Sams Club Houston

Where are the lowest gas prices in Lake Houston this week?

The average gasoline price for the Lake Houston area has continued to decrease this week, data from gasbuddy.com show.

Based on the 32 rates submitted by users of the price-tracking website gasbuddy.com, the average price of regular unleaded gasoline for the Lake Houston area was about $3.483 per gallon. The area's average was not far off the averages for Texas ($3.499) and the metropolitan area ($3.491), while it sits almost 15 cents below the national average ($3.630).

Last week's average price for the Lake Houston area was $3.510.

The cheapest rate of regular unleaded gasoline in the Lake Houston area was reported to be $3.41 per gallon, offered by the Sam's Club at 9665 FM-1960 Bypass and Whitaker Drive in Humble. The lowest price available at a non-club station was $3.44 per gallon. Four stations were listed by gasbuddy.com users to have sold gasoline at this price, including the H-E-B at 7405 E FM-1960 and Atascocita Road. The Sam's Club in Humble was also one of last week's most inexpensive stations.

Two gasoline stations in Huffman were mentioned by the price-tracking website to have sold gasoline at $3.55 per gallon, the highest rate in the area. These two stations were the Mobil at 11105 FM-1960 E. and E. Lake Houston Parkway, and the Chevron at 12241 FM-1960 E. and FM-2100.

Cheapism.com Tries to Compare Sam's & Costco | Addicted To Costco!

There’s a website called Cheapism.com that does consumer reviews geared toward getting the best value for money.  They claim that they are the only review site that focuses exclusively on low-price products, a part of the market they say is often overlooked by experts.  So, this week they published a report on their comparison between Sam’s Club and Costco .  In the end, they decided that Sam’s Club was somewhat better than Costco.  But of course, as you can all guess, I don’t agree with that.  And I don’t even necessarily agree with that based on their own data.

One of my biggest gripes with their comparison starts with what is definitely the easiest direct comparison: prices.  They compared the prices from the two stores when purchasing a variety of items for a family of four.  Overall, they came out spending less at Sam’s Club by $12.00 ($215.65 at Sam’s vs. $227.08 at Costco).  So, you’d think that was pretty cut and dried and apparently they did too because they gave the pricing win to Sam’s Club.  However, it turns out that Costco is actually cheaper by 3.6% on the actual cost when compared on a per unit basis.  So, what that says to me is that Costco is actually less.  Does it not say that to you too?  If Costco is cheaper on the per unit cost, but costs more overall, that just means that when you are buying at Costco you are getting slightly larger quantities than at Sam’s Club.  Therefore, their pricing win to Sam’s Club is a false victory.  You’ll have to buy those items (or at least some of them) more often if you shop at Sam’s Club, thus spending more over the course of a year.  That doesn’t seem like a good thing to me.

Using their own comparison table, they show that Costco is the less expensive option by 3.6%, but then in the actual text of the article and the verdict table they contradict this finding by saying that Sam’s Club is cheaper.  Huh?  No, the price is not cheaper overall at Sam’s Club, you just weren’t buying as much stuff.  For instance, in a hypothetical situation, if you buy a 10 ounce jar of peanut butter at Sam’s Club for $2.00 and the 16 ounce jar of peanut butter at Costco for $2.50, then Sam’s Club is not cheaper for peanut butter because you are paying more for that smaller quantity.  You are paying $0.20 per ounce at Sam’s instead of $0.16 per ounce at Costco.

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