Understanding Warehouse Club Clearance

I am not a big warehouse club shopper mostly because of the distance I must travel to get to them.  I have found the best way to get a deal at any of the three major warehouse clubs is to go there regularly.

I discovered this method of shopping when I was working in Best Buy during college.  One of my roomates worked at BJ's warehouse club and had scored free memberships for a few of us.  The closest BJ's was right next to the Best Buy where I worked most of my shifts as a cell phone representative.  So on my lunch break I would head over to BJ's and scan the aisles.  I noticed that there were a reasonable number of clearance items sitting on the shelves.  After a few questions to my roomate I learned that they just keep marking down clearance items every week or two until they are all gone.  I saw this as a great opportunity to buy some things that I had been wanting but was unwilling to pay full price.  So I would come in at least once a week and see how many of that item were left and what the percentage mark down had come to. When the deal was good enough and there were only one or two items left I would buy.   I ended up getting a $200 printer for $35, a $250 monitor for $79, and a bunch of other smaller purchases at 60% off or more.  As you can see there are deals to be had by shopping in these clubs but not really great ones for groceries (they can get some rowdy deals on meats but I find that to be it).  The key, of course, is persistance and regualr visits to the store.

If you are interested in using this method to shop here is what you should know about each warehouse clubs clearance:

BJ's -Very clear labeling with the word clearance in a black box on the tag.  Markdowns typically happen every two weeks.

Costco -Not clearly marked but look for any item that ends with 97¢.  Also any item marked with an asterisk (*) is an item that will not be reordered and is subject to clearance pricing

Sam's - Not always clearly marked but look for any price that ends with a 1 (ex.$21.51).  They will mark some of their clearance items with a "C".