Costco wants you to think twice before you shop with someone else’s membership card.
The wholesale giant will begin to check membership cards at self-checkout registers and, in some cases, ask to check photo IDs in an effort to end membership sharing.
“As we already ask for the membership card at checkout, we are now asking to see their membership card with their photo at our self-service checkout registers,” Costco said in a statement shared with SFGATE. “If their membership card does not have a photo, then we ask for a photo ID.”
The recent crackdown on membership sharing comes after Costco expanded self-checkout registers across select stores. A handful of Costco stores in the Bay Area have self-checkout counters, including locations in Concord, Richmond, Vallejo and Sunnyvale, among others.
Costco said that lately, more nonmember shoppers have appeared to use Costco membership cards that belong to other individuals — particularly at self-checkout registers. Costco stressed the importance of membership fees because they offset the cost of doing business and thus help keep prices low for customers.
“We don’t feel it’s right that non members receive the same benefits and pricing as our members,” Costco said.
Membership sharing has long been a problem for large corporations. In May, Netflix announced it was ending account sharing between households and stressed that streaming accounts were to be used by one household only.