PSA: Walmart+ $49 Membership Renewals Appear To Be An Error (Plus, Discount Ideas)

Quick headsup: if you go in on the $49 Walmart+ membership deal last year and you see the renewal slated to be $49, it’s likely an error in the Walmart system – it’ll renew at $98.

Background

For context, many of us did a Walmart+ membership deal last year which gave us one year of Walmart+ for $49. Strangely, for the entire year, the system has been showing our renewal (one year later) as being $49 as well.

Most of us just assumed that the initial promo had somehow coded a perpetual $49 membership rate on the Walmart+ membership.

Sadly, this does not appear to be true: Walmart sends out notice of renewal one month prior to the actual charge. In the renewal email they are noting the fee clearly as $98. This is all-the-while that the $49 is still showing in the online login. 

Reader Courtney reached out to Walmart who verified that the full $98 fee will be charged, despite what it shows in the login.

Discount Walmart+ Ideas

There are a few ways to get Walmart+ free/cheap:

  1. Best is if you have a Amex Platinum card or Business Gold card and get Walmart+ for free.
  2. They’ve been running $49/yr offers twice per year (once during the Prime Day shopping season in July and once around Thanksgiving time). These offers work for prior members too – if your membership lapses you can wait for one of these sales and then renew it for $49. (Sometimes it might even be possible to cancel and get the renewal $49 rate locked in before lapse, but might be a bit safer to let it lapse first.)
  3. Amex Offer for $49 back gets you the membership for $49. (An offer is live at time of this writing, through 1/28/26.)
  4. Here’s a Paypal Offer for 40% back in rewards.

There are no ways of stacking two deals together, as far as I’m aware. Obviously not good for us, but I still have to congratulate their marketing team at having figured out how to have multiple offerings with no overlap stacking options. (To balance that my praise here: when Walmart Plus initially launched, there were excellent stacking opportunities, and so I guess they learned their lesson.)

Our Verdict

Personally I find Walmart+ worth the $49/yr, but it’ll obviously depend on each person’s shopping habits and then the other benefits like Paramount/Peacock, Burger King, etc. 

Since my membership is renewing in January, I’ll either input my Amex card as the payment method and then I’ll get the year for just $49 after Amex rebate. I’m considering signing up soon for an AmEx Platinum card, and so I might just let it lapse entirely for now.

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