Sad that we don't see more high praise of simple things. Not exciting enough, I guess.
Costco is the anti-Amazon
291–300 of 610 posts
Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon
#292My impression of Costco's selection is that it's the retail distillation of car-centric suburbs, despite it not being exclusively those people who shop there. The happy suburbanite cares about convenience and quantity above all else, from what I can tell anyway. They don't really have a varied sense of taste, they just want stuff, and they want easy access to that stuff. They like a "haul" that they do once a month,…
Agree with you on most angles but with a twist: the suburbanite should be seen not as the adult shopping, but as the children that the suburbanite is most likely shopping for. I’m certainly not going to be picky about the Greek yogurt when half of it will end up uneaten (or on the floor).
Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have a limited company or be in a baroque list of occupations: https://www.costco.co.uk/membership-goldstar-questions
What on earth is the point of limiting membership to such random and specific groups?
Government Regulations[1]
> According to the Costco U.K. website, memberships to those stores are only available to certain groups of people. Since the store is classified as a wholesaler, this complies with the U.K.'s wholesale store laws. These dictate that wholesale stores are only accessible to those working for select business sectors.
[1] https://www.thedailymeal.com/1483679/costco-uk-membership-re...
Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon
#294I understand the appeal, but let’s be honest. Costco is designed for rich people who think they are frugal. You drive your big SUV there to load up on months worth of food and goods, which you can only do because you have a big house with enough storage for all of it. And who cares if some of it goes bad because you can always go back for more and hey it was so cheap anyway. You even pay a membership for the privileg…
I think average familiy could do better at financing so that they can affort to plan for 1 month or more on groceries. For me, it's not about rich, it's about planning, I must know exactly what I need before I go there. It save time and but stability, I have at least 1 month buffer on common goods shortage.
Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon
#295I understand the appeal, but let’s be honest. Costco is designed for rich people who think they are frugal. You drive your big SUV there to load up on months worth of food and goods, which you can only do because you have a big house with enough storage for all of it. And who cares if some of it goes bad because you can always go back for more and hey it was so cheap anyway. You even pay a membership for the privileg…
46% of Costco shoppers are middle class (earning $40k-$125k) and 33% are upper class and according to market research companies.
Membership is $65.
You don't need an SUV to shop at Costco, it is easy to load the groceries into a sedan.
Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
In fairness, Amazon does seem to have improved in this regard. There's less plastic and fewer comically oversized boxes.
Order whole foods from them. They will pack 6 things in 4 reusable insulated bags. The problem is there is no way to send those bags back to be reused.
This must vary by region. We get paper bags with a reflective liner. They’re re-usable if the super adhesive they use for the label stickers doesn’t require ripping the bag apart to open it, but they’re definitely intended to be disposable. Sometimes they just use regular paper bags and let our stuff get warm. It seems random whether they stuff the bags to the gills or have a single item per bag. This happens with both Fresh and Whole Foods.
Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Only because stores that have large parking lots are in cheap land areas that are hard to reach by bus, bike, or anything except a car really. Where one can comfortably walk to a store, giant parking lots are awful.
Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
One issue is Amazon doesn’t appear to optimize for “fewest trucks trips to the block” - we’ll see 4-5 Amazon trucks/couriers on our cul de sac every day (plus USPS, UPS, FedEx, DHL). That’s for 10 homes. If Amazon was able to do one truck to the block, that would big a big win for fewer trips/less emissions. Probably.
You aren't seeing the entire picture, though, so it makes it hard to understand the efficiency calculation. How full are those Amazon trucks, and how many deliveries are they each making on their route? If those Amazon trucks are all full, and are making deliveries constantly along their routes, than more trucks doesn't mean less efficiency. They aren't optimizing for "fewest truck trips to the block", they are optim…
> If those Amazon trucks are all full, and are making deliveries constantly along their routes, than more trucks doesn't mean less efficiency.
Right but a truck could be full of not 100 packages for 100 houses, but 100 packages for 70 houses. Both are full, but one will require fewer miles driven, hence be more (fuel/environmental impact) efficient (not necessarily time efficient).
Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon
#299Earlier 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.
Anything to avoid walkable neighborhoods, naturally.
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Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon
#300Costco is mostly food, clothes, furniture, other large things, and auto services, which generally you don't get from Amazon even if you aren't a Costco member. The points about less choice more apply to like Costco vs grocery stores or Walmart. And I do like Costco, similar low-choice reason I like Trader Joe's even though Costco is its own league.
I think a lot of people buy furniture and clothing on Amazon. It's extremely cheap and easy to return, or just throw away if you can't return it (not endorsing that).
I do actually buy furniture from Amazon and Walmart, don't think I'm the common case though. And wow it's annoying to get rid of the packaging after.