal like what happened in China before the general public wakes up the problem.
  - anon1m0us 7y ago
    Are you all for real about this? I buy coffee, soylent, various hard to find canned goods, and other things all the time off Amazon.
    - walrus01 7y ago
      If you actually eat Soylent you're in like the 0.0001th percentile of Amazon shoppers.
      - wil421 7y ago
        Downvote walrus01 all you want but I’ve never met a person in real life who eats Soylent. If it weren’t for HN or Reddit I’ve never even know it existed.
        OatMilkLatte 7y ago
        I have. He was ... a person of generally questionable life choices. Great developer and a true pleasure to work with though.
        notduncansmith 7y ago
cfallin 7y ago
Yes, the electronics/appliance selection, when one needs it, can be slightly lacking. Costco appears to reduce costs by often stocking exactly one option for a given thing. E.g., I'm in the market for a toaster as my old one died (a 2012 basic 2-slot model, $20 at Costco). My local Costco now seems to only have an upscale 4-slot model for $50. I'm considering my options and living a toaster-free life at the moment, but even two options would be nice. It's hard to beat the prices on bulk foods, though, which keeps me going back (and I like voting-with-dollars for well-run, customer-friendly stores). Perhaps it's just the bulk-commodities mindset from the food aisles leaking over into electronics that causes the above.
- DubiousPusher 7y ago
  This is true. In fact Costco frequently stocks models of electronics that are exclusively sold through them. For example, many TVs you buy there are slight variations of popular models that only Costco sells. They even have distinct model numbers that you'll have a hard time finding info about on Google. The manufacturer makes up costs by defeaturing the TVs. Frequently they reduce the number of ports or withhold smart TV features. This is actually great for me because I seldom want all the bells and whistles. I'd like as much money spent as possible to go to size and quality of the display.
  - creato 7y ago
    If Costco is removing "smart" features from TVs, I might get a membership just to buy one TV there.
    - majewsky 7y ago
      Since the Smart TV shit started, I've moved to just buying large PC monitors and using them with my PC. (It helps that I'm a cable cutter. There's nothing interesting on TV that's not streaming somewhere.)
      - nitrogen 7y ago
        That sounds great. How large do computer monitors go?
philwelch 7y ago
> Their health and hygiene section can be hit or miss, and if you're looking for more natural products similar to what may be sold at Whole Foods... Whole Foods sells a lot of homeopathic garbage, though.
- techntoke 7y ago
  Yes, I'm not advocating someone to try a homeopathic recipe for cancer. However, there are times when supplements can be beneficial and you can find actual reports in the NCBI and legitimate references and supporting information on Wikipedia. Multivitamins and probiotics are things that can help supplement nutrients and help with digestion for people that may not be getting enough in their daily meals. Some people choose to be Vegan, and it is nice when you can find options sold by Amazon that don't have a bunch of fillers in their supplements or meat products. I recently had some issues and found that an organic garlic supplement and apple cider vinegar concentrate helped me feel better. Would I still go to the doctor in case of a medical emergency? Absolutely! However, there are a lot of great herbs and extracts out there that provide benefits to a persons health. As always, do your own research and know the risk.
  - mikestew 7y ago
    However, there are times when supplements can be beneficial and you can find actual reports in the NCBI and legitimate references and supporting information on Wikipedia. Parent is not busting the chops of Whole Foods for carrying vitamins and supplements that arguably have some minor benefit for a subset of the population. No, parent is busting their chops for carrying magic water that, AFAICT, has zero supporting evidence. In the worst case, at least your garlic supplement has garlic in it.

projektfu 7y ago

I disagree here. Costco is now often trading on its reputation for getting you a bulk discount, but when you compare them to Aldi, or even to a larger supermarket, you're often getting things in large quantity for the same price or more than you'd pay in small quantity. This is especially true for things like cheese. Meanwhile, you're giving up the opportunity to get a superior product. In the cheese example, Costco stocks Belgioioso mozzarella, which to me is about store-brand quality. Popular because it doesn't taste like cheese. For a decent price, you can buy much better mozzarella which has some flavor. And you don't have to buy 3 lbs at a time.

simonsarris 7y ago
I was doing price comparison just yesterday and was pretty disappointed in what I found for Costco prices. I thought they were better. Kerrygold butter is cheaper at Walmart. Organic chicken stock is cheaper at Whole Foods. Organic diced tomatoes at Costco however are very well priced.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  I shop at Costco despite the prices, because I like their ethos of treating employees well and business model that makes me feel like they wouldn’t cut unnecessary corners on product quality.
- sureshv 7y ago
  Since this is an item I get regularly - it’s $9 for a 4-pack of Kerrygold butter at the Mountain View Costco ($2.25/ 8oz bar). Same 8oz butter is almost double at Safeway or Whole Foods. The local Walmart is $2.83 per bar. I have rarely found Costco items more expensive than other local stores, at least for my regular items. I discount Trader Joe’s since they don’t carry branded items other than wine and beer.
  - simonsarris 7y ago
    That's weird, it's $11.49 in NH for the same thing at Costco. :( And 2.50/bar at Walmart here (What I actually buy now is the French cultured butter from trader Joe's though, which is v good)

lrem 7y ago

You think Amazon search is broken for you? Try living in a semi-supported country, like Ireland, Poland or Switzerland. There is no "only items that ship to my country" in search. And on top of that, I've hit items that would ship as seen on product details, but only during checkout I would learn that shipping the $20 smartphone-sized item would be $250.

ryanlol 7y ago
Does this really happen while using the euro Amazons? It sounds like you might be ordering from .com, in which case the same thing would happen in “supported countries”.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Even .co.uk that has a healthy level of UK product, does not let you exclude "Amazon Global" .com items as though you would be quite happy to pay £30 shipping, VAT and import fees on branded £50 jeans. IIRC you can't exclude global marketplace from search either. eBay has a UK only tick box. Mostly there are aren't too many Global items, but in clothing particularly they can crowd out the rest, and seem to intentionally block the exact same item if it's not directly from Amazon UK. It can be quite frustrating, particularly as many are stuff UK used to carry. Though it's not among the main contributors to why I rarely use Amazon much at all any more.
  - ryanlol 7y ago
    Looks like on Amazon UK filtering for Prime (even if you're not in a Prime country) gets rid of the Global items, IME this is the only reasonable way to shop on Amazon anyway. Amazon without the Prime filter is just Ebay with much worse prices and UX.
- Strom 7y ago
  Yes this most definitely happens with the euro Amazons. In fact, it's the .com Amazon that seems to be running a newer version / experiment lately where sometimes the search only shows stuff that ships to my configured address. The most annoying thing however is when the search contains an item, then the description on the item's dedicated page has text that specifically says that the item will ship to my address, but then during checkout I get an error message saying that the specific item can't be shipped after all. Feels like the description page text is determined willy-nilly and it's not until the checkout that they take into account the package size and weight. However I sometimes do want to see what's available even without direct shipping to me, because if the item is cheap enough or rare enough, it will be worth using a reshipping service in whatever country Amazon does ship to.

mindfulplay 7y ago

I wonder if someone at Amazon can take your comment alone and fix all the problems that are so apparent. Everything you mention is a hugely broken piece. Seems like they have lost their "customer is the queen" mentality a while ago...

losteric 7y ago
Amazon's retail experience has been sliding downhill since going public, but that's fine because shareholders are the customer now

sharadov 7y ago

I agree, Amazon just seems to be getting worse, with dodgy Chinese brands, counterfeit stuff, and fake reviews. Costco is a no-brainer and food is top-notch.

Glyptodon 7y ago

I agree with most of what you've said except for low prices. There are a few things that are good deals but lots of food products actually cost more than at my local grocery store. Particularly meat.

Iv 7y ago

Costco is the only place in Japan where I can find decent French cheese. I am not sure how it happened, but there it is.

greggman2 7y ago
You must mean decent French cheese at a reasonable price? All the big depa-chika have cheese stands with cheeses from all over the world. Seijo Ishii seems to have some selection as well?
- bosie 7y ago
  Do you mind quoting some prices? I would be really curious what French/European cheese costs in Japan and what is considered a 'reasonable price'.
  - greggman2 7y ago
    I'd expect 4x+ and wouldn't care about paying. I live in Japan, local stuff is cheap, ingredients for local dishes are cheap. Ingredients for foreign dishes are expensive. That seems like it would be the same everywhere. https://www.fermier.co.jp/products/list.php?&mode=search&search_product_statuses=17 https://www.fermier.co.jp/products/list.php?&mode=search&sea...

ChuckMcM 7y ago

At least in the Bay Area I can pay for a yearly membership just by the savings on gas.

seanmcdirmid 7y ago

Living in the Seattle area, I like not having to drive out to Costco weekly or even monthly and can have a mostly car free life using amazon to provide what we can’t get from the QFC or Safeway down the street. Of course, if our family ever gets another kid, doing the Costco thing might be unavoidable.

tssva 7y ago
Costco has same day and 2-day delivery options through their CostcoGrocery program.

perl4ever 7y ago

I had a different problem the last time I wanted to buy something from Amazon. I knew what I wanted, so I didn't care about search. In fact, the item was only available on Amazon. But the seller looked sketchy, so I had to convince myself to buy it from them on Amazon. After looking some more to see if there was anywhere else to buy, including on the manufacturer website, I resigned myself to buy it. But then the total price started increasing while I was trying to check out, so I went away mad. As far as reviews, I believe I have a reasonably foolproof system. I simply look at the worst reviews and see what kind of theme they have. If that is a clear pattern that is a design flaw, then I expect that is a warning I should pay attention to. Good reviews are basically irrelevant except if they describe the product to some extent. Unfortunately, with many consumer product categories on Amazon, I give up because all of the items have dealbreakers in the bad reviews, and sometimes it seems the products may not really be meaningfully different.

speby 7y ago

> For me, the value they provide is curation of selection and filtering for quality Yes, this is huge. They have pretty good buyers in many of their product categories. And while Costco does not always have the lowest price, they often do for many items. And, as you said, you have the benefit of usually being able to rely on them for having picked a set of products that more than "good enough" (and sometimes the best in their categories, too) so you don't have waste tons of time shopping around, reading reviews, and so forth.