I’ve had a Sam’s Club card since birth I think.  Maybe not that long but for probably 20+ years.  I’m not knocking Sam’s Club.  I wish we had one here in our town.  I’m just sharing a comical experience we’ve had with them, though it isn’t so comical if we ever want to shop at Sam’s again.

When I worked for an attorney in Lake Charles, he had a business account and the three of us who worked in his office all had Sam’s Club memberships.  Even after I left there and moved to Kentucky, John continued to renew my card.  Not long before we left Kentucky, a Sam’s Club opened up in our town and for Vince to get a card, we had to get our own membership.  Chad was 15 at the time.  That’s important to remember.  Chad is almost 25 so I guess we’ve had that card for about 10 years.

We renew the card.  We pay for the card.  The cards say I’m the primary member . . it has my name and my picture.  Big as Texas on the front, my card says “Primary Card Holder” or something like that.  Vince has his own card with his name and picture.  Chad does not have a Sam’s card.  Remember that!   He isn’t on our account and even though he works for Wal-Mart and could probably get a deal on a card, he just never has done it.

Since moving here, we’ve had to renew our card and we did that at the Abilene store.  Recently we were going to order something online and tried to set up a username and password and we couldn’t do it.  We called customer service (and I use that term very, very loosely!).  They said “Well, you cannot set up an account because Chad is the primary card holder and he’s the only one who can do it.”  Huh?  Chad doesn’t have a card.  Where did you get that?  They don’t have a clue.  But really, they can’t talk to me because I’m not the primary holder.

They wanted Chad to come in to the store . . the closest store to Chad is in Joplin, 50 miles away from his house.  We finally talked to someone who would listen.  They showed that when the business account was opened 10 years ago, it was opened by Chad . . who was 15 at the time and had no business and still doesn’t.  They show my birthday.  They said they had to talk to Chad.  I had Chad call them.  They wanted answers to all the secret questions but they were all my questions and Chad didn’t know the answer so they would no longer talk to Chad.

Now they tell me that neither Vince or Judy can shop at Sam’s and our cards are no longer valid, even though we paid for a membership which has not expired and only Chad, who doesn’t have a Sam’s card, can shop at Sam’s.

I think how this all started is that once probably 5 or 6 years ago, I ordered something from Sam’s while at the store in Joplin and had it sent to Chad.  That’s the only thing I can think of because otherwise, how would they even know his name?

I find it so funny when you can’t talk to anyone who will listen to reason.  It truly doesn’t matter to me because I don’t care if we ever shop at Sam’s again and we only had a few months left on our membership.  But, I just can’t believe they have my birthday, my address . . I even asked the guy to ask me one of the secret questions, he did and I answered correctly but no . . I am not the primary card holder.   We don’t have a Sam’s here and when we do go to Abilene, there are so many other places to go but if we do get to Sam’s, I guess we’ll just go in and start a whole new account if we want one.

Is that not the weirdest story?