They also offer some degree of curation, so your dollar goes further by volume/weight/unit on average, but also in less quantitative ways quite often. I trust what I buy from Costco, but I’ve completely stopped buying from Amazon (many years ago now) because apart from the poor value prop, I simply don’t like the quality or reliability of what’s offered.

Amazon largely being a dumb marketplace, a faster-shipping AliExpress/Temu, really makes them easy to drop if you find that shipping speed isn’t super important for those types of products. You can just go straight to the source and cut Amazon out entirely.

It’s not only a faster Temu for e-junk. It can also deliver your paper wipes and bananas in the same order.

Could you just place 3 different orders to 3 different vendors? Sure.

Could you just drive to the grocery for 2 bananas and then to Costco for the big discounted paper wipes? Sure.

But likely you will not. Which is why Amazon pulls a Trillion in revenue.

When some of your products are fraudulent all your products are fraudulent. Amazon has zero trust from me these days. It’s the equivalent of an overpriced garage sale.

You do you, I and most others don't have issues, hence their revenue.

I've tried Amazon for groceries on this line of thinking. Verdict: it's terrible. Their groceries are priced uncompetitively and after a few times having some stranger pick my produce (and doing an offensively bad job of it) I don't do that anymore.

So since I'm 100% definitely going to the grocery store for produce, at minimum, this whole concept fails. May as well pick up the ziploc bags and paper towels as well while I'm there.

The competitive advantage is being able to order in the same shipment as all your other stuff, and it should also obviate the need to go to the store too, saving time and likely money by not being enticed to buy other things while you're there. Even if I didn't use Amazon I'd still use grocery delivery such as what Costco offers for example.

I don't think my point got through: purchasing vegetables and fruits, essential staple foods, involves some amount of discernment. It's not like grabbing a USB cable out of the box of identical USB cables.

Passing this task off to someone who's essentially the lowest bidder and doesn't care about picking acceptable quality goods, in my repeated experience, does not work. They pick unusable goods, wasting my time and money.

I've had to be taught this lesson an embarrassing number of times before it really sunk in, but it finally did. I'll not that this applies getting delivery from local stores. Grocery pickers are simply not aligned with your interests.

Maybe you are looking for only exceptional produce because I've never had an issue, in looks or quality. There are even sellers who purposefully sell you produce that does not look good but otherwise tastes fine, such as Misfits Market.

In Q1 2026, AWS was 60% (roughly) of Amazon’s operating income.

I’m not so sure their retail piece is the part that’s making them big money.

Thats the story they tell investors because investors love a growing tech company. But scratch the surface a bit and you see retail shoveling most of it's profit into purchasing AWS.

Do you have anything to indicate this? A source or any analysis?

If they were targeting 60% margins in grocery they would be bankrupt.

Retail has famously razor thin margins.

But their cash flow came in handy when AWS needed 300B in cash for gpus. Nobody could lend them that amount.

I’m familiar with the margins in retail (my parents ran a retail store their entire lives).

My point wasn’t that they don’t do a lot of volume; it’s that their retail business is not what’s driving their profit, and I don’t believe it’s growing.

I wouldn’t be surprised (though have not looked) if DoorDash (with DashMart), Uber Eats (which does more than just food), and Instacart have eaten significantly into Amazon’s revenue by solving the “get it to me” problem even faster.

In the US last mile is super hard because of the super high wages. The only way to work around it is volume per delivery person.

If you do 2 deliveries per hour (like Uber Eats / door dash), you pay essentially $5/order (assuming a super low us wage of $10/hour and no equipment cost/ gas).

So no in the US, Amazon is not threatened by such delivery services.

Now if you go to China, the equation flips. Which is why Amazon failed completely.

I see this said a lot, but Amazon products I buy actually work (even if the quality of obviously laughable - it actually performs the function and won't break any time soon to justify a 100x price increase for something more...artisan.

The only order I did for temu, everything arrived completely DOA

This is an important point for me. I am too lazy (too much executive dysfunction) to research products. I trust Costco to do the product research and offer us a good quality/price match up.

Return policy is also pain free. You can pretty much return anything you don't like. Just take it back.

They used to have amazingly generous return policy for electronics. Since some people abused it, bit tighter now.

I don't find Costco necessarily cheaper than anywhere else. For example, if I'm careful and search flyers, local supermarkets will often have better prices.

For me, Costco has good prices, an excellent return policy, and reliably excellent quality. I don't need 15 choices of peanut butter, just a few (smooth and chunky, natural and sugary) good ones.

I also appreciate that Costco employees are always busy, but they seem positive and friendly. Most Costcos I go to, I look for the board that highlights long-term employees. The one nearest me has 8-10 people who have been there for 30 years or longer.

As the article said, Costco pays higher hourly wages than most other people. They also provide extended health benefits (in Canada, so basic health is already covered), paid sick days, paid vacation days (one woman I talked to had been working there for 25 years and had six weeks of annual vacation!), and more.