I don't know if we can say that a store with unlabeled aisles can be a source of curation.
While the products are often above average and maybe even the best in their category, that reflects Costco’s affluent demographic more than an unusual commitment to quality or trust. For the most part Costco is the exact same as a Target or Walmart but with fewer SKUs and fewer items that are popular with low income individuals.
Is Tide Original trustworthy? It’s banned in New York for having too much of cancer-causing chemical. Sold in Costco.
Are products with artificial colors trustworthy? Costco is happy to sell you a case of Gatorade with Red 40, which is linked to ADHD in children.
Compare the ingredient list for Costco bakery croissants to Whole Foods. Costco’s product has a bunch of unpronounceable chemicals, I don’t find that all that trustworthy. Also, they’re not very tasty croissants.
What are Costco’s ethical standards for the treatment of animals used in their meat and dairy department? We don’t really know of any, while most natural foods stores publish some kind of guidelines. For example, I can buy visibly better eggs from pasture raised chickens at natural foods stores that beat the quality of Costco’s organic egg product. The yolks have a deeper color, and eggs from pasture-raised chickens are known to have more nutrients.
Here’s the other thing I can’t trust about Costco: they’re going to frequently sell out of the common items I buy every day, change suppliers on a whim, or rearrange the store to make the pallets fit.
Having aisles unlabeled is not very trustworthy because it shows how the goal of the store is to get you to get lost, impulse purchase, and over-consume. It’s a less extreme version of IKEA, whose store layout is a basically a dark pattern in itself.
This is the store that has third-party salespeople hawking free samples of products they want you to buy and nagging you about solar panels and DirecTV.
The wonderful return policy is there so that you come back in and shop some more. They know that once you fight the ridiculous Costco traffic and actually get in the store you “might as well stock up.”
Then on your way out the food court sells food that’s somehow lower quality than a typical county fair. Does a chicken bake even exist outside of Costco? Like, it’s a product inspired by the manufacturing convenience rather than something people actually cook in their homes.
As a member I’d like the cult of Costco to go away. It’s just a store. I’m just there because the cost of certain staple goods make the membership make fee worth it. That’s all.
Natural foods stores have much more stringent standards on things like artificial colors, animal treatment, and use of chemicals.
For example, Tide Original is banned in New York for having too much of a cancer-causing chemical. Costco sells it. Costco sells products with artificial colors linked to ADHD in children. Costco’s best organic eggs are visibly and nutritionally inferior to eggs from pasture-raised chickens.
The fact that Costco doesn’t sell low quality private label and discount brand items has more to do with customer demographic than trust and curation.
This is also the store that allows third-party companies’ representatives to harass customers about solar panels and DirecTV in the store. “Trustworthy.”
They’re really no different on “trust” than Walmart or Target, and I think people need to stop being a part of its retail cult and take it for what it is: a store with good prices on staple goods.
What they said is that Costco is upfront about what they're selling, rarely sells defective products, and offers a very generous return policy in the (rare) case you are dissatisfied with a purchase.
Those aren't that far off from Walmart or Target, because those are also generally reasonable retailers. I would say Costco offers better value on their products overall.
If you ask more of that from any retailer, good luck finding anyplace to purchase anything.
And speaking of convenience, it would be a big shame if we had to go back to physical stores for non-trivial purchases because we can't trust anything online.
In short, the store that serves what I want is usually the huge sell-everything store.
without good reviews and insight it's just amazon with higher pricing.
Plus they send you candy
Maybe Amazon brands will at least be predictable, but the non-Amazon brands on Amazon will be increasingly counterfeits and noise.
(A contributor to the current problem of eroding non-Amazon brands with counterfeits seems to be Amazon's commingling from different marketplace sellers of the "same ASIN". And the current mass-spam search DoS of random-name brands and near-identical products from overseas sellers is also a problem. Amazon can not only shield their own brands from both of those problems, but can also exercise more supply chain integrity control for its brands than is possible for the non-Amazon brands if Amazon doesn't cooperate.)
Of course, because that helps sell the Amazon brand goods.
They identify widely ordered products and source their own version to sell. Why is that a negative? Costco does the same. As long as they vet the quality (my experience with AmazonBasic products has been fine), seems like a win-win?
Obviously in a world where every online retailer is nearly useless, a guy who creates an online retailer that is not useless would immediately have anyone he personally tells about it as customers, and anyone they tell about it, and so on (since in this hypothetical, everyone is desperate for a good retailer).
Roost Stand
Accessories4less
Svsound
You’d have to duplicate this to take them on.
Very difficult to get a hold of someone when they lose a package even when they explicitly tell you “contact us”.
But if you stick to inconsequential items, it’s great. I needed a few USBC cables and charging cables the other day and got them next day at half the price. I checked the local stores and none had what I was after.
But yeah, I agree with your point
I realize that it’s apparently way worse in the US, but there supposedly are issues here as well, I just never encountered them (or the products are so well-faked that it’s a distinction without a difference).
Fast delivery, a lot of choices, both "Aliexpress but faster delivery for a price", but also EU products, and a customer service that does pretty much anything asked.
I mean you get scammed maybe twice by a company, then buy somewhere else. You quickly realize that it is better spending 3-4 times the amount of money for something that will last 10 years than buying stuff that do not work or keep breaking after a few months/years.
I am too poor to be able to afford buying cheap stuff.
Most people still just buy the cheapest version of an item they are looking for.
Also, I am not trying to hyper optimize my use of time, but rather I find the experience of huge selection, fake reviews mixed with sponsored listings to be very unpleasant. I have slightly more faith in quality control at a department store, or even a dedicated housewares store.
One of the depots used by DHL when they "can't find" my building (even though the place predates the formation of the Soviet Union, let alone its collapse) is about a mile away and I don't have a car. This is fine unless it rains, but it's not even conveniently on my way to anything interesting.
I bought a VOIP phone from the media store recently. When I was there looking at them, and feeling them etc, I was thinking how there is no way I could have picked the right one from an online shop. I might have never known there was something better, I guess. But being able to hold them helped me pick one I thought I would like.