Latest news with #hot tub
Android Authority
09-05-2025
- Android Authority
A Pixel 8 was left in a hot tub for four days, here's what happened
Adamya Sharma / Android Authority TL;DR A Pixel 8 owner lost their phone during vacation. Their device was found four days later, submerged in a hot tub. The phone continues to work without issue. There are plenty of mishaps that can occur while on travel, but one of the worst may arguably be losing your phone. A Pixel 8 owner recently found themselves in just such a situation. In what turned out to be a real-life stress test, the ending to this story is quite surprising. According to Reddit user Intrepid-Ad3513, to celebrate a holiday and four additional days off, they traveled to Poland with a group of friends. While on vacation, the group stayed at an Airbnb with various amenities, including a hot tub. The Redditor states that one night, they got so drunk that they lost their Pixel 8 on the first day of the trip. Despite searching for it, the group was unable to locate the missing device. On the fifth day, as the group headed back home, Intrepid-AD3513 was surprised by a video the Airbnb owner sent them. The video showed the owner fishing the missing Pixel 8 out of the hot tub. The Redditor mentions that the water in the hot tub reached up to 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit). After finding the phone, the Airbnb owner packaged the Pixel 8 up and sent it to Intrepid-AD3513. In a huge upset to expectations, the phone was still in working order after the user unwrapped the package and plugged the device into the charger. The user also shared an image of the handset working without issue. The Pixel 8 has an IP68 rating, meaning it can prevent ingress of dust and protect against water for long periods of time. However, this rating is for 30 minutes of water immersion, not four days. So, the fact that the phone seems perfectly intact is astonishing. One commenter jokes that the water was probably keeping the device cooler than usual, as Pixel phones are commonly known to get warm. The Redditor says that they wrote the post with their Pixel 8 and that, 'I will never buy another phone other than a Pixel.' Got a tip? Talk to us! Email our staff at Email our staff at news@ . You can stay anonymous or get credit for the info, it's your choice.
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Come for the hot dogs, stay for the gold bars: How Costco hooks shoppers
Last October Ann Watson strolled into her local Costco with a shopping list and a sense of purpose. From the $330 giant Halloween skeleton to the $1,000 backyard playset, her O'Fallon, Missouri, home was already overflowing with Costco bounty. Determined to buy just what her family needed that day, she warned her husband: 'Stick to the plan.' Then she saw the hot tub. Her willpower wobbling, the 37-year-old nurse and mother of three pushed her shopping cart forward, giving the friendly salesman a wide berth. But while waiting in a long line to check out, she couldn't help it. Her eyes wandered over to the vendor's display. Soon her feet followed. 'Oh my God, I'm in trouble,' Watson thought to herself. 'The hot tub was just so sparkly, shiny and beautiful.' Before she knew it, she was the proud new owner of a $23,000 five-seat luxury spa with a salt-water system – by far her priciest Costco splurge yet. Many of Costco's 140 million card-carrying members around the globe can relate. Social media is rife with shoppers' tales of popping in for a rotisserie chicken only to wheel out a basket piled higher than a tractor trailer. 'Yesterday I bought a $300 apple pie,' joked one member of a Costco Facebook group. Replied another: 'Every time I go to Costco.' Think of it as Costco's secret sauce. The popular warehouse chain has perfected the art of the impulse buy. It reels you in with the $1.50 hot dogs and then sells you gold bars. The retail alchemy even has a name: The 'Costco effect.' And it has helped turn Costco into the world's third-largest retailer behind Amazon and Walmart. 'People come in to spend $100 and walk out with $300,' CEO Ron Vachris said during a May 2024 earnings call.A hot tub wasn't even on Watson's wish list. She went in to buy toilet paper and paper towels. But Watson said she has no regrets, especially when she soaks her sore muscles in the bubbling hot water at the end of a night shift or when she watches her 4-, 5- and 6-year-olds splashing away on a sunny afternoon. 'We can't afford a swimming pool so a hot tub is the next best thing for them,' Watson said while munching on chocolate pistachios from – where else? – Costco. 'They love it so much.' Costco stocks far fewer items than most giant retailers but lures shoppers with low prices on high-quality goods, retail analyst Neil Saunders said. 'Costco knows how to entice shoppers. It drives traffic by offering essentials and it boosts sales by tempting people with all kinds of interesting products,' said Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail. 'However, the rule is that everything has to be great value for money. Costco sells some very expensive items but they will be cheaper than they are elsewhere. Customers know this so they pounce on the bargains.' And those impulse buys are a vital part of Costco's business. Non-food sales are about 25% of the company's total revenue. 'They are also higher margin than food,' Saunders said. 'So getting people in for food and tempting them to load their carts with other things is really important.' Costco did not respond to requests for comment. Natalia Stefanioutine, 57, who works for a software company and lives in San Jose, California, said she and her husband are compulsive Costco shoppers. 'Everything in our house from the furniture to the dishes is from Costco,' she said. All week they add items to their Costco shopping list. Once inside the warehouse, they each grab a cart and set off in different directions. While treasure-hunting up and down those well-traveled aisles, that $150 shopping expedition magically doubles, even triples. 'It's just like some kind of spell gets cast after you swipe your membership card,' Stefanioutine said. 'We sometimes forget to buy the things that were on the list.' Cristal Hernandez, 35, who lives in Stockton, California, and works for the state's Medicaid program, said she and her husband shop at Costco for practically everything: furniture, groceries, tires. While most purchases are planned, others – like a new mattress in 2020 – are picked up on a whim. 'I think it's something in the air Costco probably puts in the ventilation. We can never go for one or two things,' Hernandez said, adding that it's hard to say no to deals when the quality is high and she gets cash back rewards through her Costco credit card. All of this is by meticulous design. A gleaming flotilla of high-end goods from big-screen TVs to diamond rings greet shoppers from the moment they walk in the door. Sale items compete for attention along the periphery. The distractions don't end there. Vendors hawk deals on cell phones and patio furniture, causing minor traffic jams. 'Part of what they're trying to do is get you to consider something but also to slow you down,' said Paco Underhill, author of 'Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping.' 'The pricing of some of those things triggers the thought in your head about what great bargains there are.' The basics – milk, toilet paper, those rotisserie chickens – are relegated to the back of the store, ensuring shoppers will pass temptation after temptation – many of them new additions in the ever-changing lineup of some 4,000 warehouse items. With no store maps or signs above the aisles – and the way the merchandise seems to hopscotch around the warehouse from visit to visit – shoppers are incentivized to get their steps in and explore each row or risk missing out on something they didn't even know they craved. The endless cycle of unexpected finds only available for a limited time increases the sense of urgency and keeps shoppers coming back week after week, according to Underhill. 'They do tend to move stuff around, which I don't love, but as you're looking for the thing that used to be over there you then find this new thing which is now over there that looks delicious or interesting,' said Karen Morrison, 61, who is retired and lives in Asheville, North Carolina. Morrison's closest Costco is over an hour's drive away, so she makes sure to stock up during her monthly visits. 'I will go with a list of five to 15 things, depending, and I will leave with 10 to 30,' she said. Usually, that means a few impromptu snacks. But in 2019, Morrison and her husband decided a hot tub marked down from about $3,700 to $3,000 was too good a deal to pass up. It was a fortuitous purchase. The hot tub helped make COVID-19 lockdowns more bearable and the water stored in the tub came in handy when Hurricane Helene cut off their water supply. 'For about three weeks, our toilet flushing water came from the hot tub,' Morrison said. Costco can sell goods at wholesale prices because it makes a substantial amount of money from membership dues. The average item is marked up 11% at Costco versus 25% to 50% elsewhere. And, even in the face of inflationary pressures and the Trump administration tariffs squeezing household budgets, Costco is trying to keep a lid on prices. But the economic storm clouds may not spare Costco. Recently, shoppers have been more cautious, according to Gary Millerchip, Costco's chief financial officer. 'They are still showing that willingness to spend but they're being very choiceful where they're spending their dollars,' Millerchip said during a March earnings call. That could mean fewer big-ticket purchases and more buyer's remorse. Scott Goldstein, 41, a marketing director who lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, owes a prized possession to a Costco outing to pick up groceries in 2017. Goldstein said he and his wife had been dreaming of buying kayaks but were put off by the price tag. Then he spotted a $299 sale at Costco, less than half the price of kayaks they had looked at elsewhere. So he crammed the kayak into his SUV. 'I was so excited, I completely forgot to buy groceries,' he said. Later he went back to buy a second kayak for his wife. But other impulse buys have been harder to justify, he said. Of the $300 he spends at Costco every month, he joked that he returns a third. 'I bought a drone, and my wife was like, 'You can have it, but will you really use it?'' Goldstein said. 'That went back pretty quickly.' This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: How Costco gets you to shop 'til you drop more money Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Phone Arena
09-05-2025
- Phone Arena
Pixel 8 survives four days submerged in a hot tub cooking at 113 degrees Fahrenheit
You might say that a Pixel 8 owner living in Poland was in a bit of hot water recently. More precisely, it was his phone that was in the hot water. Celebrating the "May Holiday" at an airbnb, the Pixel 8 owner took four days off as is typical in the country for the holiday. He was so drunk that he lost his phone on the first day of the holiday. With the help of his work buddies, the unfortunate device owner searched high and low for his missing Pixel 8 but came up empty. On the fifth day, the Pixel owner was surprised to have received a video from the owner of the airbnb where the team stayed during the holiday. The video showed the airbnb's hot tub getting cleaned up with a net, and inside the net was the missing Pixel 8 . It was determined that the handset had spent four days in the hot tub soaking in hot water that reached a temperature of 45 degrees Celsius or 113 degrees Fahrenheit. Just the other day, the package containing the Pixel 8 was received by the pessimistic phone owner who didn't expect his phone to you? Nonetheless, he plugged the unit into the charger and was surprised to find that the phone worked right away. The impressed device owner says that he will never buy another phone again that is not a Pixel. The moment a Pixel 8 was turned on after spending four days submerged in a hot tub at 113 degrees Fahrenheit. | Image Credit-Reddit subscriber Intrepid-Ad3513 Interestingly, another Pixel owner responded to the original post by noting that he and his brother both own the Pixel 8, and his brother's handset just died while it was simply sitting in his pocket. The Pixel 8 carries an IP rating of 68 which means that it is impervious to dust. It can also withstand being submerged in fresh water to a depth of 1.5 meters (nearly five feet) for as long as thirty minutes. - Pixel 8 owner writing on Reddit As with any phone model, individual units are going to respond differently. For example, a former Pixel 7 owner wrote to say that his phone did not survive "a dunk in the sink." Even worse, a Pixel 9 Pro XL unit couldn't survive being put down in a steamy bathroom. When it comes to the water resistance of any smartphone, keep in mind "YMMV" (Your mileage may vary).
