Costco is the anti-Amazon • Hacker News Board

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#361

Post by toast0 » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 5:49 AM UTC

aabajian wrote: post #306

I don't think anyone has mentioned the obvious middle ground: PO Boxes at USPS post offices. Nearly every town and city in the USA has a post office. Instead of driving packages to individual's homes or having businesses deliver to their specific warehouses, the middle ground is to deliver everything to the USPS offices.

UPS, Fedex, and Amazon all use USPS for some last mile deliveries. It's usually a little less when using UPS and Fedex; not sure if Amazon bills less for it because I use prime shipping so the cost is hidden.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#362

Post by rcleveng » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 5:55 AM UTC

dpark wrote: post #102

newaccountman2 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

and webvan back in 2000 - both amazon's attempt and webvan are unfortunately gone - it's cheaper to throw away packaging away, and that's super unfortunate and sad.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#363

Post by bluegatty » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 5:58 AM UTC

light_hue_1 wrote: post #348

bluegatty wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still probably more efficient for you to just drive to the centralized place. The amount of optimization and process improvements required to 'beat that' will be enormous, like infrastructural change enormous. Your car is very useful an generalized and adaptable. So are you. Only you know what you really want, the nuances of comparison, seeing things real, returning them. Economies of scale work extremely well f…

> Home Delivery - in most situations - is effectively a first world luxury. The comments here always blow me away by how totally out of touch with the rest of the world many posters are. No, home delivery is not a luxury, it just works really poorly in your country. India is going through a 15 minute or less delivery boom right now. It's gotten so popular that the government is asking companies to not promise 10 minu…

The comments here always blow me away by how totally out of touch with the rest of the world many posters are.

Yes, home delivery is a luxury, and it 'does not work' in India - it's only evidence of an utterly broken system.

It's a sign of radical inefficiency and economic failure that labour is being used for those kinds of things because it's extremely unproductive.

"It has nothing to do with loopholes on anything. "

--> it's entirely about 'loopholes' Food delivery is not 'efficient' in India - it's the least efficient process imaginable - that can only work because 'loopholes' - marginal cost of labour is cheap aka no rights, no standards, high unemployment, low wages, externalizations and corruption, sketchy taxation, safety, social insurance, healthcare, emissions, food safety etc.

The only place in the world where 'Food Delivery Works' - is for rich people in First World countries.

That is the only scenario in which labour, rights, wages, taxation, non-corruption safety etc. are all met and the 'comparative value' (aka price) still works out.

That's it - the top 10% in the Denmark etc. can have their food delivered in a way that is 'economically efficient' (maybe >10% for some things) - aka those are the only people 'willing to pay a true fair market price when all of the externalizations are built into the model'.

We're making some progress with automation, probably China are leaders there but it's still not closed to automated and won't be because the marginal cost of labour is still low.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#364

Post by olalonde » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 5:58 AM UTC

hx8 wrote: post #319

oatmeal1 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The next revolution is zoning reform so it's legal to build shopping people want to do within walking distance of where they live.

As someone that has lived in a walkable neighborhood with a lot of shopping let me tell you, it doesn't solve the problem. Realistically you aren't going to reach more than 250k skus within a 20 minute walk of your home, and probably less. Even this is very heavily biased towards using retail space instead of space for anything else (homes, restaurants, parks, offices). You can only build up to add more space within…

I second. I live right above a shopping mall and next to Dongmen, which is easily one of the largest shopping areas in the world, yet I still end up ordering most things online.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#365

Post by jdeisenberg » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 5:58 AM UTC

georgeburdell wrote: post #327

claw-el wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, in the photo, it shows a huge car park. The stores, have to support large empty spaces for parking of those 100 people all driving to the store. I also wonder about the social value of utilizing the land that way.

SoMa Costco has the parking under the store. It’s just economics. On the other end of the spectrum, the notorious (in the Bay Area) Sunnyvale Costco actually demolished a nearby restaurant just to expand the parking lot.

The restaurant was one of those “all you can eat” salad bars. It closed during the early part of the pandemic and had been vacant for several months with no buyers, if I recall correctly.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#366

Post by rahimnathwani » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 5:59 AM UTC

hx8 wrote: post #319

oatmeal1 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The next revolution is zoning reform so it's legal to build shopping people want to do within walking distance of where they live.

As someone that has lived in a walkable neighborhood with a lot of shopping let me tell you, it doesn't solve the problem. Realistically you aren't going to reach more than 250k skus within a 20 minute walk of your home, and probably less. Even this is very heavily biased towards using retail space instead of space for anything else (homes, restaurants, parks, offices). You can only build up to add more space within…

For reference, Google tells me that the largest Argos stores in the UK have only ~20k SKUs in stock.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#367

Post by bluegatty » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 6:01 AM UTC

glpgeFwac wrote: post #342

bluegatty wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still probably more efficient for you to just drive to the centralized place. The amount of optimization and process improvements required to 'beat that' will be enormous, like infrastructural change enormous. Your car is very useful an generalized and adaptable. So are you. Only you know what you really want, the nuances of comparison, seeing things real, returning them. Economies of scale work extremely well f…

Home delivery being a first world luxury is a joke. Delivery is a labor intensive low-skill activity. It's fifty times better in developing countries, at least in the cities, where the marginal cost of sending someone to your house is so much lower. Unless you meant it's a luxury only in the first world, which I could get behind, especially food delivery.

Food Delivery is a First World Luxury - meaning that it's the only scenario in which the system functions reasonably (aka it's inherently expensive, a true economic luxury). Food Delivery is Cheap in places where the system is completely defunct, it's not a luxury it's a sign of failure.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#368

Post by rahimnathwani » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 6:01 AM UTC

khurs wrote: post #126

All the comments appear to be US centric, but Costco is also in other countries. So to tell you about the UK: Here membership is unusual in that it isn't technically open to everyone, it's business and certain professions: https://www.costco.co.uk/membership but in reality anyone who wants to join can find a way. Also no mention in the article of non-food. In UK Costco is known for special offers on electrical and wh…

FWIW you can use your US membership in the UK.

I ordered a dishwasher from Costco UK last week.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#369

Post by handle584 » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 6:13 AM UTC

light_hue_1 wrote: post #348

bluegatty wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still probably more efficient for you to just drive to the centralized place. The amount of optimization and process improvements required to 'beat that' will be enormous, like infrastructural change enormous. Your car is very useful an generalized and adaptable. So are you. Only you know what you really want, the nuances of comparison, seeing things real, returning them. Economies of scale work extremely well f…

> Home Delivery - in most situations - is effectively a first world luxury. The comments here always blow me away by how totally out of touch with the rest of the world many posters are. No, home delivery is not a luxury, it just works really poorly in your country. India is going through a 15 minute or less delivery boom right now. It's gotten so popular that the government is asking companies to not promise 10 minu…

> It has nothing to do with loopholes on anything.

Not sure about India but delivery in China has everything to do with loopholes.

No health care and social security for most, and for the few who have the company artificially fake income for tax evasion.

Working conditions are the usual 12~14 hours a day with 2~4 days off a month.

The electric bike they are riding are dangerously over-limits and categorizes as motorcycles, which are actually banned in most big cities. Of the few that allow it, Shanghai for example, you need to pay ~$70k for registration alone.

In the US the situation is better but not free from problems, for example the first job for a lot of the illegal immigrants who can not speak English is package sorting with similar working schedule, but at least it pays good enough.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#370

Post by cyberrock » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 6:20 AM UTC

serial_dev wrote: post #183

cyberrock wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That idea is intriguing but brings up a lot of questions. If I live out in the middle of nowhere, order something but take a long time to open it, when does the Amazon truck come back to take the packaging? If there's a million of us procrastinators, is it really that much better than normal centralized garbage collection? Milk bottle delivery and collection only worked because the product naturally had a time limit,…

You don’t need time limit, you just need to deal with the company frequently enough for this to work. How I would imagine this work if there was will (I don’t think there is)… there are online grocery delivery services that do this already, it’s not that complicated. You get your stuff delivered in a reusable bag. They charge you 1 dollar for the bag. Next time you have something delivered, you give the bags back and…

That also leads to my other (perhaps main) issue with this idea, which is that it requires some level of coordination or synchronicity with the delivery courier that's simply inconvenient for both of us. I've lived in apartments that 90% of couriers of any service cannot find their way around, because they weren't simple take-elevator-and-walk-to-unit designs, so I thanked the stars when we got lockers at the gate. Perhaps I could leave my packaging in a locker... but that just sounds like we re-invented trash collection? And actually, this is why I never used grocery services like Amazon Fresh or Instacart. I don't think grocery delivery is as solved as you think it is.

The implied time synchronicity also sounds like a nightmare. Taiwan does timed trash collection (you have to throw the bag into a garbage truck when it comes playing Fur Elise at 7pm) and there's a reason it hasn't spread.

I just think this is overcomplicating matters instead of just making the package generically disposable, which seems to be what's happening anyways.