Comments on: Sam’s Club and a Bad Battery Deal

By: JohannaB

JohannaB — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 14:21:35 +0000

My favorite of all time was Jello for 12 cents per package or two for 25 cents. It’s been a few years since I ran across that particular price scheme but it still makes me laugh and wonder how many people bought two packages for that quarter.

By: nickel

nickel — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 13:07:08 +0000

From my point of view, 48 batteries is 48 batteries and 32 batteries is 32 batteries. While this make make sense to some people uder certain circumstances, paying more for less is a bad deal for me no matter how they’re packaged. For the relatively few Sam’s Club customers who buy them to re-sell (the vast majority of members are just plain old families), it might turn out to be an okay deal, but for everyone else it’s not.

By: anne berry

anne berry — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 08:26:06 +0000

The 48 pack of batteries at sam’s club is packed in individual 4 packs for people to resell in thier business. The 32 pack is not and is therefore cheaper. Make sure in the future you are actually comparing apples to apples and not apples to kumquats.

By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 01:12:16 +0000

The same is true for Dog Food at Target, the 22.something pound bag is cheaper per pound than the 40 pound bag.

By: Andy

Andy — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 03:01:55 +0000

At grocery stores one can of Red Bull is $1.99, which a 4-pack is $7.99. So it’s 3 cents more expensive to buy the 4-pack.

I don’t drink Red Bull, but I found it amusing.

By: jim

jim — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 01:08:01 +0000

Trust no one.

I found out the same thing at a Chevy’s nearby, the 32 oz. draft beer was more expensive, per oz, than the 16. So not only were you paying more for the larger beer, you were paying more just to let the second 16 oz. get warm!

By: FMF

FMF — Thu, 29 Dec 2005 19:28:43 +0000

I should have calculated it out. I guess I just trusted you.

By: BP

BP — Thu, 29 Dec 2005 14:39:26 +0000

Noticed the same thing at Costco for baby formula. The strangest thing is they actually listed the price per oz. on the display and you could clearly see that the bigger container was (slightly) more costly on a per oz. basis.

By: nickel

nickel — Thu, 29 Dec 2005 14:33:37 +0000

My bad. I just found and checked my receipt. The 32 pack was $10.66 (not $11.23) in the store… I knew I did the math right in the store, but then couldn’t find my receipt when I sat down to write the story. Thus, I looked up the price on their website, but didn’t redo the math. It looks like they’ve priced things appropriately online (with the 32 pack being more costly). Weird. I edited the post to fix it.

By: j

Thu, 29 Dec 2005 13:49:25 +0000

I’m confused. The 32 pack at $11.23 is 35.09 cents per battery. The 48 pack at $16.66 is 34.71 cents per battery. Isn’t that cheaper?

By: FMF

FMF — Thu, 29 Dec 2005 13:07:21 +0000

Yep. It used to be that “bigger” meant “less expensive per unit”, but the companies figured out that consumers thought that way, so many started pricing larger units higher. I’ve noticed it on several products.