Sam’s came to our area in Seattle about 20 years ago and we became members for a year. The thing we really liked about it was there were not long lines at the counter (but we enjoy that in the Louisville stores now).
But here is why we didn’t keep our membership: We noticed a lot of overlap of sorts in the products they sold, but there was a key difference: Sam’s would be a little cheaper, but have significantly lower quality. They are sort of like a box store version of Wal-Mart, which makes sense.
One example: We bought a vacuum cleaner at Costco and then went to Sams club and saw the same one for $30 less. But then we examined it closely. Though they were both the same base unit, the Costco one had the “rubbery feeling” hoses with internal wire while the Sams one was one of those cheap plastic accordion hoses you see on a shop vac. Also, the Costco one had a very robust attachments bag of goodies while the Sams one had a couple of basic attachments that, again, were cheaper (attached brush on one at costco while it’s equivalent at sams had no brush). That is just one example.
The funny part was that if you were not familiar with either store, and just walked through both, they looked almost identical. but the devil was in the details.
We have a Sams within 40 minutes of us, but found costco worth the extra trip. But, again, Amazon is eliminating the need for either for us.
Big box stores often get specially built stuff ( read cheaper) than the same product elsewhere. For example the Moen faucets at Home Depot have internal plastic parts that you don’t get at a local hardware store. Same same Behr paints.
Kirkland AA batteries at Costco have half the life of Duracells but you don’t save that much on the Kirklands. Kirklands socks fall apart faster than other brand socks.
Buyer beware.
Yes, I have noticed that the quality of the clothing is better at Costco than Sam’s but for the most part, I usually buy groceries/meat/produce at Sam’s. I figure that my husband will want to keep memberships at both places. I think my two son’s have both and they live near Louisville also.