---
title: "Sam's Club Rider on Hot Search: The Veil of the Membership Model Is Lifted"
description: "Xiaogu, a long-time Sam's Club member, is considering canceling her membership after seeing photos of delivery riders' overloaded e-bikes, which sparked public outrage over safety and labor practices. She and other consumers are demanding that Sam's Club improve delivery equipment and address the outsourcing and penalty issues that shift risks onto riders."
author: "王铁梅"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2025-10-23"
categories: "Retail Formats"
language: "en"
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original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/yyoqx6e3pQTSpmStNWoVWA"
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citation: "王铁梅. “Sam's Club Rider on Hot Search: The Veil of the Membership Model Is Lifted.” New Distribution, 2025-10-23. https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/sam-s-club-rider-on-hot-search-the-veil-of-the-membership-model-is-lifte-02e6120a/"
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# Sam's Club Rider on Hot Search: The Veil of the Membership Model Is Lifted

> Xiaogu, a long-time Sam's Club member, is considering canceling her membership after seeing photos of delivery riders' overloaded e-bikes, which sparked public outrage over safety and labor practices. She and other consumers are demanding that Sam's Club improve delivery equipment and address the outsourcing and penalty issues that shift risks onto riders.

**Source** | Shixiang
Xiaogu, a long-time Sam's Club member, has for the first time considered canceling her membership.
She told the author that although Sam's Club has been embroiled in public controversies multiple times in the past, she mostly chose to be tolerant due to her understanding of the brand's quality.
"I've been shopping at Sam's Club for ten years. In the past, when product issues arose, they were mostly within controllable limits. After all, as a large retailer with a complex supply chain, occasional flaws are understandable. With a proactive after-sales attitude, I usually wouldn't dig deeper." But this delivery rider safety incident made her re-evaluate the company.
The trigger for Xiaogu's change in attitude was a widely circulated photo on social media: Sam's Club delivery riders' e-bikes were piled high with goods, and some vehicles were visibly tilting due to severe overloading. Moreover, this was not an isolated case. After the public outcry, netizens from various parts of the country posted similar images, showing Sam's Club delivery riders commonly riding two-wheeled e-bikes loaded with large items through the streets.
As the incident escalated, the topic "Sam's Club delivery riders' e-bikes loaded with large items" quickly hit the hot search, and Sam's Club's official social media comment sections were flooded with user criticism. Many consumers called on the company to equip riders with three-wheeled vehicles suitable for the goods, and bluntly stated that the high-quality service members enjoy should not be built on the basis of the company compressing delivery costs in an inhumane way.
Xiaogu also joined the call. In addition to leaving comments on official channels, she publicly posted a screenshot of an email to Walmart's U.S. headquarters on social media, demanding that the headquarters intervene, improve delivery equipment standards, and regulate the excessive financial penalties imposed on riders for uncontrollable cargo damage.
"If Sam's Club does not respond formally to this matter, I will cancel my membership," she emphasized. "I cannot in good conscience enjoy a 'high-quality service' built on suppressing riders' safety and rights."
Interestingly, this is not the first time Sam's Club has been pushed into the public opinion storm over delivery overloading and rider penalties. Faced with ongoing public scrutiny, the company has shown a lag in awareness, seemingly not realizing that this is not just a dispute over delivery models, but a test of brand trust and business ethics.
"Give riders new vehicles, or I'll cancel my membership"
As of now, in the comment section of Sam's Club's official Xiaohongshu account, many users are still demanding a substantive response to the delivery safety issue. Sam's Club's cold-shoulder response strategy seems to be continuously eroding members' patience, turning the official account's comment section into a site of corporate denunciation.
Xiaogu told the author that as a long-time Sam's Club member, she has recently started frequently using the "Jisuda" (express delivery) service due to her busy work schedule. "Before frequently using Jisuda, I didn't realize the impact of placing orders worth hundreds of yuan on the delivery process.
The first time I used the service, the rider's e-bike was loaded with goods, and he had to make three trips up and down to complete the delivery. Since then, I've started splitting large orders into multiple smaller ones, as shared by Xiaohongshu users, so that riders can take more orders per trip and earn more delivery fees."
It is understood that Sam's Club's delivery services mainly include three modes: "Jisuda" (express), "Quanchengpei" (city-wide), and "Quanqiupei" (global). Among them, "Quanchengpei" and "Quanqiupei" rely on professional logistics systems, while "Jisuda" is mainly carried out by riders using e-bikes, covering a range of about 3 to 5 kilometers around the store.
Sam's Club delivery riders are paid based on the number of orders, so the more orders, the higher the income. This indeed means that when a customer places a high-value order, the rider's workload doubles, but the delivery fee remains the same. Additionally, some stores are relatively remote, with longer round-trip distances and longer delivery times, so carrying as much cargo as possible per trip has become a necessary choice for riders to improve delivery efficiency.
Sam's Club's "Jisuda" service offers free delivery for orders over 99 yuan, so many netizens suggest that members split excess orders into multiple 99-yuan orders to help riders increase their income by increasing order volume. However, this practice also means that members need to expend extra effort and packaging costs.
It is worth examining that the threshold of free delivery for orders over 99 yuan is essentially a marketing strategy to encourage large purchases, but the system design does not match it with corresponding compliant delivery capabilities.
Although Xiaogu also adopted the splitting strategy in actual orders, she believes it is fundamentally unreasonable. "Consumers have to adjust their shopping habits to fight for reasonable treatment for riders, while Sam's Club, as the service provider, does nothing. Isn't this deliberately shifting the contradiction? Moreover, although this method can increase riders' income, it does nothing to solve the safety hazards behind overloaded driving."
It is noteworthy that Sam's Club's delivery service is not self-operated but outsourced to third-party logistics companies such as Dada Now and SF City. Under public pressure, Sam's Club once responded, "Please contact the logistics company; delivery is outsourced," while the logistics company stated that the vehicles are self-provided by the riders and have nothing to do with them.
This "passing the buck" response exposes Sam's Club's speculative mentality of wanting to have "brand rights" in service experience while choosing to "hide" in safety responsibility.
According to the Work Safety Law, production and business units have the legal responsibility to coordinate, manage, and regularly inspect the work safety of contracted units. From a business logic perspective, when consumers place orders through Sam's Club's official channels, they are purchasing an integrated "product + delivery" service. Riders wearing Sam's Club uniforms and delivering goods with Sam's Club logos represent "Sam's Club" in consumers' perception.
When delivery issues such as overloading occur, consumers naturally attribute blame to the Sam's Club brand itself; if an accident occurs, it will inevitably damage the brand reputation that Sam's Club has built over time. This practice of "enjoying service benefits while stripping away core responsibilities" clearly violates the basic principle of equal rights and responsibilities in business ethics.
The Hidden Concerns of Rapid Expansion
Sam's Club delivery rider Meng Fei told the author that he was overwhelmed on his first delivery after joining.
"Actually, Sam's Club customers mostly live in relatively upscale neighborhoods, and riders rarely can ride directly to the customer's building, but I didn't know that at the time. My first order was heavy goods like boxes of fruit, grain, and oil. I had to make multiple trips on foot to carry them to the customer's door, and in the end, I found that the fruit box was damaged. I only got 8 yuan for that order, but if the customer complained, I would have to pay 400 yuan."
According to Meng Fei, the income of front-warehouse riders mainly comes from commission per order and some bonus subsidies. Although the unit price is relatively high, the labor intensity and penalty severity are also among the highest in the industry. "Breaking an egg, or encountering overtime or complaints, can result in fines of 500 yuan or more. The high intensity of large-item delivery, coupled with the strict penalty system, leads to high turnover among Sam's Club riders, and stations are constantly recruiting."
Meng Fei can receive 25-30 orders a day, earning about 6-7 yuan per order. Only when the goods exceed 20 kilograms or the distance exceeds 6 kilometers does he get an extra 1 yuan, "but it's not an additional 1 yuan per extra kilogram/kilometer; it's a total of 1 yuan extra per order, regardless of how much it exceeds." This pricing rule effectively shifts almost all the additional costs of overweight and over-distance onto the riders.
Another former Sam's Club employee revealed that in-store positions such as food samplers are also outsourced and carry heavy sales targets, with high fines for non-compliance. Previously, Sam's Club made headlines for firing an outsourced food sampler, who was an employee of the outsourcing company Guangzhou Dasheng Marketing Co., Ltd.
As a retail brand that relies on high-quality service and member reputation for survival, Sam's Club outsources all its key service links. This means that the "Sam's Club standard service" that consumers expect is highly dependent on non-self-operated, non-standardized external labor.
Whether it's delivery riders or food samplers, these third-party employees endure high pressure to meet Sam's Club's standards, and the risks and costs during service are almost entirely transferred to the grassroots through a "management by fines" mechanism. This raises an unavoidable core issue in the retail industry: when a company outsources its service chain, can the brand reputation it has painstakingly built also be outsourced without damage?
The deeper reason behind this may lie in Sam's Club's "unstoppable" expansion pace. According to industry insiders, in the early days, Sam's Club's store opening in China, from site selection to launch, typically took 3 to 5 years of preparation. But since 2020, this cycle has been significantly compressed, with Sam's Club maintaining a pace of opening at least 5 new stores per year.
As of September this year, Sam's Club has opened new stores in Jiaxing, Hefei, Wuhan, and Zhongshan. By the end of the year, it is expected to add at least 6 more, bringing the total number of new stores this year to over 10 for the first time, setting a record for expansion since entering China. The core supporting Sam's Club's rapid expansion is its "front-warehouse" model and "asset-light operation" strategy.
The former uses stores as distribution centers and "cloud warehouses" as front-end nodes, aiming to connect the "last mile" delivery coverage—this is also the foundation of the "Jisuda" service that is currently in the spotlight; the latter replaces self-built facilities with leasing, significantly reducing upfront investment and shortening construction cycles.
"Jisuda" has made a significant contribution to Sam's Club's online revenue. According to retail industry commentary, Walmart CFO John David Rainey noted at the Q2 2024 earnings meeting that in China, "one-hour express delivery" orders increased by 28% to 59 million orders. The asset-light model reduces fixed assets on the financial statements, but the hidden dangers in human resource management and quality control may become heavier "implicit liabilities" in the future.
Currently, Sam's Club's online e-commerce sales account for 55% of total sales, with nearly 70% of e-commerce orders coming from "Jisuda." This may also mean that more and more Sam's Club delivery riders on "overloaded" e-bikes are traversing city streets.
Sam's Club has clearly mastered the methodology of "how to expand rapidly," but on the more critical issue of "how to achieve sustainable high-quality service without relying on outsourcing and shifting pressure during expansion," it has yet to deliver a satisfactory answer.
The essence of the membership business model is that consumers prepay in exchange for trustworthy quality and service. Now, while Sam's Club is rapidly opening stores, compressing costs, and optimizing financial reports, it seems to be gradually forgetting the fundamental commercial contract.
For a membership-based retail brand, the real crisis may not be that expansion is too slow, but that when it is busy chasing scale, it forgets that behind the service are real people.
(Pseudonyms are used for individuals in this article.)


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## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: 王铁梅
- Published: 2025-10-23
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/sam-s-club-rider-on-hot-search-the-veil-of-the-membership-model-is-lifte-02e6120a/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/yyoqx6e3pQTSpmStNWoVWA

## Copyright and AI use

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