I removed any STR() in any indexes from the two tables involved ( and checked the code pages - they were the same) and I still have the same issue. Tamar suggested Rushmore levels and I got:

Level for A : none
level for B : none
joining A & B (cartesian product)

Not sure what to do now because when I join A(member table) to the contact table it seems to work fine. However, when I join A to B (comments table) the slow down happens. I even removed all indexes from B except the basic index on member number and no change.

Any suggestions?

Thanks again
Kelly