Comment by inferiorhuman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by inferiorhuman | Hacker News Reader

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> the ones available are guaranteed to be fairly good quality and at an affordable price

I bought into the hype and got a Costco membership a few years back. One of the first things I went looking for was whole bean coffee (Peet's xmas roast). The local Costco had a bunch of coffee from Starbucks and Peets (meh quality to start) but only the painfully dark roasts and all of it was ground. Pre-ground coffee in bulk has a pretty limited use case (and relatively short shelf life).

Fast forward to last week and I went looking for a new fridge at Costco dot com. They prominently featured LG (ugh) and Samsung refrigerators. While some LG models seem to review pretty well I've never seen anyone say anything positive about Samsung, their service, or the serviceability of their appliances. I'm in the middle of dealing with a defective LG fridge and that's about the nicest thing I can say about LG's warranty and customer support.

Costco may have a permissive return policy and decent customer support but I would never blindly buy something without doing a bit of research just because it's at Costco. Especially with a big ticket item like a fridge I'd rather use my Amex anyhow.

> I've never seen anyone say anything positive about Samsung, their service, or the serviceability of their appliances

I have all Samsung appliances at my home. They are the best appliances I have ever owned. I can't speak to their service because I have never had a single issue with any of them.

I've heard enough stories from friends and family about samsung fridges and washing machines dying shortly after their warranty and Samsung wanting crazy money to fix them. Also a friend who bought their top of the line "frame" TV and returned it within a week because the TV had stutter when watching live TV and there is an 800-pages long forum thread about it on their forums, with Samsung basically replying "we're aware of this issue and we aren't planning on fixing it".

On the other hand I have their phone(S21) and I'm very happy with it.

> I have all Samsung appliances at my home. They are the best appliances I have ever owned.

Congrats. I think you're in a minority. Our washing machine 'fabric softener' compartment started rusting less than a year after getting it. We had a long time and many back and forths trying to get them to acknowledge the problem. Their 'fix' initially was "don't use that". Finally - months later - they agreed to have someone come fix it, but it was going to be hundreds of dollars because we were "out of warranty". "But... we reported this to you with months left in the warranty period". "Well, tough luck" was basically the response.

My wife kept persisting - this dragged on for months - and eventually got some service rep to 'cover' this and a service guy came out. "Oh this is common - see this a lot with Samsungs in the last few years".

Relatedly, we had a dryer guy come out to fix the Samsung dryer. He indicated Samsung and LG were among the worst consumer-level brands for home appliances, based on their workload as service techs. But Samsung and LG have gigantic foot prints in the major retail outlets, so continue to get sold in to many households.

My experience is the big ticket items are all fine products at normal prices, but there's no reason to pick Costco for them. I suspect it's where they make a lot of their profit, considering their groceries are famously low margin. I buy groceries and gas exclusively there.

I strongly suspect it's the extra services that third parties sell through them. Like the vacation packages, air conditioning installation, etc. We almost got a Puronics filter through them, but stopped short when we found out that it was $9000 at Costco, but $6000 through an independent installer.

Costco’s profit is all membership fees. Everything else is (in aggregate) sold at cost. This is public information in their 10-K filings.

For the hotel and travel stuff, they get a commission like other travel agents/channels.

Here in UK the #1 reason to get them from Costco is that they give 5 years warranty on all electronics and home appliances, way beyond what the manufacturer offers. I'd happily buy a new TV or a fridge from them for that reason alone.

The reason to pick Costco for appliances is because you get a 4 year warranty if you use Costco credit card (in the US).

Almost all of their profit is from membership fees. https://investor.costco.com/node/24021/html

Sales almost equal merchandise cost plus selling expenses. Membership fees add $984 million on top of that.

Costco.com is where to look for coffee and other foodstuffs. You may have to buy the coffee in 5 lb bags, but the selection is superior and the quality is generally very good.

Looks about the same to me. They have Peets Nespresso cups, K-cups, bags of ground coffee, and whole beans (conveniently filed under "ground coffee"). K-Cups are offered in hazelnut mocha (yikes), house, french roast, maj. dickason, and decaf maj. dickason. The ground beans are available in Colombian, Big Bang, Decaf Maj. Dickason (+ decaf), and Organic Alameda Morning.

Whole bean? Just Major Dicakson in various quantities.

You could make an argument that the disposable cups will have a decent shelf life. 10 ounce bags of grounds won't though – that's kind of the antithesis of quality right there.

Your store(s) must have better coffee selections than the ones I frequent. Ruta Maya, Mayorga, some Kirkland varieties and others are much better than what I can get locally and only available to me online.

> I've never seen anyone say anything positive about Samsung, their service, or the serviceability of their appliances.

I've never had problems with Samsung appliances. Can't say the same for (supposedly high-quality) Bauknecht or Miele.

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