Last year, I purchased (online) a couple of Vornado portable heaters from Costco. Today, I received an e-mail from Costco telling me that the models I'd received were the subject of a recall — something about them having a tendency to burst into flames or some other technicality like that. The message told me how to get my heaters replaced or repaired at no cost to me. (If you have Vornado heaters, go to their website and check out the details.) Maybe this happens all the time but it's new to me, and I was impressed with Costco making the effort to alert its customers.
Actually, I make jokes about their vastness and the fact that you can't buy a small anything there. But the more I go to Costco or order online and the more I read about how they run their business, the more impressed I am.
Also: If you live in Los Angeles, you might want to check out Restaurant Watch, a free site that monitors the Hygiene Inspection Violations in our local restaurants. You can build a little online database of the places you dine and you'll see the results of inspections and you can even be e-mailed when the places on your list are reinspected. What I found out is that I've been laboring under a delusion. I'd assumed that the expensive, ritzy-looking eateries I frequent would be among the cleanest and that the "dives" with cheap food would be questionable. Turns out, on my list, it's the other way around. One of my favorite "slightly expensive" place to eat — a place I dined last week, in fact — just got a score of 70 to barely earn a "C." That is very low. (There's nothing lower than a "C." 69 or below, they post the number instead of a letter, and those establishments usually scurry to correct flaws and get re-evaluated. Either that or they get closed down.) On the other hand, the two Sizzlers I occasionally visit both scored in the nineties for an "A," as did many places I wouldn't have expected.
By the way: If you do sign up there, don't read the details of those inspections. Even the ones that get the top grades have something wrong back in the kitchen. You don't really want to know what's in your frankfurters, either.