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Comment by ceejayoz | Hacker News Reader

I'd love to see a large e-commerce site that runs like Costco. Want a printer? Here's one, and it's probably top ranked by Consumer Reports. Want snow pants? Here are the available sizes and colors for the single set on offer.

Pay professionals to pick and vet reputable, high-quality vendors.

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> a large e-commerce site that runs like Costco. Want a printer? Here's one, and it's probably top ranked by Consumer Reports.

Costco is actually a very bad actor in this particular area; they generally order their stuff with a unique SKU (often the same product, but just a different SKU) specifically so that reviews of outside products don't apply to the (again, identical) Costco product.

I actually think this is due to their liberal return policies and so other retailer's dont have to price-match.

I have not found it difficult to find reviews of products Costco sells - it's typically easy enough to find via the name and physical appearance of the product. I'll search "LaserJet M281cdw", not the individual SKU.

I used to work for a food company that Costco required to make special sizes in order to get into their stores. That made it impossible to price compare across stores, because the sizing was unique. Not all products are as easy to search for as printers.

Was it "we want these specific sizes", or was it "we want these specific sizes and you can't sell those sizes anywhere else"?

The latter.

But this is Amazon - pay people? Pay real live people? What are you trying to do, bankrupt them? /s

What? They are the one of the largest employers on the planet with over 600,000 employees.

costco.com? They may not list all the food items online, but they do have printers and snow pants.

Sure, but I want a middle ground between Costco and Amazon.

More product categories than Costco. Fewer options within those categories than Amazon. I can't buy an Apple Watch screen protector at Costco; at Amazon I'm presented with 8,000 Alibaba resellers, often with identical photos of the same product.

For example:

https://www.amazon.com/Lalagen-Women-Sleeve-Peplum-Blouse/dp...

https://www.amazon.com/KaleaBoutique-Womens-Sleeve-Cutout-Pe...

Two different "brands" (there are probably dozens of other sellers with the same item, but these two show up on the same page) selling the exact same shirt, with the exact same photo. I want a site that doesn't allow this, by sourcing reputable vendors.

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