I’m talking about the shoppers’ club store, of course. I have a coupon to enroll for $25, and I’m wondering if it’s for me. Is the store like CostCo? How is the selection? Do I have to buy in bulk? We’re a family of four, so we don’t need mass quantities. Are the prices and quality good?
Well, that wasn’t what I was expecting.
If you don’t like the selection in CostCo, I can give you the names of certain bars in Bangkok.
Or have I misread the OP?
You should go downtown. They’re only $20 there.
Okay and now a serious answer.
When I had a BJ’s membership (or when I had a Sam’s Club membership) the biggest thing I used it for was buying gas. So check to see if your local clubs have gas pumps and compare what the prices are to other area gas stations.
As for other goods, I’d call it a wash. Outside of buying gas, I probably saved about the amount my membership cost me.
You get decent prices on books, DVD’s, and CD’s if you buy those. But the selection is generally limited to recent big releases. Plus you can generally do just as well on Amazon. You also get good prices if you’re buying appliances or tires.
As a family, you might do better than I did. I’m a single guy so I didn’t buy things like a family pack of meat.
Nitpick: It’s Costco, not CostCo.
Welcome to Costco, I love you. You can get better BJs at Starbucks.
Costco store brand (Kirkland) is generally very good. But otherwise, they’re all fine, and $25 is a small amount to try it out.
BJ’s offers more selection than Costco but they are a similar concept store.
I’m a single guy, rarely do I make food purchases at wholesale clubs but there are enough other things they carry to make membership worthwhile.
I maintain a Costco membership, I’ve had BJ’s memberships in the past. I don’t see much value in maintaining multiple memberships. Costco has won me over due to quality of products and customer service. I’d have a BJ’s membership if Costco wasn’t an option.
Well, if 25 bucks is the going rate for getting screwed, so be it.
Best way to find out isn’t to ask other people. Instead, visit your local store, and “shop” without buying. You don’t have to pay to do that. You’ll find out much more quickly what they offer and at what price that way.
I used to have a membership at Costco, and then later when a BJ’s was opened much more conveniently, I switched to them. I found that for me, it wasn’t worth the fees, because the electronics they sold were always the same secretly lesser versions of things that the non-fee stores trundle out on Black Friday, only at a higher price. Last years foreign version without the best features, for a ten percent savings, wasn’t appealing.
But it depends on what you need to buy. When I had babies to diaper and I could get the diapers in bulk, I saved a bit, but even then, they didn’t sell the exact brand I wanted.
A yearly, regular membership for an existing member is about $50 so a discounted $25 membership is a good deal. You would be hard pressed not to save that much if you shopped there every couple of weeks for a year. I let my existing membership lapse but I am thinking about renewing it again. I bought things like work khaki pants, olive oil in bulk, large bags of chicken breasts and even a nice Android tablet that was a display model. The gas is a good deal too. I saved a whole lot more than $50 a year doing that. You can save more than $25 in a single trip if you make some larger purposes.
For a family of 5, it was a good deal. It is essentially the same as Costco - the only reason we had a BJs membership instead of Costco was that it was a lot closer.
Yes, everything is in bulk, so to really save money you still need to go to a local supermarket on occasion, unless you you’re actually going to use up 6 jumbo cans of pumpkin in a single baking season. But for things you either use up quickly or can keep around a long time, you can save a lot of money.
I don’t have a BJ’s membership (the apostrophe makes all the difference) but I shop at Costco, and I think they are very similar. You save on groceries, although as mentioned you have to buy larger quantities. But they also carry a lot of other merchandise. Most of their clothes are cheaper quality but occasionally they have great bargains. I have bought two 100% silk aloha shirts (branded as Jamaica Jaxx) for about $20 comparable to what Tommy Bahama has the nerve to sell for over $100. Drugstore items like toothpaste are a deal. I get office and school supplies there; I save my annual membership just on buying printer ink. In states where they can sell beer & wine (Va.), there are good deals. I saved more than twice my annual membership buying a set of tires (compared to buying the same tires from Tirerack and having a local shop install them). Some grocery chains have started to fight back, and the cases of water, chicken breasts, salmon, and ribs are no longer the huge bargains they used to be. But they carry very high quality cuts of beef and lamb that you can’t even get at some stores and the prices are very good (lamb loin chops for half of Whole Foods charges).
In the first couple of years of my Costco membership I kept records of everything I bought and compared it as if I bought the same quantities at my local Giant Food. The savings were pretty big. Costco sells at very, very low margins and makes nearly all its revenue from membership fees.
I thought this was about…something entirely different.
I’ve been a member since 2005.* BJ’s is great for popular brand name items that you can buy in bulk. It’s great for paper goods and cleaning products, for example. Canned/bottled drinks are also a good deal.
There are some interesting items that you don’t see elsewhere, but you do have to go to a supermarket if you want something other than the base varieties of something (e.g,. low cal, low salt, less popular varieties).
Ours has a nice selection of cheeses and a pretty good one of meats. Their cold cuts are also good. Baked items are a mixed bag – their croissants are better than supermarket ones (and they freeze well) – but some of their items don’t look appealing. And sometimes they have some oddball item you can’t get in supermarkets.
Also, members get coupons – substantial ones – that cut the prices further.
*I also designed the maps they used to show store locations in the 80s.
I thought it would be related to this from today’s news:
I, too, was expecting it to be about this.
I don’t have a membership, so I can’t really say. One thing I did want to mention was, I don’t know how old your kids are. When my daughter was in diapers ages ago, my FIL would always get me diapers and pull-ups at BJs for fantastic prices. I know they can be expensive, so if you have little ones you may want to do a price comparison.
This is my experience. Both BJ’s and Costco are nearby here and once you’re inside you can forget which one you’re in.
They’re both useless for my family situation, but they’re equally useless. Certainly for other family situations they’d be useful. Albeit equally useful.
Thanks everyone for the responses.
I see that my thread title got modded. :eek: