Feb 4th, 2016 | Julia Becerra

With the Flint water issue (Michigan water crisis), and the news of water rationing in some counties in California, I took  myself on a journey to search for bottled water. My intention was of buying some to keep around untouched for a period of time; just to be used in case of an emergency of some sort.

I remember that probably a good 15 years ago, I had saved a big container of water, one of those 5 gallon containers used on the water coolers.  I had kept it hidden in my garage for a long time.  One good day, I decided to check on the water, just to find the 5 gallon container empty.

 A lot of theories came out among my family members on the whereabouts of the water.  My nephew, who was surprised of the outcome, said that the water somehow will evaporate even if kept unopened in that original container.  The shelf life of the bottled water is 24 months but does that mean that the water will leave its container quietly once the 24-month period starts ticking? Without any noise or any sign or any drops that could point to its new whereabouts?

Well I never got to finally figured out what happened to it; I did learn though that bottled water goes “bad” after its shelf life time is up.

So this time I decided to buy bottled water on 16 oz. containers (bottles) instead of the 5 gallon water cooler size.  That would mean to buy water in bulk.  And what a better place to buy items in bulk than Costco?, I thought.

I went to the Costco website to see what brands and sizes of bottled water Costco carried.  I typed “bottled water” on their search prompt and to my surprise here is what Costco search engine came out with:

A watch!  Yes a Stainless Steel Man’s Watch!   I could not figure out how in earth a search engine for a company the size of Costco could return a watch in their search result right next to a package of bottled water.  I did take the time to click on the watch description to see if somehow there was a key word that could relate the item to my bottled water search. I found nothing.

Another interesting fact I noticed was the option to COMPARE the two products  was made available.  Compare them based on what? Drinkability?

Not only that, but those two items (the watch and the one pack of bottled water) were the ONLY two items listed as found by their search engine.  The search results were listed by “Best Match’!

Costco a company with a Market Cap value of 63.B and a stock price of $145.  A company that reported net sales of $8.32 billion for the month of January 2016 with an increase of 2% from 8.15 billion during the similar period last year, perhaps needs to invest a little bit of more money or resources or both in enhancing the capabilities of its website; ideally starting by having a good Quality assurance test of its search engine.  Not doing so may leave its online customers a bit thirsty like me; making them go to its competition (BJ’s) to fill up the shopping cart;  that is exactly what I had to do to be able to find the bottled water I was searching for.

The same search in the BJ’s website not only returned a series of bottled water options but also it aligned the results by brand; making it a lot of easier to make comparison about brands and their offerings.

Now with my bottled water shopping options clear, I am just waiting for the latest update on NYC water test results, to find out how much room I need to make in my garage, to store the recommended supply of emergency bottled water.