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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

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
        As a formerly-Soylent-drinking engineer of questionable life choices, I hope there’s a causal relationship behind that correlation :)
        rootusrootus 7y ago
        They must exist. I can buy Soylent off the shelf at my local Fred Meyer (Kroger for people who don't have Fred Meyer in their area). They are pretty aggressive about dropping products that don't sell in sufficient quantity.
    - gumby 7y ago
      Look at how they mix stock under the same SKU and see if you’re still confident perhaps that Peet’s coffee came from Peet’s or perhaps a third party seller used counterfeit — Amazon’s will put hem into the same punnet and pull out one where it’s from amazon or “fulfilled by amazon”. Right now I’ve only seen it in electronics but I don’t buy much food that way. Amazon fresh is a different thing (all sourced / sold by amazon) so probably not a problem. Likewise oddball stuff (a low volume brand of tea) is unlikely to be worth counterfeiting. But mass market goods definitely are and the baby food example, while not amazon, is an excellent cautionary tale.
- paulcole 7y ago
  I bought a box of tic tacs on Amazon and it was just a bunch of fishing sinkers painted white.
  - techntoke 7y ago
    Were they sold by Amazon.com or you just being silly?
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.

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
        As a formerly-Soylent-drinking engineer of questionable life choices, I hope there’s a causal relationship behind that correlation :)
      - rootusrootus 7y ago
        They must exist. I can buy Soylent off the shelf at my local Fred Meyer (Kroger for people who don't have Fred Meyer in their area). They are pretty aggressive about dropping products that don't sell in sufficient quantity.
  - gumby 7y ago
    Look at how they mix stock under the same SKU and see if you’re still confident perhaps that Peet’s coffee came from Peet’s or perhaps a third party seller used counterfeit — Amazon’s will put hem into the same punnet and pull out one where it’s from amazon or “fulfilled by amazon”. Right now I’ve only seen it in electronics but I don’t buy much food that way. Amazon fresh is a different thing (all sourced / sold by amazon) so probably not a problem. Likewise oddball stuff (a low volume brand of tea) is unlikely to be worth counterfeiting. But mass market goods definitely are and the baby food example, while not amazon, is an excellent cautionary tale.
paulcole 7y ago
I bought a box of tic tacs on Amazon and it was just a bunch of fishing sinkers painted white.
- techntoke 7y ago
  Were they sold by Amazon.com or you just being silly?

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.