Bad news if you’re mooching off of someone else’s Costco membership: The retail giant is cracking down.
When you enter Costco, you need to show your membership card to an employee to shop. Costco membership cards are non-transferable, but the company allows members to give a second household card to one other person in their home. Anyone with a card can bring up to two guests to the club during each visit, the company stipulates.
But Costco has noticed that non-members have been sneaking in with membership cards that don’t belong to them — particularly since Costco expanded self-checkout.
Costco recently started asking for shoppers’ membership cards along with a photo ID at the self-checkout registers, the same policy as regular checkout lanes, to crack down. “We don’t feel it’s right that non-members receive the same benefits and pricing as our members,” Costco said in announcing the change.
And now, Costco is testing out a system that requires members to scan their membership cards at the store entrance — instead of just flashing the card to employees. Shoppers have spotted the new scanners at a store in Washington State and posted photos on Reddit.
Because it’s part of what allows them to keep costs down. If you’re only going to go once or twice a year, they’re losing money on you. They need a way to compensate for unprofitable shoppers, and a bit of sunk cost to keep the regulars coming back.
Still, I tallied up my last Costco trip with the equivalent of the same items at our regular grocery store and came up about $35 cheaper, that’s already a decent chunk towards my membership cost and doesn’t include cash back. In capitalism, that’s about as close to a win-win as you can get.