Anyone have any experience with this? I'm a builder and thus have some access to contractor prices and am pretty good at scrounging up deals on the internet but my brother in law just joined (also a builder) to buy for his own personal house he's building and with my own new one coming up I wonder if I should give it a try. Seems to me it's just another informercial foolish people desparate to save money fall for. But does anyone here have any actual experiences? Do you really save enough money to offset the huge membership cost?

I'm a member Johnny.

You will offset your initial cost between both of you or if one of you spends a tremendous amount of money on items they carry. Also be prepared for wait times of anywhere from 3 - 8 weeks on most things you will buy.

You really have to buy a lot to cover the cost.

My friend became a member while she was building a 5000+ square foot house. She said she saved 15k to 20k on cabinets. I think the membership fee was $4k or so. She still had to find and pay for someone to install them. Might have penciled out around 25% off retail, plus the cost of installation.

Not much help, is it?

If you already have access to contractor prices, it might not save you anything.

Employment opportunities?

Thanks for all the responses....they pretty much reflect most of the other feedback I've gotten...buying a LOT of stuff or buying a Kitchen through them is really the best way to take advantage of them. The kitchen thing makes me nervous though...we have a hard enough time delivering kitchens for our customers using custom kitchen places (always late, an occasional broken cabinet, missing mouldings or trim pieces) and the only thing that saves the day is a kitchen place that steps up and takes resonsibility to fix the problem. If I order a kitchen and receive a broken cabinet and have to wait another 4-6 weeks for a replacement that's gonna kill me.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback.

-J