Saturday, December 16, 2006

WHY I'M TRYING COSTCO AND LEAVING SAM'S CLUB, AT LEAST TEMPORARILY

I've used Sam's Club for four years now, and generally been extremely satisfied with them. In particular, I love the way I can order groceries online so they are waiting for me when I come to pick them up. It's like something out of the future as predicted in the 1970's!

Unfortunately, they are having some absolutely awful problems with their website, both the pages on the site and the registration/account system. Here is the email I sent them about why I'm reluctantly and unhappily leaving Sam's Club and trying Costco until they fix those problems:

To: mserve@samsclub.com

Subject:
WHY ARE YOU MAKING IT SO HARD FOR PEOPLE TO GIVE YOU MONEY?

I always used Sam's Club until now, but due to the severe problems (which I
reported on the phone) with your website and also with my registration, I plan
to try Costco until these problems are resolved.

I also plan to put this information -- including the details of the problems and
my decision to try Costco -- on my blog.

I hope that you can fix the problems with your website and also with my
registration.

As a reminder, these problems are:

1. Every product is listed as unavailable in Club #8140.

2. In "Shop By Category," in every category, the top three rows of
sub-categories (which are the ones that got covered by those annoying pop-up
advertisements) are not clickable, even after the pop-up advertisement finally
goes away.

3. When I got a replacement card (because my old card was lost), the website
forced me to re-register AND choose a new email address AND it no longer has
access to my click-and-pull lists.

These are the sort of problems I expect from webpages done by
high school students who have not mastered HTML.

I know that Sam's Club is not a cheap fly-by-night organization
that can't afford to hire competent people as webmasters, so
I assume there is some other reason why your webmasters are
apparently so incompetent. I'm just *really* curious what that
explanation could be.

John Fast

P.S.: When I tried to send this using the "E-mail Sam's Club" feature
on your website I got a "severe error" message, so I'm sending this by regular
email. It just keeps getting deeper and deeper, doesn't it?