Great battery shopping experience at Sam's Club

[spackard]

I had to changeout an in-law's battery who lives 20 miles away.
Got to Sam's Club El Monte CA at 1p, place is busy, grab shopping cart, grab a 24F battery on pallet, used Sam's Club "Scan and Go" app on my smartphone to scan it, pay, then walk out. About 1 minute total, no waiting in line behind the tire shoppers.

Drive to job and replace battery. Stop at Sam's on way home to get back core charge.
That's where it became the more conventional visit, where I'm behind two other couples who are buying tires and aren't car people, so each takes about 10 minutes to consult, decide, and write up. I wish I could have done a Scan and Go for the core charge refund

All these decades and buying a car battery is always a time suck and never changed. Somebody made it a 1 minute in-and-out (well, except for the core charge return). Thank you!

 

[CharBaby]

Nice, Don’t you just love when systems work well?

 

[jhs914]

Scan and Go is great. I just walk past all the other folks waiting in the checkout line and wonder why they don't use it also.

 

[AKhan87]

I had to changeout an in-law's battery who lives 20 miles away.
Got to Sam's Club El Monte CA at 1p, place is busy, grab shopping cart, grab a 24F battery on pallet, used Sam's Club "Scan and Go" app on my smartphone to scan it, pay, then walk out. About 1 minute total, no waiting in line behind the tire shoppers.

Drive to job and replace battery. Stop at Sam's on way home to get back core charge.
That's where it became the more conventional visit, where I'm behind two other couples who are buying tires and aren't car people, so each takes about 10 minutes to consult, decide, and write up. I wish I could have done a Scan and Go for the core charge refund

All these decades and buying a car battery is always a time suck and never changed. Somebody made it a 1 minute in-and-out (well, except for the core charge return). Thank you!

I work in user experience and design for Apps and various systems (business rules & logic), you can go into the App and suggest that even the core return should have had a similar experience, where a picture could be taken along with tagging it and then you could drop it off, Sam's club app team will review and possibly fix it.

It's all about customer suggestions and complaints, that actually get the business to change its business rules and logic.

 

[sky jumper]

you can't be Sam's scan & go it's the one reason I rarely go to Costco anymore.

However, my local Sam's has a nasty policy of swapping date stickers on their batteries (or perhaps their supplier does it??). I found this out the hard way but there's really no recourse. Just reinforces the need to test the battery before you buy it no matter how fresh the date code is.

 

[meadows]

Explain stickers swap?

 

[sky jumper]

Explain stickers swap?

after the battery sits for several months on the shelf they peel off the date code sticker and replace it with a new/current one to make the consumer think he's getting a fresh battery. ideally they'd charge the battery when they do this, but I doubt they do. so how do I know this... I bought three grp31 Marine batteries from Sams last September. I needed fresh ones with same date (they are wired in parallel in a backup power supply), and all 3 were stickered 9/22... bingo! but I didn't have my battery tester with me (I usually test batteries on the shelf before I buy them). so I took a chance, and when I got home I tested them. To my chagrin 2 of them tested low voltage (something like12.47) and one tested 12.6+. The 2 old ones also tested lower CCA. I took a closer look and yep... the 2 old ones clearly had the sticker swapped.... you could see the residual adhesive disk from the original stickers (new sticker placed slightly askew). In retrospect I should've taken them back and raised h3ll, but I wasn't in a fighting mood and decided to just use them (I was also unsure I'd be able to find 3 actual fresh ones with same date code, and I needed batteries).

 

[ammolab]

after the battery sits for several months on the shelf they peel off the date code sticker and replace it with a new/current one to make the consumer think he's getting a fresh battery. ideally they'd charge the battery when they do this, but I doubt they do. so how do I know this... I bought three grp31 Marine batteries from Sams last September. I needed fresh ones with same date (they are wired in parallel in a backup power supply), and all 3 were stickered 9/22... bingo! but I didn't have my battery tester with me (I usually test batteries on the shelf before I buy them). so I took a chance, and when I got home I tested them. To my chagrin 2 of them tested low voltage (something like12.47) and one tested 12.6+. The 2 old ones also tested lower CCA. I took a closer look and yep... the 2 old ones clearly had the sticker swapped.... you could see the residual adhesive disk from the original stickers (new sticker placed slightly askew). In retrospect I should've taken them back and raised h3ll, but I wasn't in a fighting mood and decided to just use them (I was also unsure I'd be able to find 3 actual fresh ones with same date code, and I needed batteries).

Where do they get the “new” fresh date stickers?..from batteries they install in the service bay?