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Comment by niyazpk | Hacker News Reader

The fact that I can trust Costco to have good quality products with low prices and great return policy means that I never have to buy day-to-day items from Amazon.

Amazon is where I go to buy books (and obscure one-off things that I can't buy from anywhere else). When buying from Amazon, I have to read the reviews, analyze them to figure out if the reviews are fake, read the return policy, research the seller, figure out the shipping dates etc. Given how broken the search is, I am not even sure if I am buying the best item in the category. Most of the time I end up reading wire-cutter reviews before buying from Amazon.

Amazon has billions of items at this point, and it is on me to figure out the right stuff that I should buy. I don't have that kind of time or patience to read hundreds of reviews before buying every single item.

Compared to this, Costco is a breeze. If they carry it, I just buy it assuming that it is going to be good quality. For me, the value they provide is curation of selection and filtering for quality. I am willing to pay the membership fee for this.

And this is anecdotally true for almost all of the families in my friends group in the Seattle area. I can see the perspective that if you don't have a family, the savings are probably not a big deal. And I also agree that there are people who don't want to drive to a store to buy stuff. But, I for one, am glad that Costco exists.

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You think Amazon search is broken for you? Try living in a semi-supported country, like Ireland, Poland or Switzerland. There is no "only items that ship to my country" in search. And on top of that, I've hit items that would ship as seen on product details, but only during checkout I would learn that shipping the $20 smartphone-sized item would be $250.

Does this really happen while using the euro Amazons? It sounds like you might be ordering from .com, in which case the same thing would happen in “supported countries”.

Even .co.uk that has a healthy level of UK product, does not let you exclude "Amazon Global" .com items as though you would be quite happy to pay £30 shipping, VAT and import fees on branded £50 jeans. IIRC you can't exclude global marketplace from search either. eBay has a UK only tick box.

Mostly there are aren't too many Global items, but in clothing particularly they can crowd out the rest, and seem to intentionally block the exact same item if it's not directly from Amazon UK. It can be quite frustrating, particularly as many are stuff UK used to carry. Though it's not among the main contributors to why I rarely use Amazon much at all any more.

Looks like on Amazon UK filtering for Prime (even if you're not in a Prime country) gets rid of the Global items, IME this is the only reasonable way to shop on Amazon anyway.

Amazon without the Prime filter is just Ebay with much worse prices and UX.

Yes this most definitely happens with the euro Amazons. In fact, it's the .com Amazon that seems to be running a newer version / experiment lately where sometimes the search only shows stuff that ships to my configured address.

The most annoying thing however is when the search contains an item, then the description on the item's dedicated page has text that specifically says that the item will ship to my address, but then during checkout I get an error message saying that the specific item can't be shipped after all. Feels like the description page text is determined willy-nilly and it's not until the checkout that they take into account the package size and weight.

However I sometimes do want to see what's available even without direct shipping to me, because if the item is cheap enough or rare enough, it will be worth using a reshipping service in whatever country Amazon does ship to.

It's even worse than that. SOMETIMES there's a "show only sellers that ship to $FOO" option, but not always. Terrible experience.

Or Alaska or Hawaii - same problem (shipping restrictions invisible until checkout). It's insane. They know exactly where I live.

I disagree here. Costco is now often trading on its reputation for getting you a bulk discount, but when you compare them to Aldi, or even to a larger supermarket, you're often getting things in large quantity for the same price or more than you'd pay in small quantity. This is especially true for things like cheese. Meanwhile, you're giving up the opportunity to get a superior product. In the cheese example, Costco stocks Belgioioso mozzarella, which to me is about store-brand quality. Popular because it doesn't taste like cheese. For a decent price, you can buy much better mozzarella which has some flavor. And you don't have to buy 3 lbs at a time.

I was doing price comparison just yesterday and was pretty disappointed in what I found for Costco prices. I thought they were better.

Kerrygold butter is cheaper at Walmart.

Organic chicken stock is cheaper at Whole Foods.

Organic diced tomatoes at Costco however are very well priced.

I shop at Costco despite the prices, because I like their ethos of treating employees well and business model that makes me feel like they wouldn’t cut unnecessary corners on product quality.

Since this is an item I get regularly - it’s $9 for a 4-pack of Kerrygold butter at the Mountain View Costco ($2.25/ 8oz bar). Same 8oz butter is almost double at Safeway or Whole Foods. The local Walmart is $2.83 per bar.

I have rarely found Costco items more expensive than other local stores, at least for my regular items.

I discount Trader Joe’s since they don’t carry branded items other than wine and beer.

That's weird, it's $11.49 in NH for the same thing at Costco. :(

And 2.50/bar at Walmart here

(What I actually buy now is the French cultured butter from trader Joe's though, which is v good)

Second on TJs butter. For quality to value ratio of most foods, TJs blows Costso out of the water imo, and you don't have to buy cheese in 3 lb blocks.

I discount Trader Joe’s since they don’t carry branded items other than wine and beer.

They carry a variety of branded items including Kerrygold, Tilamook, Rouge et Noir (Bay Area cheese maker), those kringles, Spindrift, Columbus (lunchmeat), those organic herbs, and Tom's of Maine (hygiene). There's probably a few more.

It's funny that you mention Rouge et Noir; I think they've been re-branded to "Marin French Cheese". I miss the old name.

That is depressingly cheap Kerrygold. I live in ireland (the home of Kerrygold), and it cost me 3.75 euro to get one of those packs today :(

On the bright side, the no-name brand butter is almost as good here, so it's not a total wash.

> Organic chicken stock is cheaper at Whole Foods.

If you buy Better than Bouillon at Costco, you can get a pound of the stuff for about $6, which is double the quantity that you find at most other grocery stores.

I stopped buying liquid stock after I found that stuff, because it's so much cheaper.

And so much easier to store! I've also given up on liquid - you cannot taste the difference.

That stuff is way too salty though with a pretty thin flavor profile. You can at least find liquid stocks with no sodium so you can add a lot of flavor and then salt to taste. Even their reduced sodium version is too salty. Liquid no sodium stocks still aren’t awesome either but I think it’s better overall than the Better than Boulion options.

Yes, but to get those things, I'd have to make three stops, or I can make one stop and pay marginally more.

So given a choice of shopping at Costco who pays the highest wages and benefits vs. Walmart who has the lowest wages and benefits, I will pay that small extra for the butter.

I've been getting a lot of stuff at Home Depot and Lowe's recently, and finding that they each have different products for everything, and which one is obviously better/cheaper varies on an extremely granular level - not just a manufacturer or product type, but an individual product. It's gotten really frustrating that every time I want three or four things I have to go to both or I will regret my choices.

I believe this is a general phenomenon and I read years ago about someone studying it in grocery stores. I'm not sure to what extent it is emergent vs. rationally thought out, but direct competitors tend to evolve to give you just enough good options to get you in the store, and as many bad deals as you are likely to go with just because you are in the store. Being uniformly better is not necessary to compete and therefore suboptimal.

It depends on the Costcos, Walmarts, and Whole Foods in your area.

In LA, Costco isn't always the cheapest on a per-unit basis, but they're always the cheapest on a per weight/per ounce basis.

For example, Kerrygold butter is $5 at the Ralphs, and the same size container is $8 at the nearest Whole Foods. It's $16 at Costco...but for 4x the amount of butter, making it cheaper than both Ralphs and Whole Foods if you can actually use all that butter. (There are no nearby Walmarts, and neither of the local Targets or Food4Less' sell Kerrygold.)

The problem with costco is bulk buying. I feel like someone should start a buyers club or something online.

That mostly feels like a myth to me?

It’s not that bulk. Chips come in bigger bags - use a clip. Bread comes two loaves, freeze one. It’s very rare I see something but it’s an unusable quantity for a family of four.

Now that said, when I lived in a tiny apartment getting 36 rolls of toilet paper at once was annoying, but I made it work.

I mean, you get like 16 packs of chicken.. 3 boxes of cereal, a crate of pears, 3 things of hummus... yes you can make it work but still it’s a lot.

There are the buckets of soy sauce that seem targeted to the “restaurant supply” sector.

If you don't run a restaurant there are also just bottles of soy sauce.

Put chips in the freezer. It pumps the water vapor out.

Are single and childless people a myth to you? A lot of people are part of households that have substantially fewer than four members.

Also, frozen bread is an indignity that no one should have to suffer. Unless you are very very poor just pay the extra dollar and eat fresh bread.

The trick is letting it warm up to room temperature slowly to let the moisture it lost from freezing return. I mostly just toast my bread and I honestly can't tell a difference between thawed and fresh bread.

Most things are OK to buy in bulk from Costco or elsewhere: flour, rice and other grains (quinoa, lentils), oil, cheese, toilet paper and paper towels, potatoes and onions, frozen veggies and other frozen foods, coffee beans, tea, yeast and other baking ingredients. Eggs are good for at least 2 weeks after their sell-by date and even without that, it's easy to get through 2 dozen eggs in 3 weeks. Dry pet food, treats, and regular pet medication (e.g. heartworm, flea protection) don't expire before they are used and far cheaper than elsewhere. Beer is good for months, wine and liquor for years.

Large families (4+ people) can easily get through Costco sized bread, milk, cereal, snacks, fruit, meat and veggies before it goes bad.

For a single or 2 person household, pretty much the only things from Costco that it doesn't make sense to buy are fresh produce, meat, and seafood, and bread.

I got a vacuum sealer and happily buy steaks and freeze a few.

Costco often as Prime beef that's ~$18/Lb. Whole Foods for USDA Prime is often $30+.

Like another person pointed out, a vacuum sealer and a freezer are your best friend with Costco meat. For a family of 5 it makes buying quality meat a bargain. 1 or 2 days in the fridge to thaw and you can’t even tell it was frozen, especially with steaks.

I think I go through 3 eggs every 2 dozen weeks.

I agree. Which items are cheaper than competitors are really hit and miss. Some of Costco's have higher quality, though. I think that Aldi sells singles cheap by stocking cases with 1-3 stockers keeping the whole store up proves Costco could've done that. They should try doing it Aldi-like with higher-quality brands.

Costco is seldom cheapest, but you can be confident that it will at least be competitive and they only sell quality products.

If you enjoy shopping around and comparing pricing, it's not the best option. But if you just want to buy a product and know you won't be ripped off, you can shop there and never have to think about it. That allows people who don't enjoy shopping to save a lot of time and mental energy.

> Costco is seldom cheapest, but you can be confident that it will at least be competitive and they only sell quality products.

I've run into plenty of counterexamples to the last claim.

Same here, on occasion, but I've found they typically make you whole when you get a dud.

Good example:

I bought two collapsible milk crates. They loaded all my groceries into them in the store.

When I got home and lifted the first crate out of the car, it had too much weight inside, the bottom fell out and two bottles of wine shattered.

I told them the story when returning the crate two weeks later, they waved me off when I said I had a pic, told me it wasn’t necessary, and refunded the wine without being prompted.

Trying to get wine refunded with most other retailer would probably require talking to a manager and making a scene.

Which is where their return policy comes in. I've used it extensively

At least in the Bay Area I can pay for a yearly membership just by the savings on gas.

I wonder if someone at Amazon can take your comment alone and fix all the problems that are so apparent.

Everything you mention is a hugely broken piece. Seems like they have lost their "customer is the queen" mentality a while ago...

Amazon's retail experience has been sliding downhill since going public, but that's fine because shareholders are the customer now

Costco has some nice products, and usually has a good food selection, but there are times when they sell junk products as well. Their health and hygiene section can be hit or miss, and if you're looking for more natural products similar to what may be sold at Whole Foods then your best bet is Amazon.

Costco usually have a descent selection of organic foods cheaper than you'll find almost anywhere else.

One area that I'm disappointed in is their computer selection. Although you may be getting additional support and a cheaper warranty, they simply don't refresh their hardware enough. Almost all their computers are lower end and still expensive compared to what you'll find on Amazon, especially if you price out the cost of building a desktop with much better and newer parts.

a technically well-versed audience like this HN crowd is not really the customer base for computer equipment from Costco. In keeping with their product offering approach, Costco is catering to the people too busy and/or don't find it fun to evaluate computer equipments. What their customers know is that what Costco offers is good enough and pretty good value. The liberal return policy helps ease customer concerns about making equipments work. Looks to me like Costco is doing it pretty much right.

Be very careful buying things you ingest on Amazon. The risk is high of fake products from otherwise trustworthy brands or "fake" brands of some guy ordering something to be packaged at a dodgy Chinese manufacturer with little or no QA or basic verification.

Let's be real. Under no circumstance should you be ingesting anything you buy on Amazon. It's going to take a baby formula scandal like what happened in China before the general public wakes up the problem.

Are you all for real about this? I buy coffee, soylent, various hard to find canned goods, and other things all the time off Amazon.

If you actually eat Soylent you're in like the 0.0001th percentile of Amazon shoppers.

Downvote walrus01 all you want but I’ve never met a person in real life who eats Soylent. If it weren’t for HN or Reddit I’ve never even know it existed.

I have. He was ... a person of generally questionable life choices. Great developer and a true pleasure to work with though.

As a formerly-Soylent-drinking engineer of questionable life choices, I hope there’s a causal relationship behind that correlation :)

They must exist. I can buy Soylent off the shelf at my local Fred Meyer (Kroger for people who don't have Fred Meyer in their area). They are pretty aggressive about dropping products that don't sell in sufficient quantity.

Look at how they mix stock under the same SKU and see if you’re still confident perhaps that Peet’s coffee came from Peet’s or perhaps a third party seller used counterfeit — Amazon’s will put hem into the same punnet and pull out one where it’s from amazon or “fulfilled by amazon”.

Right now I’ve only seen it in electronics but I don’t buy much food that way. Amazon fresh is a different thing (all sourced / sold by amazon) so probably not a problem. Likewise oddball stuff (a low volume brand of tea) is unlikely to be worth counterfeiting. But mass market goods definitely are and the baby food example, while not amazon, is an excellent cautionary tale.

I gave up on Amazon once I wasn't able to buy the replaceable toothbrush heads for my electric toothbrush. Try ordering the name brand oral-b ones and see what shows up (in my case, cheap Chinese knockoffs that lasted about a week instead of however many weeks they're supposed to).

I honestly miss being able to go to a unique store to buy things - that way you could look at what you were actually buying and (maybe!) find something better for what you're trying to do.

Amazon has their Essentials brand for vitamins which is apparently legit. I think brand name foods and drinks are probably OK since they are hard to counterfeit and if you did get a counterfeit I am sure the brand would be very interested in Amazon's role in it. Vitamins though and any kind of spice should be suspect... I think this is why they started Essentials. Costco also does product quality tests so buying stuff there should be ok. I'd be interested in lead testing Tumeric from Costco, Amazon, Whole foods etc... that's been a big thing recently. We also know Kona coffee is not legit for instance even at Costco.

If there are problems with counterfeit Apple chargers, why wouldn't there be problems with "brand name" foods?

Maybe things with very distinctive tastes (Doritos, Coke, etc) you might have a point but outside that it's largely packaging.

When you get counterfeit electronics, you can usually tell right away. The packaging is off, misprinted, often has a Chinese name in small print on it somewhere. The product looks fine from a distance but up close, the mold alignment is off, it's too light, it feels cheap.

More often than not you roll your eyes and use it anyway, because most of the time it works well enough, for a while at least.

Branded food is a lot less likely to get a pass on any of those. We have a strong sense of what it's supposed to look like, smell like, taste like, feel like; we might put up with less from a clearly marked store-brand copy, but a name brand that doesn't taste like it should sets off alarm bells. And exactly reproducing a commercial food product is hard.

That's very much not true. I've received many fake items - where if I didn't already own the product AND box and could compare side by side, I'd never know.

Even then, until it doesn't work right, you wouldn't know.

There are some _very_ good looking counterfeits on amazon.

> Amazon has their Essentials brand for vitamins which is apparently legit.

Right now, their policies may change in the future.

> apparently legit

not exactly confidence inspiring ;-)

Amazon sells lots of food items that are sold by Amazon.com. You have to use discretion, but there is nothing wrong with buying multi-vitamins, probiotics and supplements on Amazon. However, it is probably a good idea to not buy them from a third-party seller.

On the front page right now: Amazon shipping counterfeit books as "sold by Amazon.com": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21243420

> Amazon sells lots of food items that are sold by Amazon.com.

“Sold by Amazon.com” is not safe, because of potential commingling with stock identified as the same SKU from Fulfilled by Amazon sellers. If you know of a reliable non-FBA third-party seller, that's the safest thing

At least in its SoCal warehouses, Amazon does not commingle its own inventory with FBA sellers for product liability reasons. It maintains separate internal warehousing SKUs for FBA inventory stockpiles.

Do you have sources for this?

Third party? No, but Amazon used to be a client so I got to see them firsthand.

Amazon Warns Customers: Those Supplements Might Be Fake https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-fake-supplements/

Supporting the counterfeiting point, this just hit the front page as well:

https://twitter.com/nostarch/status/1183095004258099202

I bought a box of tic tacs on Amazon and it was just a bunch of fishing sinkers painted white.

Were they sold by Amazon.com or you just being silly?

Yes, the electronics/appliance selection, when one needs it, can be slightly lacking. Costco appears to reduce costs by often stocking exactly one option for a given thing. E.g., I'm in the market for a toaster as my old one died (a 2012 basic 2-slot model, $20 at Costco). My local Costco now seems to only have an upscale 4-slot model for $50. I'm considering my options and living a toaster-free life at the moment, but even two options would be nice.

It's hard to beat the prices on bulk foods, though, which keeps me going back (and I like voting-with-dollars for well-run, customer-friendly stores). Perhaps it's just the bulk-commodities mindset from the food aisles leaking over into electronics that causes the above.

This is true. In fact Costco frequently stocks models of electronics that are exclusively sold through them. For example, many TVs you buy there are slight variations of popular models that only Costco sells. They even have distinct model numbers that you'll have a hard time finding info about on Google. The manufacturer makes up costs by defeaturing the TVs. Frequently they reduce the number of ports or withhold smart TV features. This is actually great for me because I seldom want all the bells and whistles. I'd like as much money spent as possible to go to size and quality of the display.

If Costco is removing "smart" features from TVs, I might get a membership just to buy one TV there.

Since the Smart TV shit started, I've moved to just buying large PC monitors and using them with my PC. (It helps that I'm a cable cutter. There's nothing interesting on TV that's not streaming somewhere.)

That sounds great. How large do computer monitors go?

40" and more

I do not understand this. Buy the TV as it is bigger and cheaper. Just do not configure the WiFi and do not plug the Ethernet in. I have 2 Samsung’s that are set at just out of the box with no internet.

Some smart TVs will find an open AP if you don't otherwise configure them for internet access, hence the swing to dumb TVs and monitors for people who want to guarantee no logging of their viewing habits.

I have heard this before but yet to see anyone show proof of this. I used to have the Samsungs wired but I used DNS to block the tracking.

Here is link to the info I used:

https://gist.github.com/peteryates/b44b70d19ccd52f62d66cdd4b...

At some point I realized I did not even want to use the TV apps and did not care to maintain the PC with Kodi on it. I just switched to an AppleTV for everything and paid for MrMC (Kodi port for AppleTV that supports SMB/NFS mounting). So much simpler.

It took a second to dig out, but on a hunch I added "site:reddit.com" to my search criteria.

https://www.reddit.com/r/security/comments/bpjky4/worried_ab...

They were doing this more when Smart TV features were kind of an upsell. Now that they're standard they don't do this as much.

Often it's the same product, but sold with a different name/SKU.

That's so the manufacturer doesn't upset other retailers that offer price-matching.

But often it's not. You can find threads on AV forums comparing Costco only models to their common models. Though maybe this has changed a bit as I haven't shopped for a TV for a few years.

They don't always remove features. Really it's more about making the comparison between the products just fuzzy enough that the other retailers can't give the manufacturers a hard time for offering Costco a cheaper deal. And in some cases just trying not to devalue their brand elsewhere.

Costco doesn't sell the same Dyson vacuum as everywhere else -- instead of a "Total" they sell an "Absolute" or some other equally confusing nonsense.

The difference is they remove a single (non-motorized/cheap) attachment, and throw in two different ones and a couple other accoutrements. And sell it for $100 less.

The part that's not included in their package can be purchased retail from Dyson for less than $100.

Other retailers can't use this to put pressure on Dyson. Dyson doesn't look like they're overcharging everywhere else.

My experience is that the Costco exclusive models of many electronic products are not feature reduced but are identical to the non Costco versions except bundled with accessories or services not included with the non Costco versions.

For example Ring security systems and cameras sold at Costco usually include additional sensors or things such as additional Ring chimes plus a free year of service.

Back in the day, I haven't bought one in years and can't speak to the current situation, printers sold at Costco almost always had unique model numbers because Costco insisted printer manufacturers include USB cables and full ink or toner cartridges instead of starter ones. So if HP sold a model 420 everywhere else they would sell a model 425 at Costco which included the cable and full ink cartridges but the printer itself was identical to the 420 sold elsewhere.

A couple of years ago I bought an electronic keyboard for my daughter. It had a different model number than the keyboard normally has but the keyboard itself is the same feature wise as sold other places but it came bundled with a stand and a couple of other accessories which would have been extra elsewhere.

It might be your lucky day then, because this apparently amazing toaster was on HN the other day:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21164014

You can get them on Ebay

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=sunbeam+radiant+control...

Wow -- the engineering cleverness is actually really incredible (using heat expansion of the nichrome wire to automatically lower the bread! fully mechanical closed-loop monitoring of bread surface temperature!). Tempting.

Can it run NetBSD?

You can probably return the old toaster for a refund and apply the balance to the new toaster.

> Their health and hygiene section can be hit or miss, and if you're looking for more natural products similar to what may be sold at Whole Foods...

Whole Foods sells a lot of homeopathic garbage, though.

Yes, I'm not advocating someone to try a homeopathic recipe for cancer. However, there are times when supplements can be beneficial and you can find actual reports in the NCBI and legitimate references and supporting information on Wikipedia.

Multivitamins and probiotics are things that can help supplement nutrients and help with digestion for people that may not be getting enough in their daily meals. Some people choose to be Vegan, and it is nice when you can find options sold by Amazon that don't have a bunch of fillers in their supplements or meat products.

I recently had some issues and found that an organic garlic supplement and apple cider vinegar concentrate helped me feel better. Would I still go to the doctor in case of a medical emergency? Absolutely! However, there are a lot of great herbs and extracts out there that provide benefits to a persons health. As always, do your own research and know the risk.

However, there are times when supplements can be beneficial and you can find actual reports in the NCBI and legitimate references and supporting information on Wikipedia.

Parent is not busting the chops of Whole Foods for carrying vitamins and supplements that arguably have some minor benefit for a subset of the population. No, parent is busting their chops for carrying magic water that, AFAICT, has zero supporting evidence.

In the worst case, at least your garlic supplement has garlic in it.

I agree, Amazon just seems to be getting worse, with dodgy Chinese brands, counterfeit stuff, and fake reviews. Costco is a no-brainer and food is top-notch.

I had a different problem the last time I wanted to buy something from Amazon.

I knew what I wanted, so I didn't care about search. In fact, the item was only available on Amazon.

But the seller looked sketchy, so I had to convince myself to buy it from them on Amazon. After looking some more to see if there was anywhere else to buy, including on the manufacturer website, I resigned myself to buy it.

But then the total price started increasing while I was trying to check out, so I went away mad.

As far as reviews, I believe I have a reasonably foolproof system. I simply look at the worst reviews and see what kind of theme they have. If that is a clear pattern that is a design flaw, then I expect that is a warning I should pay attention to. Good reviews are basically irrelevant except if they describe the product to some extent. Unfortunately, with many consumer product categories on Amazon, I give up because all of the items have dealbreakers in the bad reviews, and sometimes it seems the products may not really be meaningfully different.

Costco is the only place in Japan where I can find decent French cheese. I am not sure how it happened, but there it is.

You must mean decent French cheese at a reasonable price? All the big depa-chika have cheese stands with cheeses from all over the world. Seijo Ishii seems to have some selection as well?

Do you mind quoting some prices? I would be really curious what French/European cheese costs in Japan and what is considered a 'reasonable price'.

I'd expect 4x+ and wouldn't care about paying. I live in Japan, local stuff is cheap, ingredients for local dishes are cheap. Ingredients for foreign dishes are expensive. That seems like it would be the same everywhere.

https://www.fermier.co.jp/products/list.php?&mode=search&sea...

Living in the Seattle area, I like not having to drive out to Costco weekly or even monthly and can have a mostly car free life using amazon to provide what we can’t get from the QFC or Safeway down the street.

Of course, if our family ever gets another kid, doing the Costco thing might be unavoidable.

Costco has same day and 2-day delivery options through their CostcoGrocery program.

> For me, the value they provide is curation of selection and filtering for quality

Yes, this is huge. They have pretty good buyers in many of their product categories. And while Costco does not always have the lowest price, they often do for many items. And, as you said, you have the benefit of usually being able to rely on them for having picked a set of products that more than "good enough" (and sometimes the best in their categories, too) so you don't have waste tons of time shopping around, reading reviews, and so forth.

I agree with most of what you've said except for low prices. There are a few things that are good deals but lots of food products actually cost more than at my local grocery store. Particularly meat.

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