Waiting for a Membership Card

Dear Sam’s Club Headquarters:

Thank you for your current $15 joining fee special. I let my membership lapse several years ago when I decided my husband and I, now empty nesters, didn’t need to buy mega-size this and that anymore.

But your gas prices coupled with such a deal on joining reeled me in. I looked forward to filling up my tank and occasionally buying a big tub of potato salad to put in a bowl and pass off as homemade at a family reunion.

Here’s the problem, though. I can’t get a membership card. I mean a hard-copy, put-in-your-wallet kind of card.

My local Sam’s Club is out of cards and not sure when more will come in, according to the lady with the super-long, fancy-painted nails at the Customer Service Desk.

“Get the Sam’s Club App,” she told me. “Then you just scan it to check out.”

Sounds easy, right? Wrong!

I’d already attempted that at home. Getting the Sam’s Club App requires remembering my email password. I’ve tried every combination of letters, numbers, and symbols I vaguely remember using for anything, and nothing works.

I even made a stab at changing my password, and that was scary. I didn’t receive any new messages on my email account for a day. By some miracle–thank you, Jesus–the problem seems to have fixed itself. I’m not going there again. No changing whatever that password is that’s locked somewhere in my computer.

I called your helpline and talked to AI and then a customer service rep who seemed to be reading from a script. Both the robot and the person told me cards are issued at the local level and if they’re temporarily unavailable, I should download the app.

Sigh. The nice service rep lady at the local Sam’s Club, the one with the flashy fingernails, gave me a temporary paper pass to use the day I was in there looking for a card. “Won’t work at the gas pump though,” she said.

I was so bummed I didn’t buy a thing.

I’m at the age where I love to give advice. Here’s some:

When you run a special for joining, be sure to have plenty of membership cards available for old folks like me who don’t want to use the rest of their days fooling with technology. I need a card to add to the ten already in my wallet.

I trust my local Sam’s Club will soon get a supply of bona fide, hard-copy cards, and I’ll be able to enjoy all the perks provided by my $15 joining fee before my annual membership expires.