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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.
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It's also possible its not a conspiracy and you and the other poster just have different opinions.
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This sounds so American. Why not just do a home delivery?
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The idea of Amazon astroturfing an HN thread to get more retail customers.
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I mean did you see the completely unironic thread where discussors were mentioning "$50 Tees" as the lowest acceptable end of quality?
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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.

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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.
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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.
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Heck, I live in the burbs and do Costco delivery all the time. I dont want to carry them either :-)
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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.
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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.
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It could be an underground system, like sewerage. However, noise might be an issue.
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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).
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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?

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for many, this is a fun activity
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Half the fun of shopping at TJs is the actual shopping at TJs.
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