The days of mooching off a friend’s Costco membership will soon be over.
In an effort to implement stricter store policies, Costco Wholesale announced it will be placing membership scanners at the entrance door to each of its locations.
Before entering the warehouse, shoppers will be required to scan the barcode on their physical membership card or the QR code on their digital Costco ID. Simply flashing a membership to an attendant will no longer be enough.
Plans to show a fraudulent membership card that does not include the owner’s photo have also been quashed by Costco, which has now instructed its employees to ask for photo ID.
In any case, Costco attendants will “encourage you to stop by the membership counter to have a photo taken to have on your card,” the company described.
Guests to Costco must be accompanied by a valid membership holder — and yes, that also applies to Costco’s food court and famous $1.50 hot dogs.
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The wholesaler said the scanners are expected to be implemented “in the coming months.”
Costco Wholesale Canada has yet to respond to Global News’ request for comment, but social media pages dedicated to Canadian Costco fans report that the scanners have already made their way into a handful of stores in Ontario, B.C. and Alberta.
The company first began testing membership scanners in January.
Costco’s finance chief Richard Galanti told CBS at the time that scanning memberships at the door would eliminate the need to do so at cash registers and self-checkouts.
“It speeds up the process at entry and speeds up the process at the checkout,” Galanti said.
He said more Costco shoppers have been sharing membership cards since 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the Costco 2023 Annual Report, the wholesaler made a whopping US$4.6 billion (C$6.3 billion) in revenue from membership fees paid by their 128 million cardholders last year.
Costco members, and any new signees, will face higher fees next month when the company increases its annual membership cost by $5 to $65. The bump applies to Canadians holding an individual, business or business add-on membership.
Those with executive memberships will see a $10 increase to $130 and will also have their maximum annual rewards increased.
The annual fee was last raised in June 2017.
Costco is not the only company trying to shed moochers.
Several of the biggest entertainment streamers, including Netflix and Disney+, have implemented limits to password sharing, locking some non-paying watchers out of the platforms.
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