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Costco is the anti-Amazon

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101–110 of 610 posts

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#101

Costco is way too damn crowded. There needs to be 2x or 3x the number of stores. It is a great deal. But an utterly miserable shopping experience.

That's because of "them". If they weren't here.

Them is a universal variable you already injected.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this argument falls flat on it's face. Of course it's more complex than that. When I worked from the office, centralized retail was very convenient and hardly added any driving. If you work from home, the opposite is true. The next revolution would be to standardize reusable packaging, that same daily delivery truck could bring that back. But only government could make that happen.

I could imagine Amazon incentivizing reusable containers on their own TBH. If I was living in a house and not an apartment, I could easily imagine putting the Amazon bins back out so the next time I get a delivery, they take those, and we are constantly cycling bins back and forth. Even environment aside, from a purely self-interested perspective, I would much prefer it to dealing with the recycling Amazon deliveries…

Amazon did that with an earlier version of their grocery delivery service. I assume the cost and logistics of managing and cleaning the bins just wasn’t worth it because their grocery service delivers in paper bags now.

One problem with the bins for normal items is that rarely will they be packed to the brim. I imagine the overall item density would drop significantly if they started using standardized bins instead of appropriately sized boxes for the items.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#104
post #33

> Even if you think it is preferable at an individual level, there are good reasons to question the social value of the logistical complexity that it necessitates. Home delivery of single-packaged items entails an entirely different cost structure than freight trucks driving to consumer-facing warehouses delivering entire pallets of goods to be driven home by customers themselves. Ok, so 100 people can all drive to t…

great for specialized items you want to pay premium for, awful for paper towels

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Put solar panels over ‘em

Put the entire building over 'em. And solar panels over the building. The Target near my house is built on top of its parking lot. I don't have to cross an entire parking lot, dodging traffic, when I go there by bike or on foot. And it's on a bus line. What's not to like?

In most places in the US, land is cheap enough that paved surface parking is cheaper than building the store above a parking garage. In central urban areas, it's not, so they build up.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Put solar panels over ‘em

Put the entire building over 'em. And solar panels over the building. The Target near my house is built on top of its parking lot. I don't have to cross an entire parking lot, dodging traffic, when I go there by bike or on foot. And it's on a bus line. What's not to like?

The exepense is what's not to like. Far cheaper to build a single-story warehouse + outside parking lot than a second story above a parking garage.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#107
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed true. Even more efficient is when people can wait a few days and let Amazon bundle your orders and deliver on a designated day. That said people don’t typically get in a car to buy one thing -though obviously sometimes they do. On average though their trips will be for multiple things. I still think even without using designated delivery days Amazon deliveries are more efficient than individuals going out to b…

I've always wondered why I don't see passed on savings for the "amazon day" thing. It's gotta be way better for their logistics to deliver bulk orders, or pick a standardized delivery day for each neighborhood or something. Why do they only offer a single dollar of credit for choosing it?

I get 6% back instead of 5% with my Amazon card which is more than enough to incentivize me in many situations.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#108
> Amazon often negotiates delayed payment terms with suppliers, leaning on them to allow payment windows longer than the thirty-day industry norm.

Oh how I would wish for this crap to be banned. By law. Simply put, at the scale of "you are even allowed to sell at large volume to Amazon, Walmart, ..." you aren't on equal footing with Amazon. You are subservient.

Contract law still builds on the idea that b2b contracts are made between roughly equal parties because that was how business was done back 200 years ago, and thus there's much less legal protection than for b2c contracts.

This needs to change, and the sooner the better.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#109
post #33

> Even if you think it is preferable at an individual level, there are good reasons to question the social value of the logistical complexity that it necessitates. Home delivery of single-packaged items entails an entirely different cost structure than freight trucks driving to consumer-facing warehouses delivering entire pallets of goods to be driven home by customers themselves. Ok, so 100 people can all drive to t…

When the Amazon truck drives down my street it’s always stopping at 5 houses or so. So the marginal cost of my package is practically zero.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#110
post #73

This is about 80% spot on, but the last 20% fails to mention that you can avoid the in store experience if it isn't for you, and in fact get the stuff you want delivered to your door in a short period of time, using services like instacart. Costco even partners directly with instacart for same day delivery. You can use your membership to get same day delivery shopping on costco's website and they will use instacart t…

True, but at higher prices (and with delivery fees), which somewhat defeats the purpose of the cost savings at Costco.

But saving the cost and time of you driving there yourself, which if you're honest is probably worth the delivery fee.
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