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Love Song to Costco

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Re: Love Song to Costco

#171

Post by lowercased »

DocTomoe wrote: post #160
p_l wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lidl, at least in most places, doesn't run bulk stores like Costco apparently is. There are some bulk stores with memberships, some of them limited to B2B sales, some accepting normal people as customers - places like MAKRO and Selgross - but they obviously are mainly a warehouse supplier for shops and companies. I don't know how Lidl is in terms of selection in other countries, but especially with smaller stores the…

It is always interesting to read how different such brands are perceived in different countries. Over here in Germany, Lidl is considered "the better discount store" as compared to Aldi (especially Aldi Nord), and has made a push to more high-level products (which often are better than name-brand stuff that they also carry). When I talk to British friends, the idea of shopping at a Lidl seems to be sacrilegious to th…

We got a Lidl near us - one of the first when they were planning their US East Coast invasion. Apparently, they're scaling back new stores, and ours is one of a handful of 'large' footprint stores, and almost everything after that is (or will be) probably half the size.

We love Lidl mostly because of the price. Almost everything was/is around 20-30% less than the stores around it. Much of this is from 'store brand' items, but the price diff is lower even against other 'store brand' pricing.

When they opened, they had a wider variety of items, including a wide variety of daily baked breads. That got scaled back a lot, as apparently there's not enough support/demand in this area for fresh breads outside of 'white'.

There's a weird circle of grocery stores that have sprung up in my area. Within a 3 mile radius, there's Target, Walmart, Lidl, Aldi, Wegmans, Food Lion, Harris Teeter, Publix and Lowe's (2?). It seems excessive to me, but the area is growing, and they likely wouldn't have invested in this area without a strong expectation of not losing money.

There's still a Lidl stigma around here. Many folks I talk to think of it as some 'poor person' shop.

Re: Love Song to Costco

#172

Post by mikebonnell »

iudqnolq wrote: post #99
inferiorhuman wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the ones available are guaranteed to be fairly good quality and at an affordable price I bought into the hype and got a Costco membership a few years back. One of the first things I went looking for was whole bean coffee (Peet's xmas roast). The local Costco had a bunch of coffee from Starbucks and Peets (meh quality to start) but only the painfully dark roasts and all of it was ground. Pre-ground coffee in bulk ha…

My experience is the big ticket items are all fine products at normal prices, but there's no reason to pick Costco for them. I suspect it's where they make a lot of their profit, considering their groceries are famously low margin. I buy groceries and gas exclusively there.

Almost all of their profit is from membership fees. https://investor.costco.com/node/24021/html

Sales almost equal merchandise cost plus selling expenses. Membership fees add $984 million on top of that.

Re: Love Song to Costco

#173

Post by lowercased »

adastra22 wrote: post #112
inferiorhuman wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the ones available are guaranteed to be fairly good quality and at an affordable price I bought into the hype and got a Costco membership a few years back. One of the first things I went looking for was whole bean coffee (Peet's xmas roast). The local Costco had a bunch of coffee from Starbucks and Peets (meh quality to start) but only the painfully dark roasts and all of it was ground. Pre-ground coffee in bulk ha…

> I've never seen anyone say anything positive about Samsung, their service, or the serviceability of their appliances I have all Samsung appliances at my home. They are the best appliances I have ever owned. I can't speak to their service because I have never had a single issue with any of them.

> I have all Samsung appliances at my home. They are the best appliances I have ever owned.

Congrats. I think you're in a minority. Our washing machine 'fabric softener' compartment started rusting less than a year after getting it. We had a long time and many back and forths trying to get them to acknowledge the problem. Their 'fix' initially was "don't use that". Finally - months later - they agreed to have someone come fix it, but it was going to be hundreds of dollars because we were "out of warranty". "But... we reported this to you with months left in the warranty period". "Well, tough luck" was basically the response.

My wife kept persisting - this dragged on for months - and eventually got some service rep to 'cover' this and a service guy came out. "Oh this is common - see this a lot with Samsungs in the last few years".

Relatedly, we had a dryer guy come out to fix the Samsung dryer. He indicated Samsung and LG were among the worst consumer-level brands for home appliances, based on their workload as service techs. But Samsung and LG have gigantic foot prints in the major retail outlets, so continue to get sold in to many households.

Re: Love Song to Costco

#175

Post by rascul »

noSyncCloud wrote: post #102
inferiorhuman wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when it comes to a $4,000 gazebo or some $2,000 appliance I have really come to trust Costco's vetting. How does that jive with selling Samsung (and LG) appliances? Samsung is easily the worst appliance manufacturer in North America across pretty much any appliance. LG's not too much better but supposedly their dryers and front load washers are decent.

> Samsung is easily the worst appliance manufacturer in North America > LG's not too much better Any sources for these blazing hot takes? Or are we supposed to take your hearsay at face value?

For a couple years I delivered and installed appliances for Lowe's. We brought back (ie customer returned) LG and Samsung just as much as Whirlpool and GE, even though we sold significantly less of the LG and Samsung appliances. I was told that the closest person able to service them was 250+ miles away. Also, LG and Samsung tended to scrap an entire new fridge for seemingly trivial stuff, such as an ice maker not working. I've never owned a LG or Samsung appliance but from the number of returns I've seen, I certainly wouldn't want a fridge or front load washer from either manufacturer.

Re: Love Song to Costco

#176

Post by anotherman554 »

cyberge99 wrote: post #19
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Costco account and a Sam's Club (Walmart's Costco equivalent) account. Even though I do something like 98% of my bulk shopping at Sam's club (due to proximity, the Costco is ~ 15 min drive away vs 5 mins for the Sam's club), it's still worth it for me to hold the Costco membership for specific purchases. Notably I've purchased (because there's no better place to buy these things and the vendor vetting is ama…

Costco also works out deals to sell “special” revisions of major brand offerings. One example is a Sony Bravia that has a physical microphone disable switch.

If you are referring to the A80j model the Costco exclusive Bravia has a microphone disable switch because it has a microphone. The standard Bravia has no microphone at all.

Re: Love Song to Costco

#177

Post by permo-w »

gumby wrote: post #5

My great grandfather moved to a different part of Asia and never went back. My grandfather moved elsewhere and never went back. My mother moved to another continent and then later, with my father, to a third, where I partially grew up. And I moved to yet another continent (with another emigrée), speaking a language that, like my mother, I had learned after growing up. Yet today I spoke English with a stranger, a woma…

what does this have to do with Costco?

Re: Love Song to Costco

#179

Post by jmacd »

base698 wrote: post #149
gopalv wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would like to understand why people are so enamored with Costco The first thing someone told me when I got to the US was to go to Costco, pay the membership and get an AMEX charge card for Costco. If you are someone with zero credit history and want to buy groceries without having cash on you all the time, then Costco is a big part of the "welcome to America" package. What Costco lacks in variety, it made up in q…

Costco only takes Visa.

In Canada it is Mastercard only. Used to be Amex.

Re: Love Song to Costco

#180

Post by Suzuran »

lbrito wrote: post #47

Haven't read the piece yet, but I definitely will - for a long time I would like to understand why people are so enamored with Costco. I recently joined because they have some good food that is hard or more expensive to find elsewhere, but that's about it. To me it's just a store. Outside of the US/Canada I've never seen people evangelize a store so much.

Costco is generally clean, Costco doesn't have the corporate reputation for extreme exploitation of their workers that Walmart does, Costco's store brand is actually decent, there appears to be no overt cost-cutting in store operations, and for me the big deal was that Costco was the only place around here that attempted to actually enforce mask mandates after you were inside the store. I saw one lady getting escorted out for taking her mask off and starting a fight when asked to put it back on; She screamed "I'LL NEVER SHOP HERE AGAIN!" and the employee escorting her out said matter-of-factly "Yes, that's what trespass means."

In short, they give the appearance of doing ask if the things a business should be doing in line with the intent of the law, as opposed to just doing the bare minimum to the letter of the law, and doing what you are supposed to do is so rare as to be considered exceptional.

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