"It's a madhouse, and quite unnerving for an introvert like myself." That is a fair point. On the flip side, I find phone or email or text-based customer serv

"It's a madhouse, and quite unnerving for an introvert like myself." That is a fair point. On the flip side, I find phone or email or text-based customer service to be unnerving. I like talking to a real person face-to-face :) Part of why I like TD Bank (in the northeast, it's the only bank open on Sundays) "How do I know what I'm getting at Costco is the best quality for the price? I can get a very good idea of that at Amazon. Not to mention Costco can't even being to compete with the product selection at Amazon." There are two ways to look at product selection and product ratings. Amazon gives you everything and the kitchen sick, and leaves the problem of quality to you (via the ratings scheme, but in order to have a rating someone else must have purchased it and thought it wasn't good). Every purchase carries, above the standard risk of product defect, the risk that the product may be terrible. While Costco doesn't have the breadth of substitutes in any particular class of item, their selections are generally high quality. They separate the sheep from the goats for you, and while I've had some bad experiences with products from Amazon I haven't had a bad experience with costco stuff (even with their store brand "Kirkland"). So you have Amazon, which gives you depth of selection but requires you to do the due diligence and take the risk, and you have Costco, which gives you limited selection but doesn't offer the stuff that would get 1 or 2 stars on Amazon.