[mlinsey]

Costco is an elegant solution for the suburbs, where everyone is driving around a vehicle large enough to store giant boxes off a pallet and bring them home. Here in NYC, it's really impractical to go to a warehouse and carry a month's worth of supplies home on the subway. The flip side is that the Amazon last mile deliveries are done on electric scooters that can bring a whole trailer worth of packages to the mailroom of a big apartment building. These have some other externalities (eg around traffic laws and sidewalk space) but they are on the whole a lot more resource-efficient than everyone driving around giant cars to go to the store.

[mike50]

This has to be astoturfed or something. There is literally a Costco in Manhattan and several in suburban Queens and Staten Island. Nothing stops you from going to Costco and just getting a cab back for a once a month trip.

[mlinsey]

You got me, I'm totally paid off. Real New Yorkers love to go five miles (just for the closest one to me, in Manhattan seven avenues over and around 100 streets north), take a cab back from shopping, then haul costco-sized boxes up the stairs. I only pretended to not love that to get the sweet check from daddy Bezos (good thing he didn't notice my aside criticizing the e-bike trailers breaking traffic laws, though I guess that was subtle if you haven't been following the controversy about them here)

[mlinsey]

Also, I just want to step back and actually give Costco some props here for their brand loyalty. Inshallah, when I have a 400 Billion market cap company and someone writes a fawningblog post about how awesome I am from a social-benefit perspective and how socialist mayors should learn from me…it’ll be the skeptical comments that will be suspected as paid shills for my $2T competitor!

[gWPVhyxPHqvk]

As someone who used to live in lower Manhattan... yes there is. The smaller apartment sizes, the 45min - 1hr each way travel time, the difficulty loading and unloading out of a car that's not yours. Costco is totally a suburban, car dependent location phenomenon, while Amazon/FreshDirect/bodegas are much more convenient in a city.

[tegiddrone]

Costco is popular in Japan as well. I also think about the bike infra[0] to Ikea in Netherlands— a similar store that may be more associated with car/suburban culture.

[0]: https://youtu.be/CgvYgxo6UY8

[deeth_starr_v]

I'm in SF and have a car but I have called an Uber before to bring the stuff home when I just had a bike.

[wilg]

It's also possible its not a conspiracy and you and the other poster just have different opinions.

[missedthecue]

The idea of Amazon astroturfing an HN thread to get more retail customers.

[jMyles]

This doesn't seem at all unlikely to me. I think we sometimes forget the ease (in terms of scale and cost) of standing up a massive astroturfing campaign.

That said, I don't think this particular comment has the flavor, tone, or message I'd expect, and it does seem to be a genuine HN poster.

[razster]

And the kicker is that this could be an ai-agent doing the astroturfing. Now that even the common man can run local ai-agents that can post.

[gunsle]

You are absurdly naive if you think they’re incapable or unlikely to do such a thing. Half the comments and threads on this site are ads at this point.

[LearnYouALisp]

I mean did you see the completely unironic thread where discussors were mentioning "$50 Tees" as the lowest acceptable end of quality?

[bossyTeacher]

This sounds so American. Why not just do a home delivery?

[jhbadger]

Costco also delivers -- I also live in a city in an apartment and order bulky things I don't want to carry from Costco online.

[saveferris]

Heck, I live in the burbs and do Costco delivery all the time. I dont want to carry them either :-)

[seaal]

Don't know what I would do without Instacart.

Closest Costco is 1 hour on a bus or 22 minutes/9 miles driving. The Wegman's that delivers to me is 40 minutes/26 miles driving, all for a like 10-20% fee on every item. Honestly I'm surprised more people don't use it considering how much time they waste going to these places, and how much more they spend by walking through the stores in person. Sometimes I'll get the receipt and the price will be more than what I paid after delivery fee/tip.

I'm sad the 80$ for 100$ Instacart giftcard deal at Costco is gone. And the $2 off scheduled delivery. At least uber eats/doordash/walmart+/whole foods keeps this market competitive. Wonder how much trader joe's would make if they turned on deliveries?

[insane_dreamer]

Half the fun of shopping at TJs is the actual shopping at TJs.

[kyawzazaw]

for many, this is a fun activity

[dietr1ch]

I wish cities should design a delivery railroad. I don't want to let food delivery robots take over pedestrian spaces and having standardised package sizes and weight limits would help make things efficient.

[luisln]

Large cities are designed to get people outside, not keep them inside. A delivery raiload would take up space that could otherwise be used to transport people.

[dietr1ch]

A lot of transportation is required into cities to deliver food and supplies into supermarkets and then homes. If you improved that you'd have more space and time for fun

[layer8]

It could be an underground system, like sewerage. However, noise might be an issue.

[dsr_]

Objection: most large cities haven't been designed. They grew, usually starting because they had a significant transportation advantage (seaport, seaport + river, river junction, river + pass).

[mike50]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube_mail_in_New_Yor...