Costco or Sam's Club?

[Hannelore]

Costco, isn't Sam's owned by Walmart or the other way around? I won't shop at Walmart on principal.

Indeed. The "Sam" of Sam's Club refers to Sam Walton.

[moneil]

I've never been to a Sam's Club so I can't comment on them (there is only one in all of eastern WA; there are several Costco's).  I don't trade at Wal-Mart for a variety of reasons anyways.  I'm fond of Costco for several reasons: exceptional quality, excellent value (not always cheapest), they treat their employees well (I've known people who worked at Wal-Mart because they were desperate for work, their stories aren't always pretty), they have a very liberal return policy if a particular product doesn't work out, it is the best place to fuel the rig, Costco is a Washington State company and I like supporting the locals.

I believe Costco offers great value but one does need to watch their prices.  I use to buy case lot canned vegetables there and divide the case between my pantry and my food bank offering, and the price was much better than the local supermarket.  Then I discovered that the same brands were a few cents a can (0.02 - 0.04) cheaper at the local warehouse food store (Winco) and I didn't have to buy case lots.  On the other hand, whenever there is a coupon for Colgate toothpase (4-5 tubes to the package) it has always been an exceptional buy that I'll pick up and split between my bathroom and the food bank (people forget that food banks are in need of household and personal care items also).  Deluxe mixed nuts (no peanuts) are about $1.50 a pound cheaper from the Winco bulk bin than Costco's packaged Kirkland brand.  Winco's aren't as "fancy" (more broken pieces) but they taste just as good.  Still, the Kirkland brand is cheaper than any other packaged offering that I've seen.

Being single and living alone there are a lot of things I don't buy at Costco because of the large package sizes (for some items, not all); I go to Costco once or twice a month.  I sometimes will get a 10 lb. bag of red potatoes (almost half price off Safeway and 0.10 - 0.20 cents a pound cheaper than Winco, and they are local WA potatoes from the Skagit Valley) and split it with my mother.  She wanted V8 Juice in the small (5.5 oz) cans.  They are 0.416 a can at Costco but in a 48 can case, which I split with her.  The same with some other fresh produce, which at Costco is often packaged in larger quantities than I can go through before it spoils (in season I buy almost all produce from Farmer's Markets).  A family would find great value here, I'm thinking.  I have one of those food vacume sealing machines (bought it at Costco; when the first one stoped working after 5 years they replaced it "no questions asked").  I'll buy large blocks of cheese, 4 pound packages of butter (in quarter pound cubes), large packages of frozen vegetables and fish, and then portion them, vacume seal the portions, and put them in the freezer.  The savings over the supermarket price (especially if there was a Costco coupon) are phenomenal.

As with other venues (including Wal-Mart, Amazon, Ebay) there are Costco "fanatics" who try to shop there for almost everything, rather than using it as a resource among other sometimes more appropriate sources, who constantly fill their carts up with things "not on the list" and have houses full of absurd quantities of things it will take them months to go through.

One fun thing about Costco is that they often have many food demonstrations / samplings going on, and on can basically score a  free meal while shopping (I try to avoid going on Friday's just so I don't miss out ).