> soviet stores. (...) but the ones available are guaranteed to be fairly good quality and at an affordable price

Must be different soviets that I lived in. The quality was often terrible (e.g. "chocolate" that did not contain cocoa at all, ugly clothes and shoes that would break down quickly, beer that tasted like piss etc.) and that is assuming the goods were in the store at all. Basic western goods, such as Levi jeans or can of Coca-Cola were celebrated as artifacts of an alien, infinitely more advanced civilization.

At least with chocolate, during communist times in Poland AFAIK if someone was packaged as "chocolate" it had to be chocolate - it was "chocolate-like product" that you had to be wary of which was closer to american "chocolate"[1]

[1] I jest, I jest, but what is legal to be in store-bought chocolate in USA, based on things I actually ended up getting while visiting, was literally one of the ways communist poland cut chocolate to make "chocolate-like product" :V

You footnote something... that immediately follows the footnote. I'll never understand this footnote cult in HN, I guess.

Yeah, Costco has OK selection and OK/good prices. The downside for groceries is the bulk sizing can be much more than you want to buy.

Their return policy is also very good. Obviously do not abuse this (or you are being a jerk). This means you can buy things without hesitation since you can easily return it should you run into an issue later.

> soviet stores. There is no 10 kinds of everything, but the ones available are guaranteed to be fairly good quality

According to people from the former soviet block I know, the reason they got so good at fixing stuff is because the first thing they did after buying an appliance from a store (after it became available eventually) was fixing it because nothing ever worked as expected. I guess "nothing" is an overstatement but I still wouldn't use the soviet union as an example for great product quality.

I feel like that was generally a property of everything everywhere though. I still remember sticking a fork into my VCR (probably made in USA?) or basically every car having something wrong with it.

Things have gotten more reliable across the board imo.

PriceSmart, (Costco's Latin American cousin), does something similar too.

They research/test the products before selling them so that they comply with their quality standards. So once products are on the shelves its likely that they are good.

This make buying decisions easier. Which is a much better shopping experience than having to read a dozen product reviews while shopping online.

> the ones available are guaranteed to be fairly good quality and at an affordable price

I bought into the hype and got a Costco membership a few years back. One of the first things I went looking for was whole bean coffee (Peet's xmas roast). The local Costco had a bunch of coffee from Starbucks and Peets (meh quality to start) but only the painfully dark roasts and all of it was ground. Pre-ground coffee in bulk has a pretty limited use case (and relatively short shelf life).

Fast forward to last week and I went looking for a new fridge at Costco dot com. They prominently featured LG (ugh) and Samsung refrigerators. While some LG models seem to review pretty well I've never seen anyone say anything positive about Samsung, their service, or the serviceability of their appliances. I'm in the middle of dealing with a defective LG fridge and that's about the nicest thing I can say about LG's warranty and customer support.

Costco may have a permissive return policy and decent customer support but I would never blindly buy something without doing a bit of research just because it's at Costco. Especially with a big ticket item like a fridge I'd rather use my Amex anyhow.

> I've never seen anyone say anything positive about Samsung, their service, or the serviceability of their appliances

I have all Samsung appliances at my home. They are the best appliances I have ever owned. I can't speak to their service because I have never had a single issue with any of them.

> I have all Samsung appliances at my home. They are the best appliances I have ever owned.

Congrats. I think you're in a minority. Our washing machine 'fabric softener' compartment started rusting less than a year after getting it. We had a long time and many back and forths trying to get them to acknowledge the problem. Their 'fix' initially was "don't use that". Finally - months later - they agreed to have someone come fix it, but it was going to be hundreds of dollars because we were "out of warranty". "But... we reported this to you with months left in the warranty period". "Well, tough luck" was basically the response.

My wife kept persisting - this dragged on for months - and eventually got some service rep to 'cover' this and a service guy came out. "Oh this is common - see this a lot with Samsungs in the last few years".

Relatedly, we had a dryer guy come out to fix the Samsung dryer. He indicated Samsung and LG were among the worst consumer-level brands for home appliances, based on their workload as service techs. But Samsung and LG have gigantic foot prints in the major retail outlets, so continue to get sold in to many households.

I've heard enough stories from friends and family about samsung fridges and washing machines dying shortly after their warranty and Samsung wanting crazy money to fix them. Also a friend who bought their top of the line "frame" TV and returned it within a week because the TV had stutter when watching live TV and there is an 800-pages long forum thread about it on their forums, with Samsung basically replying "we're aware of this issue and we aren't planning on fixing it".

On the other hand I have their phone(S21) and I'm very happy with it.

My experience is the big ticket items are all fine products at normal prices, but there's no reason to pick Costco for them. I suspect it's where they make a lot of their profit, considering their groceries are famously low margin. I buy groceries and gas exclusively there.

The reason to pick Costco for appliances is because you get a 4 year warranty if you use Costco credit card (in the US).

Here in UK the #1 reason to get them from Costco is that they give 5 years warranty on all electronics and home appliances, way beyond what the manufacturer offers. I'd happily buy a new TV or a fridge from them for that reason alone.

Almost all of their profit is from membership fees. https://investor.costco.com/node/24021/html

Sales almost equal merchandise cost plus selling expenses. Membership fees add $984 million on top of that.

I strongly suspect it's the extra services that third parties sell through them. Like the vacation packages, air conditioning installation, etc. We almost got a Puronics filter through them, but stopped short when we found out that it was $9000 at Costco, but $6000 through an independent installer.

Costco’s profit is all membership fees. Everything else is (in aggregate) sold at cost. This is public information in their 10-K filings.

For the hotel and travel stuff, they get a commission like other travel agents/channels.

Costco.com is where to look for coffee and other foodstuffs. You may have to buy the coffee in 5 lb bags, but the selection is superior and the quality is generally very good.

Looks about the same to me. They have Peets Nespresso cups, K-cups, bags of ground coffee, and whole beans (conveniently filed under "ground coffee"). K-Cups are offered in hazelnut mocha (yikes), house, french roast, maj. dickason, and decaf maj. dickason. The ground beans are available in Colombian, Big Bang, Decaf Maj. Dickason (+ decaf), and Organic Alameda Morning.

Whole bean? Just Major Dicakson in various quantities.

You could make an argument that the disposable cups will have a decent shelf life. 10 ounce bags of grounds won't though – that's kind of the antithesis of quality right there.

Your store(s) must have better coffee selections than the ones I frequent. Ruta Maya, Mayorga, some Kirkland varieties and others are much better than what I can get locally and only available to me online.

> I've never seen anyone say anything positive about Samsung, their service, or the serviceability of their appliances.

I've never had problems with Samsung appliances. Can't say the same for (supposedly high-quality) Bauknecht or Miele.

> soviet stores

> but the ones available are guaranteed to be fairly good quality

Yeah, right... Nope.

That's true for some categories of goods but not all. They have way more than 10 kinds of wine.

I guess the european equivalent would be LIDL

Lidl, at least in most places, doesn't run bulk stores like Costco apparently is.

There are some bulk stores with memberships, some of them limited to B2B sales, some accepting normal people as customers - places like MAKRO and Selgross - but they obviously are mainly a warehouse supplier for shops and companies.

I don't know how Lidl is in terms of selection in other countries, but especially with smaller stores the joke is that "every week something new" which refers more to somewhat random selection, and they tend to have lesser known brands (which, while not necessarily a bad thing, isn't also a sign of quality, and sometimes you really like the specific brand). Personally when I shopped more at Lidl (had one opposite of office), I compared the selection to "what recently fell of the truck and will stay till it's all sold"

It is always interesting to read how different such brands are perceived in different countries. Over here in Germany, Lidl is considered "the better discount store" as compared to Aldi (especially Aldi Nord), and has made a push to more high-level products (which often are better than name-brand stuff that they also carry).

When I talk to British friends, the idea of shopping at a Lidl seems to be sacrilegious to them. Still, when I went into one somewhere in Yorkshire before the plague, it was pretty much what I expected.

We got a Lidl near us - one of the first when they were planning their US East Coast invasion. Apparently, they're scaling back new stores, and ours is one of a handful of 'large' footprint stores, and almost everything after that is (or will be) probably half the size.

We love Lidl mostly because of the price. Almost everything was/is around 20-30% less than the stores around it. Much of this is from 'store brand' items, but the price diff is lower even against other 'store brand' pricing.

When they opened, they had a wider variety of items, including a wide variety of daily baked breads. That got scaled back a lot, as apparently there's not enough support/demand in this area for fresh breads outside of 'white'.

There's a weird circle of grocery stores that have sprung up in my area. Within a 3 mile radius, there's Target, Walmart, Lidl, Aldi, Wegmans, Food Lion, Harris Teeter, Publix and Lowe's (2?). It seems excessive to me, but the area is growing, and they likely wouldn't have invested in this area without a strong expectation of not losing money.

There's still a Lidl stigma around here. Many folks I talk to think of it as some 'poor person' shop.

Hm. For me it is about choice. The sortiment is just limited. In Germany there is also the "Luxus-Lidl" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaufland but they are just so-so. Nothing special, in comparison to what else is available.

The US stigma is interesting, because Lidl stocks more high quality goods than many other stores. E.g. the jelly is from Germany, the chocolate is inexpensive yet fair trade.

I don’t know if I eat cheaper at Lidl but I eat better. The cheese and meat sections alone - I have probably twice as many charcuterie boards now that a Lidl moved in.

I suspect it's precisely because most of those 'better' items aren't 'name brand' items. "fair trade chocolate bars" - regardless of quality - may not sell to a population raised (for generations) on hershey bars.

IMO Aldi-Nord vs. Lidl aren't that different, though it also depends on the location of the store. For instance, a Lidl embedded in a larger station has a wider range of frozen and cooled foods, or more variety of the same stuff, say pizza, or yoghurt, but almost none, (or none at all?) of that ever changing non-food action stuff. While the standard layout, freestanding Lidl has less of that, or is almost always out of the stuff I prefer.

Aldi-Nord isn't that different, I'd say, at least not when free standing, in their standard layout. The only difference is the glaring white LED lighting they have. That is bRrRr!

Oh, and their electronic payment works fast. Had to use that recently for the first time in my life because I thought I had more cash on me. Wave card, enter pin, ZAHLUNG ERFOLGT! Phew!

(Yah Yah, I caved in, I know...)

edit: Aldi-Nord has better spices, though not all the times. Their Tandoori-mixture is very good, at least compared to the dozens of others I've tried. (In those small 80g aluminum cans) Ginger powder is also acceptable for me.

However, most of the times I just skip them, because I have 2 excellently managed Edekas available, and they have it all!