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Comment by yuy910616 | Hacker News Reader

If you're worried about quality, you should really look into Costco. Their business model incentivize them to have top notch quality.

I've also worked with some of their buyers / purchasers - best in the business for sure. Very QA focus company

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>Their business model incentivize them to have top notch quality.

I worked at a competitor to Costco; I would argue this isn't quite accurate, and that this statement applies to Amazon about as much. The key distinction between Amazon and Costco is Costco sells a small (1-10 thousand) number of SKUs while Amazon wants to have as many as possible (100s of millions). Costco can vet every product, and can quickly discontinue products that have a lot of returns or complaints. Amazon scales in the opposite direction and concentrates on building tools for sellers to sell whatever will sell.

But here's the rub: by limiting the number of SKUs Costco has to appeal to the masses. You won't get the best TV, or air purifier, or cheese, or pants, etc at Costco. You will get something that has been vetted to be good enough for most people and provides a good price point. When you buy their white labeled products (Kirkland et al) you will sometimes actually get substandard products as they shift suppliers without telling their customers, but that's another topic.

If you really want the highest quality you have to either have to seek out brands that optimize for this or dig into the supply chain and understand where your products are actually coming from. For something like an air purifier I would choose Amazon over Costco any day because it allows me to choose the brand and model I want.

For most purchases, what you described is exactly what I want - something that will be solid without having too research too much. For the few things I really care about, I will research and source differently.

This used to be exactly what I used Amazon for before the listings became polluted. Since then I've switched to Costco for the reason the other commenter mentions: They pick solid products for everyday things and I can trust their incentives on some level. I have no confidence in any of the products on Amazon anymore that aren't big brands and even then I'm uneasy.

That kind of sounds great -- for most things, you just want (a) good enough, and (b) not fake. Amazon has gotten really bad at both of those.

I recently needed to replace an air filter, and there were endless complaints about fakes on amazon. I ended up having to buy it directly from a specialty manufacturer which was a pain.

I have found Kirkland brand products to usually be the highest quality available without spending crazy amounts of money. One product that comes to mind is the Kirkland olive oil. There was a report that found that many of the major brands and even high dollar Italian brands of olive oil actually had other types of oil added to them. Kirkland was one of the few, if not only major brand that was pure olive oil.

I'm always amazed at what Americans put up with in terms of food. In France, where I live, when you buy olive oil, it's olive oil: simple.

That may not entirely be true, at least as recently as a few years ago. https://www.economie.gouv.fr/dgccrf/plan-controle-2016-des-h...

As this page says, it depends quite a bit on where the oil is from. It’s easy enough (if a bit expensive) to find great oil from small producers.

That's an hilarious statement given the horse meat scandal.

As you say, it was a scandal and we did not accept it.

That's a fair point. Although I feel like if the same thing happened in the states, head would roll just for the fact a lot of people see horses as pets, not cattle. It would be akin to people learning they've been fed dog meat against their will. I would literally expect people to get murdered over that.

I'm certain that there are worse olive oils than Costco/Kirkland, but theirs isn't what I'd call good olive oil. It might be good enough for large scale commercial kitchens, who need to work on a thin margin, but it's not fit for any serious home cook, or an upscale restaurant.

It may be pure, but it is a blend of tens, if not hundreds of olive oils. And it's enough for one of the oils in the blend to be not-that-great (or outright bad) to make the whole blend less than the sum of its parts.

Just like wine, the best olive oils are mostly small-batch, made from olives from just a few orchards, preferably from just one olive cultivar that is listed on the label, and have a taste specific to that and their terroir.

In California, I found not bad oils at ~$25 for half a liter, which isn't too bad of a price, considering the exceptional oils could be double that.

I think its generally the case that people wildly overestimate how much they can actually differentiate between 'superiour, expensive' and 'pretty good, reasonably priced' quality on items like this. Once you achieve that pretty good level double blind taste tests stop showing significant differences. You're literally paying for the experience of spending more money. Nothing wrong with that, if that's your thing.

Olive oil is definitely something where you can go quite a bit higher than the cheapest brands (even the cheapest "Extra virgin" olive oil) and really taste the difference. Say, up to £10/£20 for a 1/2 litre bottle. Possibly higher, but I've not tested more expensive brands than that. Cheaper olive does have some flavour, but is mainly a carrier for other foods and tastes. Really good olive oil tastes absolutely amazing just dipping bread (or even a finger) into it.

I certainly don't buy such olive oil regularly, but I can easily tell the difference if I do.

Chef and bestselling cook book author Samin Nosrat disagrees. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/costco-olive-oil_n_5981e0abe4...

Kirkland organic olive oil has won quite a few blind taste tests and awards. Something that many small batch wines cannot even do.

Kirkland fish oil is also excellent, and reasonably priced as well.

Actually, I don't know if Kirkland actually produces anything. It's a relabel of other brands. https://moneywise.com/life/lifestyle/the-big-brands-behind-c...

That doesn't necessarily mean it's exactly the same products. Costco can request changes to turn the product into something they are happy to put their label on.

Kirkland isn't a relabel. Kirkland is a house brand, and they specify the product, and contract a company to produce it. Sometimes, the spec is "make same thing you already make, put it in Kirkland packaging". Other times, the specifications result in a different and unique product. Amazon does this with their Amazon Basics and there are probably other house brands, too.

Always buy government or state certified olive oil if you want the best. These types of oils certify the origin of olives For example, the Italian Agriculture certifies the origin of Italian olive oil with a DOP or IGP on the bottle.

Yes, I believe several of the Italian olive oils tested were certified DOP or IGP - the ones that turned out to have canola oil mixed in. I think the Italian mafia was involved.

The Kirkland olive oil that has won many blind tests is specifically Kirkland "Organic" Olive Oil. It has to have organic on the label. Try their avocado oil. Much higher smoke point and cheaper. I don't use olive oil in cooking much anymore, mostly just for bread and in salad dressing.

In my mind there is a"spend without much thought" threshold. That is about 10:1 for Costco: Amazon.

> You won't get the best TV, or air purifier, or cheese, or pants, etc at Costco.

And I'd argue it's the exact opposite. If you want a mid-range product and not top of the line you'll never find it at Costco. High end stuff they're great at, and that's pretty much always what I want. But you want a $15 pair of shoes because you're painting in them and know they'll get ruined? Look elsewhere.

A 15$ shoe is not mid-range though. That's absolute bottom of the barrel. And looking at the Costco website their shoes can be had for 18$ and the most expensive shoe i can see is 35$, which i would still classify as cheap and not even mid-range.

The reason Costco is able to do this is because of the "buyer" team of Costco. There have been many articles talked about Costco's secret recipe. I believe Sam's club did the same to some extent though not as good as Costco's team.

Amazon operated on a complete different model, more leaning towards ebay than Costco. Comparing Amazon to Costco is like orange and apple. Amazon's model let the 3rd party seller resolve the market and quality, well, didn't quite work out when met with Chinese sellers who're from a society of bottom line driven all the way business philosophy.

Unfortunately, Walmart has followed Amazon foot steps but fortunately not quite enough to run into Amazon's problem.

I genuinely don’t think I’ve ever had a negative experience with Costco. Or any negative experience I might’ve had they fixed so quickly that I’ve forgotten it, either way.

And their employee actually gets treated pretty well - when I go to Sam's club, I always feel bad; maybe I'm projecting.

I’ve shopped at both (based on location I lived), and the Costco employees always seemed in a better mood than the Sam’s employees. I figured it had to do with how the company, and maybe the customers, treated them.

>and maybe the customers

I don't think people give this enough credit. It's one thing to be shit on by your employer, but having the customers treating like shit as well is just as bad. Getting the double whammy of getting it from both sides must be brutal.

> It's one thing to be shit on by your employer, but having the customers treating like shit as well is just as bad.

Spent a few years in retail, and can tell you: if management treats employees badly, customers will treat employees badly, which in turn causes another cycle of management treating employees badly. It's a cycle that is caused when management and employees aren't focused on the one thing that really matters in a retail exchange: having happy customers.

I was going to say: I think there’s a mixture of customer selection and signaling from management going on here. I think Costco (and all stores really), subtly signal how their employees are to be treated, which creates a norm and a social expectation that most people implicitly follow.

I think the fact that Costco employees don’t have to wear a full uniform is part of it. They have a clear identification that they’re an employee, as is necessary, but they also don’t have to wear a uniform that strips them of as much individuality as possible.

At the local costco, many employees have stuck around for over a decade (you can tell because of the badge).

At an Amazon warehouse, they go through employees like a runny nose goes through tissues.

Just don't buy an extended warranty for an expensive piece of electronics. The SquareTrade warranty I bought with a Dell XPS 15 was absolute trash. Sent it in three times due to a swollen battery. Replacements only held 5 minutes of charge. After the third time getting a fake battery I just gave up.

SquareTrade is a third party company so I suspect they cut corners. It's arguably worth buying a manufacturer warranty for certain devices, particularly business class laptops.

No doubt. Costco has no business offering these as the poor quality is associated with their own brand.

Right, but I think this speaks poorly of Costco, too. If, as claimed, Costco does their homework on QA and vetting brands and products, it's a huge hole in their reputation that they did such a bad job vetting the extended warranty vendors they allow to sell in their store.

> The SquareTrade warranty I bought with a Dell XPS 15 was absolute trash.

I'm dealing with a trash warranty from Assurion on an electronic drum kit I bought at Guitar Center for my son. Not a good experience - I have to ship drums back to some warehouse to get a gift card? Um... that's $50 worth of packaging right there. Oh, and then I have to buy the warranty again if I want the replacement covered. Yes, I should have read the fine print in detail... but maybe the retailer shouldn't offer horrible experiences like this for a premium.

Costco also sells weird trash products, but a least you can normally tell by the description:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Costco/comments/ojhrts/costco_is_de...

I've found Costco to offer products that have premium "specs" at affordable prices, but I'm often underwhelmed by the product itself.

I've never had to deal with it but I've also heard they have great customer service too so if that's something that you're worried you'll miss out on by switching, then don't be.

I had a funny one - I was returning a bunch of unopened wine and I told the guy, there is one that was opened, indicating that when you see the open one please give it back to me.

He was kinda rude and I was like wtf. And then he proceeds to return all of the wine, I asked him "dude wheres the open bottle?" And he said "I thought you were returning that one too?"

Turns out in some states - they allow you to return opened bottle of wine. We laughed it off

How much do you have to return? That could be the most rewarding bottle recycling plan I've heard of. Screw your 10 cents, I want a refill.

haha, by his attitude, I'm assuming that people have abuse this policy before. I'm thinking if you return the empty bottle, they'll still take it, albeit a bit gruntled.

Mine was about 2/3 gone. Definitely beyond of the point of "hm..this wine taste funny"

Over the years I've had so many little moments like this with Costco, whether it is a friendly exchange with a gas station attendee, a door person stopping me and pointing out that I was over-charged, a service rep who couldn't find an off-brand pedialyte I purchased so they gave me a pedialyte and told me "eh yeah just don't tell anyone", it really started to make sense to me why when you mention Costco - some people would light up and say "man I LOVE Costco", when it's just a store.

Completely agree, there are a few business cases that completely exemplify this. Don’t let the shallow information internet comments tell you otherwise. Anyways, Costco model is simple … but large quantities of high quality products and work as a trusted distributor for business traders. They don’t always get it right, but they loose money doing so. If a product doesn’t sell and gets devalued, they will hold thousands across the world.

I'm just not a huge fan of the subscription model. The last time I had a subscription I only ended up making a single purchase during my entire year.

Prime is a subscription model, and is twice as much as Costco's.

It's also optional though, Costco membership isn't.

Why would you shop at Amazon as a non-prime member? If you're going to be sold knock-offs and returns sold as new products, you might as well get some videos and movies to watch for the hastle.

Edit: you can also find a friend with a Costco membership and go with them. It's not like it's that exclusive.

And a long with that, why would you buy from Amazon without Prime, and deal with slow, non-free shipping, when many competitors (Target, Walmart, etc.) have upped their game and offer 2-day shipping with a relatively low total purchase amount, with no membership fee needed?

This is actually a good point. Amazon is only able to sell that cheap crap because their return policy is so good. Without prime you literally might as well just order the stuff straight from china.

And to be fair, Costco worked a lot better for me when it was in the general direction of where I work.

I wouldn't recommend a costco subscription unless you grocery shop there.

one thing I dislike about costco - costco-specific models make finding reviews hard.

They take the pain out of returns though.

I can vouch for this. I have returned items a year later. Without original packaging. Without a receipt. They gave me my money back no questions asked and they were even friendly about it.

Why would you need to return something (opened, used, without packaging) a year later?

It fails to do what it lived up to do.

I had an IOT plug fail (plastic melt) and returned it, and they took it back, no questions asked.

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