[Redsmom]

Just today I called to make sure that I would not be auto-renewed for my membership at BJ’s. They asked why?

Let me begin with their entryway. An elderly community is utilizing this store and so they head directly to the entrance often with walkers and canes only to find out they have to walk another 40 steps to their left to get a shopping cart. Who designed this?!

Clipping coupons!? Who the heck does this anymore? Whether it’s paper and scissors, or being handy enough to figure out which product you’re buying requires you to click to have an electronic coupon, why are they putting me through this?

Buying gas at a discount is a wonderful thing, except for the process of just trying to get it in my tank. Who the heck designed the lineup for the cars to get into these stalls?! Who decided it was a great idea to put the word DIESEL on the far right stalls making it look like those lines are only for guess what, diesel!? Then it takes 15 attempts to get your card to scan, I guess you have to hold your tongue just right. So once you jump through all their hoops to get the machine to say yeah, you’re gonna get some gas today, you’ve got to try to get the nozzle into your gas tank and push it in really really hard, or it will not seal, and it will not pump gas. I have never seen such a process. And apparently I’m not alone because I have had to coach other people to this ridiculous process as I wait in line behind them. Oh and a good percentage of the time, if you have the audacity to ask for a printed receipt, it’s out of paper and tells you to ask the attendant. You’ve got cars lined up behind you and you’re gonna go find the poor attendant that is trying to deal with all these lanes of people who are struggling to get gas into their tank.

Oh and concerning prices, they might be better than your typical grocery store, but I stood in the spices aisle and looked up spice after spice at Sam’s Club only to find that Sam’s was cheaper on most all of them.

But the reason I called BJs today to make sure that they did not auto-renew me was because my husband made a clerical error when paying our bill a couple months ago and shorted them by, Wait For It, one cent. We have been charged a two dollar fee every month since. Doesn’t matter that we have never paid less than full payment, on time, every other month since we became members.

I have never seen a company work so hard to drive away customers. In our case they were successful.