Not a fan of the company on the whole myself, but thought this was neat.

BENTONVILLE, Ark., Nov. 11, 2008— Sam’s Club announced today it will host three open houses for military personnel, including retired and active service men and women and their families, nationwide, to make their holiday brighter.

Military personnel with proper identification can shop and save on their holiday meals and gifts at Sam’s Club without a membership. The company will also waive its 10 percent non-member service fee. The military open houses will be held Monday, Nov. 17, Monday, Dec. 1 and Monday, Dec. 15 in 598 Sam’s Club locations in the U.S., during regular club hours.

To kick off the event, Sam’s Club is offering a holiday greeting card photo session Nov. 17 in Annapolis, Md., Atlanta, Colorado Springs, Colo., Fayetteville, N.C. and Jacksonville, N.C. as well as in Norfolk, Va., Pearl City, Hawaii, San Antonio, San Diego and Woodbridge, Va. Military personnel and their families can get their photo taken by a professional photographer with a Nikon® DSLR camera against a “magical green screen,” depicting several holiday and patriotic themed backdrops, provided by Nikon. Participating military personnel will also receive free 30 photo greeting cards from Sam’s Club in these locations, a $10.50 value per order.

More than 3,000 Sam’s Club and Walmart associates are active military personnel and the company supports numerous military and veterans programs. “We hope this event makes the holidays easier for military families and, if we can help them enjoy a special meal or find a unique gift, our mission will be accomplished,” said Greg Johnston, executive vice president, Operations at Sam’s Club. “This event is in honor of our nation’s military families present and past, to show our gratitude for their sacrifices.”

This is from their website under press releases. Sorry it's too late for the picture thing though.

Catherine, your first instincts were correct. I too am not a fan o' Sam's but thought it would be fun to go there for this special. What a fiasco! Not one person there knew what was going on (in terms of the 'free' day) even tho I printed out the letter from THEIR PR office and website and had them read it. All the managers clustered around me at checkout and kept trying to tell me that I was 'misreading' the intent of the letter (huh?) whereas I replied that I have an ivy league education and am pretty sure I wouldn't have been able to graduate if I wasn't able to read a simple PR release. The worst thing was that my 16 y.o. son was with me and he was simply embarassed by the whole 3 ring circus that ensued. Guess that Sam's needed that whopping $9.57 they would have obtained from my 10% service fee in order to ensure that they keep their employees in the lower classes. What a farce!

I went to Sam's club twice to take advantage of this offer. The first time--in the evening with DH. Just went in, shopped, and proceeded to checkout. Was informed that we needed to "check in at the service desk first." We didn't know,the woman at the front door said nothing. The supervisor was called, she was downright impatient and rude to us. Told us we should have checked in first. We told her we didn't know. She overrided our purchases to be able to checkout, and we left, embarrassed.
The second time, I went alone in the morning, I went right over to the service desk to check in. No one knew how to check me in, the person at the desk called a manager over, after going through several people, and waiting about 20 minutes, they took my ID and told me to go ahead and shop. The manager was pleasant, but didn't know how to handle the promotion. They did have a cake that said "here's to our military families." that he invited me to have a piece of, but that seemed ironic since they had no idea how to allow us to shop. I bought a few items, and went to check out. The clerk was confused when I approached the checkout and said I was participating in the military day, but the manager appeared and told her the code to override the purchase.
I really think that if they are going to offer us a promotion, they should at least inform their staff and teach them how to handle the transactions. I was dissappointed, but hopefully they got the hang of it before more military families showed up at their store.

Mel, your reply shows that my experience was not an anomoly; this is not the first time something like this has happened to us (which is why I refuse to shop at Walmart AND dropped my Sam's club membership). I've written letters of complaint (my f-inlaw used to work at Sam's and said if you call for a manager or complain to headquarters they will cater to you 'cuz they're desparate for business). What a joke...I've NEVER received any replies and I've found for the most part that the managers are little Napoleons, drunk on their tiny bit of power. No wonder people are fighting to keep the Walton's out of their neighborhoods.

P.S. I guess I'm more p*ssed off that they're 'waving the flag' to make themselves look good and reneging on that promise. If they're so frickin' gung ho about the military, howszabout we convince them to open up a branch in Iraq?