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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.

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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.

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