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Costco is the anti-Amazon

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Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#211

Post by bombcar »

xoxxala wrote: post #186
imoverclocked wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I go to Costco when I have something else to do in the area; It's almost never a "trip to Costco" for me. Others have mentioned the parking lot sizes. If we wanted the best of both worlds, we could have online shopping at Costco with curbside delivery. There has to be a warehouse somewhere which means there are trucks/trains/planes moving goods around regardless. Even Amazon builds warehouses closer to where things n…

We live two hours from the closest Costco. We make a day of it once every 45-60 days plus shop at other stores we don’t have in our small town and see some family. We don’t have an Amazon account and maybe order something online once a month. We prefer shopping locally or waiting for Costco Day.

We’re an hour out and I had to do a deep dive and finally admit to myself that the savings just really weren’t there, including membership and gas.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#212

Post by ThunderSizzle »

mullingitover wrote: post #54
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also offer some degree of curation, so your dollar goes further by volume/weight/unit on average, but also in less quantitative ways quite often. I trust what I buy from Costco, but I’ve completely stopped buying from Amazon (many years ago now) because apart from the poor value prop, I simply don’t like the quality or reliability of what’s offered.

Amazon largely being a dumb marketplace, a faster-shipping AliExpress/Temu, really makes them easy to drop if you find that shipping speed isn’t super important for those types of products. You can just go straight to the source and cut Amazon out entirely.

I see this said a lot, but Amazon products I buy actually work (even if the quality of obviously laughable - it actually performs the function and won't break any time soon to justify a 100x price increase for something more...artisan.

The only order I did for temu, everything arrived completely DOA

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#213

Post by bombcar »

troupo wrote: post #96
imoverclocked wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I go to Costco when I have something else to do in the area; It's almost never a "trip to Costco" for me. Others have mentioned the parking lot sizes. If we wanted the best of both worlds, we could have online shopping at Costco with curbside delivery. There has to be a warehouse somewhere which means there are trucks/trains/planes moving goods around regardless. Even Amazon builds warehouses closer to where things n…

> There has to be a warehouse somewhere which means there are trucks/trains/planes moving goods around regardless. Do you want an 18-wheeler truck to do your curb-side deliveries? Or a personal train?

If I had a nickel for every time an 18 wheeler dropped something off at my house I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t much, but it’s weird it happened twice.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#215

Post by ChoGGi »

satvikpendem wrote: post #141
imoverclocked wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I go to Costco when I have something else to do in the area; It's almost never a "trip to Costco" for me. Others have mentioned the parking lot sizes. If we wanted the best of both worlds, we could have online shopping at Costco with curbside delivery. There has to be a warehouse somewhere which means there are trucks/trains/planes moving goods around regardless. Even Amazon builds warehouses closer to where things n…

Exact opposite for me, a weekend day is explicitly a Costco day to rack up for the week or month. Anything else I have to do that day is incidental. I assume this is many people's experience too rather than the other way around.

If I'm grabbing a couple items, I can be in and out of my Costco on the way back from work in 10m if the timing is right.

But yeah the wrong day, and it's 30m at least.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#216

Post by ChoGGi »

bethekidyouwant wrote: post #198
imoverclocked wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I go to Costco when I have something else to do in the area; It's almost never a "trip to Costco" for me. Others have mentioned the parking lot sizes. If we wanted the best of both worlds, we could have online shopping at Costco with curbside delivery. There has to be a warehouse somewhere which means there are trucks/trains/planes moving goods around regardless. Even Amazon builds warehouses closer to where things n…

Nobody does Costco and something else. That’s insane. Like going to IKEA and then somewhere else. Impossible.

Depends on your Costco, I can make a 10m run after work (to from parking lot) if the day is good.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#218

Post by petra »

SideQuark wrote: post #197
petra wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Judging Amazon's social value by delivery efficiency is just wrong. Amazon's biggest benefit is that anything can be sold there. So now more problems in my life could have a solutions I can buy. As for the delivery? There are more efficient ways to send deliveries. People can pickup deliveries at work or the gas station on their way home. People don't care. How is that Amazon's fault?

So you replace a loop that delivers last mile goods to a lot of cars going decently out of their way to the limited places just to pick one item? Surely it’s less miles driven when Amazon does a loop hitting several people right near me than each of us driving farther in total to get our goods.

I agree. It depends on how well the pickup points are located. Often Amazon can win. They also use EV trucks, and create jobs, so there are advantages.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#219

Post by colechristensen »

claw-el wrote: post #92
colechristensen wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite efficient use of land. Costco parking lots tend to be full, people tend to leave Costco with full carts and go once or twice a month. Direct to consumer warehouses should be encouraged not discouraged by the environmental social use advocate kinds of people. It results in fewer miles driven and more being done per mile driven. Each parking space gets more done per parking space. There's less retail worker…

This is in comparison to the delivery center methodology by e commerce where the land use for delivery driver is somewhere further away from what is needed for community events, and every delivery truck is filled to the brim, way more full than what each consumer vehicle would be filled up with?

Big trucks filled with stuff delivering a few things to each of many places is less efficient than personal cars delivering big loads with lots of things to one place.

Your SUV with a Costco haul is probably driving less distance per person and carrying MORE per person while being a smaller more efficient vehicle.

Amortizing fuel per item or distance per item I'm betting the personal vehicle wins while also being better able to deliver perishable/frozen items.

(also the likes of Amazon are terrible to employees in order to make margin while Costco is the opposite)

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#220

Post by dghlsakjg »

oezi wrote: post #162
dghlsakjg wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't like American over-consumption you can go to Carrefour and try out French overconsumption where people load up oversized trollies with corporate food to take to their SUVs in the overflowing parking lot... in France. Are you under the impression that it is a uniquely American trait to have a bigger house than you need, more car than you need, and a penchant for corporate food? Over-consumption is human n…

Since toilet paper is mostly non-perishable it shouldn't really matter, right? But for anything that goes bad there is also a tipping point where you bought too much and have things go to waste.

In which case you buy a smaller quantity elsewhere. I don’t know anyone who shops exclusively at Costco. Most people buy large quantities of the things they use a lot of at Costco, and also visit grocery stores for other things. Besides, most of what they sell has a long shelf life. With the exception of their very limited produce and Dairy, just about every other perishable food they sell is freezable.

The people I know who shop at Costco aren’t throwing away half of what they buy. They are very often families that are actually pretty efficient about using what they buy. Big families, restaurants, remote work camps (I live in Canada) are the people I see completely filling carts and SUVs at Costco. For them, shopping at Costco is a way to avoid waste in terms of small packages and multiple small trips.

While there are certainly people that shop there and waste what they buy, it’s a pretty overused exaggeration to say that it is any more than a small fraction of their buyers. If you want examples of frivolous consumption, a barebones warehouse store selling staples in bulk is kinda the opposite of that in many ways.

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