warehouse clubs

[willidan]

Is anyone a member of a warehouse club? Anybody have any pro or con stories to tell? I'm thinking of joining Sams, but haven't quite gotten to the point of justifying the $50 a year membership fee.

Edited 11/14: I'm convinced. I'll take some of my Christmas money and invest in a membership. Thanks!

Comments

[pearwaldorf]

In general, I find that you do make your membership back on things like nonperishable goods: toilet paper, garbage bags, detergent, etc. This is, of course, presuming you have space to keep large amounts of goods. If you have freezer space it's a great place to buy gigantic packs of meat or veg (I especially like the 5lb bags of green beans).

Specifically re: Sam's Club, I can't speak to that because I've always been a Costco member. It's my understanding from Interweb murmurings that compared to Sam's Costco has much higher quality stuff and has better return policies (like on everything except TVs and tech if you don't like it you can just bring it back). I read in an article somewhere they only have a 15% markup on goods, so if their costs go down, their prices go down too.

I also like that they treat their workers really really well. At the Costco I used to go to in Seattle, the employees all had nametags indicating how long they'd been with the company. Everybody I saw had been with them for at least five or ten years, which is kind of unheard of in a grocery store situation. So it must say something that nobody wants to leave.

[willidan]

No costco near here, but on the whole, it sounds like it'd be worth the cost of membership. And someone above suggested sharing a membership. I'm sure I know someone interested in sharing.