COSTCO: A DUMP GROUND OF INFERIOR QUALITY?
Juan Gonzales
especially food items, are often of lower quality than the same products
sold in other stores at a little higher price. Like Marshall and Ross,
Costco get big discounts from manufacturers who want to dump their 'lower
quality' productions to the market. Costo sells stuff in bulk at a slightly
lower price but what the consumers may not know is the quality they are
getting also at a lower quality. Costco tires are also subjected to the
same scheme. Michelin tires sold at Costco cannot be found elsewhere
because Michelin want to dump their 'less superior' lines of products to
the consumers. And Costco is the conduit in this scheme.
Walmart's Sam's Club is also practicing the same marketing scheme. Both
Costco and Sam's Club deal with large quanity and that's exactly what it
is: quantity - not quality.
With my experience with Costco foods, beverages, and fresh fruits, I would
rather spend a few more bucks to get good stuff from other retailers.
Costco and Sam's Club is not about quality. You're not really 'saving' any
money if you buy stuff in large quantity (you don't have much of a choice
in this at Costco) and having to waste a large portion due to expiration.
In short, Costco and Sam's Club could be a huge scam to be discovered.
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
casca
a price point and their profit margin. Quality, and suitability, even
desirability's by the Consumer is low on the list. After all they don't
have to offer the best when everybody else is selling the same crap as
they want to.I've paid 50.00 for a shirt at mens World that was
identical, except for the label to WalMart crap.
casca
Anonymous
Did Costco fire you because of a name/ssn mismatch?
"Juan Gonzales" <juango...@sandiego.com> wrote in message
news:Xns99C0D872...@66.150.105.47...
Bill
Juan Gonzales wrote:
>
> Some items sold at Costco have attractive prices. However, many items,
> especially food items, are often of lower quality than the same products
> sold in other stores at a little higher price. Like Marshall and Ross,
> Costco get big discounts from manufacturers who want to dump their 'lower
> quality' productions to the market. Costo sells stuff in bulk at a slightly
> lower price but what the consumers may not know is the quality they are
> getting also at a lower quality. Costco tires are also subjected to the
> same scheme. Michelin tires sold at Costco cannot be found elsewhere
> because Michelin want to dump their 'less superior' lines of products to
> the consumers. And Costco is the conduit in this scheme.
What proof do you have of this? I've never bought a food item at
Costco that was inferior to what I'd get elsewhere. And I
believe that I read recently that for tires they insist on the
better grades of each tire type (apparently they rate them after
manufacturing). And I'm pretty sure that they DO sell the same
Michelin models as elsewhere, I know they had the MXM series
that my car takes when I looked online recently.
Bill
Bill
casca wrote:
>
> Cosco, Sams, WalMart. Sears, Taret etc all demand merchandise that meets
> a price point and their profit margin. Quality, and suitability, even
> desirability's by the Consumer is low on the list.
This makes as little sense as the original post. Consumer
"desirability" has to be #1 on the list since it the customer is
not interested in buying it, why bother selling it?
Bill
SMS
> Some items sold at Costco have attractive prices. However, many items,
> especially food items, are often of lower quality than the same products
> sold in other stores at a little higher price. Like Marshall and Ross,
> Costco get big discounts from manufacturers who want to dump their 'lower
> quality' productions to the market. Costo sells stuff in bulk at a slightly
> lower price but what the consumers may not know is the quality they are
> getting also at a lower quality. Costco tires are also subjected to the
> same scheme. Michelin tires sold at Costco cannot be found elsewhere
> because Michelin want to dump their 'less superior' lines of products to
> the consumers. And Costco is the conduit in this scheme.
LOL, in reality, the Costco items are usually of much higher quality.
Compare the produce, seafood, meat, and bakery items from Costco versus
Safeway or Lucky. The Costco quality is almost always better, often far
better.
I have found the Costco bananas to be strange, in that they sometimes
never ripen, and other times they ripen very vast.
What you want to stay away from is many of the private label Kirkland
products, which are often of low quality. The cleaning products are
usually ranked way below the national brands that they also sell.
The tires they sell are the same models. I bought Michelin tires from
them and they sell the same model at Wheelworks, Sears, TireRack, etc.
Sounds like you're a disgruntled employee to make up such stupid stories.
sarge137
Wrong, wrong, wrong!!!
There is certainly some substandard junk to be had at the warehouse
stores. But, you're free to leave it on the shelf if it looks
suspect. As to brand name items, they're identical to the same things
sold in other stores in smaller quantities at higher prices.
In the grocery section their fresh meats, baked goods and prepared
foods are equal to, and in many cases superior to what you get in the
supermarkets. The fresh fruits and vegetables are also of excellent
quality, but I don't often buy those because the quantities I have to
buy create too much waste.
Regards,
Sarge
LDC
<juango...@sandiego.com> wrote:
>With my experience with Costco foods, beverages, and fresh fruits, I would
>rather spend a few more bucks to get good stuff from other retailers.
>Costco and Sam's Club is not about quality. You're not really 'saving' any
>money if you buy stuff in large quantity (you don't have much of a choice
>in this at Costco) and having to waste a large portion due to expiration.
>
>In short, Costco and Sam's Club could be a huge scam to be discovered.
Please don't feed the troll.
Charles
Steve
>I have found the Costco bananas to be strange, in that they sometimes
>never ripen, and other times they ripen very vast.
Seems like they're all either dark green and hard as a rock, or yellow
and mushy, nothing in between. But they're 30-some cents a pound at
Fred Meyer, with a wider variety of ripeness, so not much reason to
use Costco.
>What you want to stay away from is many of the private label Kirkland
>products, which are often of low quality. The cleaning products are
>usually ranked way below the national brands that they also sell.
I haven't heard that, where have you seen these rankings?
--
A great many people think they are thinking,
when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
...Edward R. Murrow
tra...@optonline.net
> Utter nonsense!
Sure is, I've been a Costco member for years. And been very satisfied
with my purchases. To rant about the food products is silly. The
food products have been excellent and super values for the money. In
fact, the produce quality at Costco here is far superior to a nearby
sole proprietorship that sells only produce. That shop is
unbelievable. They have produce sitting out wilted and going rotten
that you look at and say, wow, I would have put that on sale for 1/2
off days ago.
Now, it is true that for some items, like paper towels, soap, tuna,
etc, you can get it cheaper when it's on sale at the supermarket.
But if you just want to walk in and buy products anytime, you can't
beat the quality/price of Costco. Their eggs, cream, 1/2&1/2 are
half or less than what they are at the supermarket.
Charles
<tra...@optonline.net> wrote in message
news:1192024023.7...@v3g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
The best markets here are Publix and Costco. We use both. They each have
advantages.
The return policy at Costco is the best we have ever seen.
Glad to see that you are also pleased and when we shop at Costco we
encounter lots of others who are also happy consumers.
ska...@verizon.net
I've been shopping at Costco for almost 2 decades now in WA and
CA and I've noticed substandard quality on several name brand items
that I've repeatedly (unfortunately) purchased, within the same time
frame, in Vons and other grocery stores. Namely, Chicken of the Sea
Solid White Albacore Tuna in Spring Water (6oz.) that comes in a
multipack of 12 (or 24, I forget). Anyway, I've repeatedly been stung
in buying this multipack with the tuna mushy and discolored (gray
white and not pink white). I did some tests over time (months and
years) of buying from the local grocery store and then Costco and
found that Costco more often than not had low quality batches. I'm
defining high quality as white pink meat and solid. I ran a similar
test with duraflame logs, in which the logs from Costco tended to be
malformed (missing chunks) more often than the ones bought from the
local grocer. In a third test, I regularly buy the big box of Nature
Valley Crunch Granola Bars (the green labeled ones). I've started
noticing that the entire box (I forget how many it holds, a lot)
contains broken and malformed bars.
I realize that when buying large quantities, if there was a
production problem at the time that it's probably going to continue
through the entire batch, so it would appear to the buyer that problem
is ongoing and not just related to the batch manufactured on that
date. I've notice over the years of Costco repeatedly hitting the
below average quality mark on the brands mentioned above, when
compared to the local grocer. It's not a one time problem, but
ongoing.
The data speaks for itself and I believe that manufacturers make
decisions on the production line after the quality control department
as to who gets what production batches. Manufacturers know when a
production batch is of marginal quality and they need to decide on the
spot who gets it. The rule of manufacturing is to not allow
substandard quality to leave the floor, but in this day and age of
price wars and bargain warehouses, manufacturers are finding
acceptable avenues for shoddy production. Manufacturers might even be
cutting corners to speed up their production knowing that a certain
percentage will be below standard quality, but also knowing that if
they are able to redirect the below quality to places like Wallmart
and Costco, it's a win-win. Costco and Wallmart are getting what they
want, large quantity low manufacturing cost goods.
Heck, I still buy from Costco, but I'm quite aware of the way
things appear to be. The bottom line is, "Be a smart shopper." I
believe that Juan's statement has some truth to it. I also know that
Costco works hard to keep their quality high, but they balance that
with the demand of lower costs from the manufacturers. It's a fine
line that they're walking and they obviously fall from side to side at
times. Run your own tests.
Skate38
Bob
ska...@verizon.net says...
<snip>
> I've been shopping at Costco for almost 2 decades now in WA and
> CA and I've noticed substandard quality on several name brand items
> that I've repeatedly (unfortunately) purchased, within the same time
> frame, in Vons and other grocery stores. Namely, Chicken of the Sea
> Solid White Albacore Tuna in Spring Water (6oz.) that comes in a
> multipack of 12 (or 24, I forget). Anyway, I've repeatedly been stung
> in buying this multipack with the tuna mushy and discolored (gray
> white and not pink white). I did some tests over time (months and
> years) of buying from the local grocery store and then Costco and
> found that Costco more often than not had low quality batches. I'm
> defining high quality as white pink meat and solid. I ran a similar
My wife has noticed the same thing with the tuna. We no longer buy tuna
at Costco.
Bob
jk...@san.rr.com
Too bad that I continue to come to the realization that COSTCO is no
longer concerned with quality; they substitute it with a decent
return policy; its all in the numbers. Not only food items, but
clothing, TV's etc; Costco has become dumping ground for quantity of
IRRIGULARS.
They should rename the store/company to the 99 cent store...better yet
to The China Outlet...at least you would know what to expect because
that is the direction the company has decided to take...whatever they
can offload on others.
Their new quality policies...well...bottom line is sell what you say vs
another media driven news splash.
Interesting that recently Matel got on TV and stated and apology to
China that it was Matel's fault due to design of the lead in toys vs
China's manufacturing. Bunch of you know what, but shows you the
power that the all-mighty China has come to enjoy.
I'm an engineer, and believe me I will or would not put on the drawing
to paint the product using lead paint; I would not have a job for very
long, plus its not right.
In part its about China and mostly about quality... Consumers should not
have to pay the price for negligent importers cutting corners in
China.