Here's Why Customers Often Return Sam's Club Meat (Or Avoid It Altogether)

Although grocers do their best to offer good quality products for reasonable prices, not every store hits the high benchmark that 21st-century American customers demand — and Sam's Club's meat department may be one of them. The store itself is the last place you'd expect to hear this kind of news from, but Sam's Club customers are taking to the internet to see if their troubles with the meat department are a common occurrence and they're leaving a trail of clues in the process.

As far as we can tell from the chatter online, many Sam's Club customers are having trouble with Sam's Club meat going bad before the expiration date. One post on Facebook asked if anyone else was facing this exact problem, saying, "This is the second time I've bought this exact [meat] in the last month and both packages soured before the sell by date." Two times in one month is enough to put most people off, but the post continued, "I called the meat department today and they said they are having issues with it spoiling in store and are having to toss it as well."

A similar post was made over on Reddit, which said, "Twice in the last week we have bought meat at Sam's club, gone home to cook it, and it was rancid when we opened the package. The first time was cod fish. Today it was a vacuum sealed pack of two grass fed ribeye steaks." Vacuum-packed meat smells funky sometimes, so it could be that, but it's hard to say for sure.

Given these complaints, you might expect Sam's Club to have made our list of the grocery store meat departments shoppers complain about the most, but that's not the case. Maybe it should have been, but a few anecdotal comments online are hardly the smoking gun that's going to take down Sam's Club for good. How bad is this problem, really?

It's hard to say, honestly. The fact that the first thread mentioned calling the store and getting the response that the meat department was struggling with a shipment of meat that was spoiling seems bad at face value. However, there are many reasons why that might happen, and not all of them point to a longstanding issue affecting Sam's Club stores as a whole. It could have just been a bad shipment that came in, and this customer just happened to be shopping at that time. Then again, it could actually signify poor backend logistics, which increase the risk that the meat you buy at Sam's Club will be rotten. You can always return it, but that's an extra trip and a hassle.

If you shop at Sam's Club and you're nervous about the meat, just make sure to check for signs that it's fresh before you purchase it and keep food safety tips in mind when grocery shopping, just like you would anywhere else. This does seem to be an issue at Sam's Club, so if you start to notice your store regularly has problems in the meat department, just know that you aren't alone in that.