Sam's club full disclosure

 In all fairness it seemed reasonable to put a full disclosure of all the problems and perceived problems and just irritations that have occurred for me at Sam's club.

Summary 

• Eye glasses decreased quality.
• Blue jeans pockets got shallow 
• Some prices have increased more than inflation
• The tire department has always been $$$$
• Cash back every month is way overblown
• checkout kiosk upgrade and donate
  

The very first thing was I bought glasses years ago which I was still wearing until a year ago. They were less expensive than the more expensive places and they seemed fantastic. I wore them for years they were great. So my prescription changed a little bit so I went and got another pair a different pair from Sam's club. When I was in the store and putting them on they seemed fine but when I got out of the parking lot I noticed that when I looked off to the sides they were blurry. When I took them back and said these don't seem as good as the last ones I had the assistant in the glasses department said yeah they've changed providers for their glasses and they're not as good anymore. At that point the assistant quickly turned around and walked away. Now I could have said excuse me excuse me but I want to return these and get my money back. But instead I went and bought Zenni glasses. It's a year and a half later and those are the glasses I'm still wearing. Apparently they're using Sam's clubs old provider and they still are great.

The next thing is blue jeans. Strangely enough the Sam's club brand blue jeans are the jeans I have on right now actually. They are great. So I've been wearing them for several years too. So I went and bought one more pair to see what they were like and they have gone cheap on some critical features. These critical features make the pants unacceptable. So I noticed sort of a pattern. Sam's is trying to hold the prices down by making stuff cheaper. Well that's not going to work Sam's because you guys are already super cheap. So you're going to have to and I know you're already doing this raising the prices some but you may have to raise the prices a little bit more but you've got man you got to keep the basic minimal quality. I mean you should be paying me about a hundred million dollars for this advice but I don't think that's going to happen who knows.

Now this next thing is one of those things where the human brain sort of jumps or leaps to these wild conclusions based on disparate factoids. But years ago at another company I noticed that they wanted to lay off a bunch of people and there was a big perturbance in the economy. So they used that perturbance in the economy as an excuse that they had to lay off people. But we were able to look at events for 6 months before the economic disaster and see that the company was making preparations to lay off people. So from that experience and and it was generally open knowledge that they were getting ready for a layoff but then they said the reason we're doing the layoff is this economic thing okay but everybody knew that was a lie. So this is just sort of like preparing you for the next you know jump in logic that I have made which you know could be completely bogus and it's not the primary reason that I went off on Sam's club, but it's just one of those things that I stuck in the list of this seems suspicious.

 After covid some of the prices have gone up about 18%. Some prices are basically stayed the same. And some of their really great value items simply are not available anymore right now. This all brought me to sort of a strange conclusion. Inflation has not been 18%. But things like coffee and hot chocolate have increased dramatically in price. Other stuff is just kind of gone up at the rate of inflation like the stuff over in the candy isles. But then some of the stuff that was really a great value like their bulk sliced sandwich meat isn't available anymore. That stuff was an incredible value because it was about half price compared to even their other sandwich meats. But it's no longer available. So here's the jumping logic it seems like they're using the covid thing and the increases in inflation to pump some of the prices up higher than inflation. Other words they're using these things as an excuse to pump up prices, but not on everything so that it's obvious. I find that irritating but inconclusive. Now of course we all get frustrated when stuff goes up, but stuff hasn't gone up for several years so it just makes sense that it's going to go up some, maybe a lot. Not a big deal just an irritant.

This is just another irritant that has been an irritant since time immemorial. Sam's club tires are not a good deal folks. They are for some reason competing with the other big box tire place that is a terrible deal. You can get the same kind of deals you're getting at Sam's club tires at any of the other premium tire places. So I guess Sam's club feels I need to do something to differentiate themselves from Walmart tires. But on most items Sam's club is even cheaper than Walmart by selling in bulk. You generally don't buy tires in bulk so I guess they don't have anything to work with. So they just compete on the same model as this other big box place that just sells stuff like pirelli Continental Michelin all the big expensive brands that start at like $150 a tire. So I never buy tires with those guys. In fact their tire department seems pretty much like a waste.

The next thing was this crazy deal they're doing where they give you Sam's cash back every month. From what I understand it's the same program they were doing where they give you cash back once a year but now they've just split it into 12 pieces. Well if you go into the store and look up on their big screens that are around the edge they are acting like that is some out-of-body experience, to get back a little money each month. Wow guys I'm not like 5 years old anymore. And the whole thing of sticking up big screen TVs way up on the walls where you can see them from miles away, that's like a bad idea that they're doing at all the sports bars and now you guys are doing it. Ugh.

And the thing that finally sealed the deal for me was the checkout kiosk. They're using it as a secret weapon to try to extract more money out of you and give you nothing. That just pushed me over the edge.