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Love Song to Costco

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Re: Love Song to Costco

#201

Post by dmos62 »

convFixb wrote: post #195
dmos62 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Costco is generally clean That makes it sound like cleanliness is not the norm in grocery stores in US.

Thanks to our old friend Baumol [1], cleanliness is not the norm in any typical grocery store in the 1st world. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol's_cost_disease

You're saying that people who work in grocery stores don't care about their job performance, because their level of pay is guaranteed by workers in other industries being productive? That's a cynical thought.

By the way, where I'm from (EU), cleanliness is definitely the norm for grocery stores.

Re: Love Song to Costco

#202

Post by mongol »

ArtemZ wrote: post #181
mongol wrote: post #98

Costco will open in Sweden soon. On the opposite part of Stockholm from where I live, so I don't think it will be useful for me. I don't know much about it but I am excited to see what it will bring, and if it will affect the general grocery market around here.

Stockholm is a horrible place to live long term. You are basically banned from owning a car, but there are no convenient connections to huge shopping centers like Kungens Kurva (and stores likes IKEA doesn't offer delivery for most items!) and huge retail/warehouse stores like Biltema.

Beg to disagree. You are not banned from owning a car.

Re: Love Song to Costco

#203

Post by the_doctah »

Suzuran wrote: post #180
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 escorte…

I'm not sure we should be proud of businesses having to force their hourly employees to act like bouncers for surly anti-maskers.

Re: Love Song to Costco

#204

Post by tacocataco »

legalcorrection wrote: post #23
gnicholas wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Years later my diabetic cat even had a Costco pharmacy account (best place to buy insulin by far) and received a discount for being without health insurance. IIRC, you don't need a membership to: • shop at the pharmacy • buy alcohol • eat at the food court I believe the first two are due to govt regulations, and may only apply in certain states. It's also much easier for anyone to shop at Costco with a spouse's/fri…

> It's also much easier for anyone to shop at Costco with a spouse's/friend's membership card now that they have self-checkout. You used to have to worry about the cashier flagging you if the cardholder wasn't there, but now there's no one who even looks at your card. Or how about don't be a liar/cheater and buy your own membership. It's not expensive and it pays for itself fast. Shame on whoever does this.

It's been a while since I was a member, but I remember being able to get my sister her own card attached to my account. I just gave the cashier her name and the next time she went in by herself she got her card.

Re: Love Song to Costco

#205

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

adwi wrote: post #198
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.

Tangential but have been buying appliances for the first time and have been deep in research of what to do with a small-moderate budget. I had indeed heard the same about Samsung, and more generally designed service lives I elected to buy all used but (good condition) late-model Miele appliances. They’re rated at 20+ years, they focus on reliability and repairability, and if you’re patient you can get them for less t…

It reminds me of the very popular Reddit thread from about a decade ago where a vacuum cleaner repair guy said that Miele's were his preferred vacuum and recommended them above most others: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1pe2bd/iama_vacuum_re...

Re: Love Song to Costco

#206

Post by ArtemZ »

mongol wrote: post #202
ArtemZ wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stockholm is a horrible place to live long term. You are basically banned from owning a car, but there are no convenient connections to huge shopping centers like Kungens Kurva (and stores likes IKEA doesn't offer delivery for most items!) and huge retail/warehouse stores like Biltema.

Beg to disagree. You are not banned from owning a car.

There are virtually no free parking places unless you own a house in Stockholm. You can't park your car long term on the street near your apartments block because there is always a day in a week during which parking is forbidden, so you have to move the car at least once a week. If you get sick and end up in a hospital for more than a week or want to go to a long term vacation you will face HUGE penalties and likely outstanding towing and penalty parking fees.

This makes car ownership a constant headache, I don't want to deal with this.

Re: Love Song to Costco

#207

Post by harpersealtako »

dmos62 wrote: post #201
convFixb wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks to our old friend Baumol [1], cleanliness is not the norm in any typical grocery store in the 1st world. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol's_cost_disease

You're saying that people who work in grocery stores don't care about their job performance, because their level of pay is guaranteed by workers in other industries being productive? That's a cynical thought. By the way, where I'm from (EU), cleanliness is definitely the norm for grocery stores.

US grocery stores in general seem no less clean than western European grocery stores from my limited experience. I don't know what the parent poster is talking about -- even Walmarts in the bad parts of town seldom seem conspicuously "dirty".

Re: Love Song to Costco

#208

Post by mercutio2 »

dmos62 wrote: post #201
convFixb wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks to our old friend Baumol [1], cleanliness is not the norm in any typical grocery store in the 1st world. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol's_cost_disease

You're saying that people who work in grocery stores don't care about their job performance, because their level of pay is guaranteed by workers in other industries being productive? That's a cynical thought. By the way, where I'm from (EU), cleanliness is definitely the norm for grocery stores.

Come on. I’ve been to many, many small grocery stores in Western Europe.

Some had obviously old/dirty fixtures, signage, and floors, some had newer cleaner looking equipment. The average in Europe was much, much “dirtier” than Americans on average will put up with.

“Dirty” in this context means not-new-looking.

I’d much rather not pay for someone to replace things that are perfectly functional.

But many consumers (especially Americans) prefer extremely well lit, very new looking equipment.

So I think you may have this exactly wrong. Europe has much dirtier stores, because it doesn’t value cosmetic polish as much as health and cost savings.

Re: Love Song to Costco

#209

Post by ArtemZ »

CorvusCrypto wrote: post #185
ArtemZ wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stockholm is a horrible place to live long term. You are basically banned from owning a car, but there are no convenient connections to huge shopping centers like Kungens Kurva (and stores likes IKEA doesn't offer delivery for most items!) and huge retail/warehouse stores like Biltema.

I am curious if your perspective comes from someone that is swedish or not. The general consensus locally is the opposite sentiment ime and ofc you can easily rent cars for the day or a small trailer for very cheap. That coupled with the fact to for example Kungens Kurva it is somewhere you can get to within an hour from within even the city center is quite nice and the bus stop is literally next to the IKEA (ofc you…

Curious if being swedish national has to do with perspectives. From what I heard, perspectives of swedish nationals usually involves leaving Sweden.

I'm living on Kungsholmen for several years already if that matters.

Getting to Kungens Kurva from Thorildsplan involves one change and realistically takes a bit more than an hour to get there. Of course, you can't bring a huge box with your new sofa to a bus or metro and Ikea won't deliver bigger items too, so you have to deal with either renting a car or paying insane prices for delivery. Same goes for bringing larger items to manned garbage collection stations.

I don't rent a car because I feel insecure about driving someone's else car after many years without driving experience.

Re: Love Song to Costco

#210

Post by legalcorrection »

tacocataco wrote: post #204
legalcorrection wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's also much easier for anyone to shop at Costco with a spouse's/friend's membership card now that they have self-checkout. You used to have to worry about the cashier flagging you if the cardholder wasn't there, but now there's no one who even looks at your card. Or how about don't be a liar/cheater and buy your own membership. It's not expensive and it pays for itself fast. Shame on whoever does this.

It's been a while since I was a member, but I remember being able to get my sister her own card attached to my account. I just gave the cashier her name and the next time she went in by herself she got her card.

Yes, the standard membership covers two people for the base price. Makes circumventing the membership requirement all the more scummy and petty.
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