A cake contained a tooth with metal threads. Customer service replied with six words: “We were surprised too.”
This topic topped Weibo’s trending searches, drawing a flood of photos from longtime members amid 1.81 million views. A Shanghai resident bought a date-and-walnut cake at Sam’s Club’s Waigaoqiao store and found a metal foreign object with threads in it. Sam’s explanation absolved the company of any blame. An accident, purely an accident.
Turn back the clock twelve months, and this membership store looks like a never-ending TV series. Late last year, a Shenzhen customer who ordered mochi online found a live mouse in the box. Sam’s said the pickup point was outdoors, near shrubs and trees, and that the mouse had wandered in by chance. After the Lunar New Year, its viral freeze-dried strawberries were reported to come from the same contract manufacturer as products named in the 3·15 report for excessive pesticide residues. In April, at the Futian store in Shenzhen, a member of nearly twenty years found maggots in the udon noodles her child was eating.
In June, a Wuhan customer bought six Thai coconuts; four were spoiled, and the child got diarrhea after drinking one. In October, Mr. Wang in Shanghai opened a pack of pork ribs and was hit by a foul stench. Every “accident” looks different, but every response is breezy.
The compensation offers vary every time, too. In the udon incident, the store initially offered just 400 yuan. The member called it arrogant, and it was only after the story blew up that the offer rose to 1,000 yuan plus an apology. In the pork-rib case, staff acknowledged the bad smell and offered a 300-yuan voucher. Members who run into problems are left to negotiate without a price list. How much you get depends on whether you make a fuss.
On June 15, the State Administration for Market Regulation summoned the head of Walmart China. Its notice described food-safety problems as “frequent.” That same day, Sam’s responded that it “fully recognizes” the issues, “deeply reflects” on them, and “sincerely accepts” the criticism. Management would lead a special rectification task force and regularly report progress to regulators.
What’s curious is the trending topic itself. Several of the most widely shared claims presented as hard evidence were later checked one by one, and some didn’t hold up. The person involved in a case about a metal dental crown in a Chinese walnut cookie clarified in an early-August video that the claims were untrue, then deleted the post and apologized. The claim about rotten pork can only be traced to scattered personal complaints, with no official complaint on record. What really unsettled longtime members were the older incidents that were backed by evidence.
Sam’s has been in China for thirty years. In its first twenty years, it opened just fifteen stores; by this May, it had sixty-seven. Paid membership has topped ten million, and sales last year reached 140 billion yuan. By mid-June, complaints about Sam’s on the Black Cat Complaints platform had surpassed 10,000. In three years, the company has covered the ground it took it twenty years to travel before—but quality control hasn’t kept pace.
My view is that membership fees are prepaid trust. The standard card costs 260 yuan; the premium card, 680 yuan. What you’re buying is the promise: “You don’t need to check—we’ll make sure it’s right.” When quality control collapses, that promise becomes empty. The idea of automatic execution, discussed constantly in the on-chain world, fits perfectly here: write compensation rules into a contract, and once triggered, payment arrives automatically—no negotiation, no dependence on the customer service agent’s mood. The flip side is a warning, too: today’s popular on-chain membership credentials prove only that you paid. They don’t prove the goods are genuine. Verifiability has to extend across the quality-control chain; a membership card alone can’t carry that burden.
One uncertainty: Sam’s membership renewal rate was once as high as 92%, but I couldn’t find an official source identifying the year that figure came from. Sam’s hasn’t disclosed the current rate.
For 260 yuan or 680 yuan, what you were buying was the ability to grab things without a second thought. Now you have to turn them over and check before opening them.
$BTC $USDC $ETH
#山姆 #会员制 #食品安全 #消费观察 #Cryptocurrency
This topic topped Weibo’s trending searches, drawing a flood of photos from longtime members amid 1.81 million views. A Shanghai resident bought a date-and-walnut cake at Sam’s Club’s Waigaoqiao store and found a metal foreign object with threads in it. Sam’s explanation absolved the company of any blame. An accident, purely an accident.
Turn back the clock twelve months, and this membership store looks like a never-ending TV series. Late last year, a Shenzhen customer who ordered mochi online found a live mouse in the box. Sam’s said the pickup point was outdoors, near shrubs and trees, and that the mouse had wandered in by chance. After the Lunar New Year, its viral freeze-dried strawberries were reported to come from the same contract manufacturer as products named in the 3·15 report for excessive pesticide residues. In April, at the Futian store in Shenzhen, a member of nearly twenty years found maggots in the udon noodles her child was eating.
In June, a Wuhan customer bought six Thai coconuts; four were spoiled, and the child got diarrhea after drinking one. In October, Mr. Wang in Shanghai opened a pack of pork ribs and was hit by a foul stench. Every “accident” looks different, but every response is breezy.
The compensation offers vary every time, too. In the udon incident, the store initially offered just 400 yuan. The member called it arrogant, and it was only after the story blew up that the offer rose to 1,000 yuan plus an apology. In the pork-rib case, staff acknowledged the bad smell and offered a 300-yuan voucher. Members who run into problems are left to negotiate without a price list. How much you get depends on whether you make a fuss.
On June 15, the State Administration for Market Regulation summoned the head of Walmart China. Its notice described food-safety problems as “frequent.” That same day, Sam’s responded that it “fully recognizes” the issues, “deeply reflects” on them, and “sincerely accepts” the criticism. Management would lead a special rectification task force and regularly report progress to regulators.
What’s curious is the trending topic itself. Several of the most widely shared claims presented as hard evidence were later checked one by one, and some didn’t hold up. The person involved in a case about a metal dental crown in a Chinese walnut cookie clarified in an early-August video that the claims were untrue, then deleted the post and apologized. The claim about rotten pork can only be traced to scattered personal complaints, with no official complaint on record. What really unsettled longtime members were the older incidents that were backed by evidence.
Sam’s has been in China for thirty years. In its first twenty years, it opened just fifteen stores; by this May, it had sixty-seven. Paid membership has topped ten million, and sales last year reached 140 billion yuan. By mid-June, complaints about Sam’s on the Black Cat Complaints platform had surpassed 10,000. In three years, the company has covered the ground it took it twenty years to travel before—but quality control hasn’t kept pace.
My view is that membership fees are prepaid trust. The standard card costs 260 yuan; the premium card, 680 yuan. What you’re buying is the promise: “You don’t need to check—we’ll make sure it’s right.” When quality control collapses, that promise becomes empty. The idea of automatic execution, discussed constantly in the on-chain world, fits perfectly here: write compensation rules into a contract, and once triggered, payment arrives automatically—no negotiation, no dependence on the customer service agent’s mood. The flip side is a warning, too: today’s popular on-chain membership credentials prove only that you paid. They don’t prove the goods are genuine. Verifiability has to extend across the quality-control chain; a membership card alone can’t carry that burden.
One uncertainty: Sam’s membership renewal rate was once as high as 92%, but I couldn’t find an official source identifying the year that figure came from. Sam’s hasn’t disclosed the current rate.
For 260 yuan or 680 yuan, what you were buying was the ability to grab things without a second thought. Now you have to turn them over and check before opening them.
$BTC $USDC $ETH
#山姆 #会员制 #食品安全 #消费观察 #Cryptocurrency