BJ's vs. Costco

Ok, so I'll be the first to admit that I was wooed from BJ's and blinded by all of the "glitz" of Costco. Our BJ's membership was up in October and a brand new Costco opened at the beginning of October in our town. So I went over to Costco to check it out. I was immediately impressed by a lot of things. For one, they have their own gas station which is 10-20 cents lower per gallon if you get gas in our town. Then, they have a lot of prepared foods that I was wowed by. For instance they make a bunch of stuff out of the leftover rotisserie chickens - pot pies, fettuccine alfredo, caesar salad etc... Then there's the huge amount of samples that they give out and their food court is pretty awesome - they have the best pizza ever ($1.99 for a huge slice!) I was a good girl - I did do a price comparison of the things I normally buy at BJ's. Most things came out even - if they had them at all. The diapers were the biggest difference. The Costco brand was significantly more than the BJ's brand. But, I justified that by finding the Target brand that worked just as well and was the same price as BJ's.

Since joining Costco in October I've seen some of the ways that they fall short in comparison to BJ's. For one, Costco's hours are horrible. On the weekdays they don't open until 11am and on the weekends (including Saturday) they're only open until 6pm. I was shocked one Saturday when we stopped by to pick up milk at 6:10 and they were closed! Another drawback is that their coupons aren't nearly as good as the coupons that we get from BJ's. Costco seems to have a lot of coupons for the higher end stuff and not so much for the everyday stuff. At BJ's I was consistently getting several coupons out of every book for stuff that I use all the time like diapers, wipes, dishwasher detergent, fabric softener etc... One thing that BJ's has that Costco doesn't is a greeting card section. Everything in that section is 50% off including gift wrap. I bought a lot of cards and wrapping paper there.

So, I decided to join BJ's again. Trevor gets a $10 discount through work so the membership price is only $35. We didn't end up paying full price for the Costco membership. Since we joined in their opening week we automatically got $10 off, then since I opened a American Express card I got another $25 off, so we only ended up paying $15 for the Costco membership. The gas prices remain to be the big draw to Costco and we'll have to reevaluate come October to see if it would make sense to keep a membership there just for the gas, but I doubt it. There's a gas station in Laurel near church that usually has lower prices and are usually about the same as the prices at the Costco in Columbia.

So, for us BJ's makes more sense. I know that won't be the same for everyone. I have a lot of friends that are completely in love with Costco. To each his own!

PS - Trevor wanted me to add that our membership at BJ's through his discount program at work is for 15 months instead of 12 so it makes it even cheaper.