Is the real play here to try and make account sharing more difficult? Encourage more membership purchases?
Been a shopper there for 30 years - they’re not a company that makes changes willy nilly. Even if you can get into the store without a card, you can’t buy anything without one. Surely the cost of sneaky samplers isn’t the main thrust of this.
The issue is they added self checkout, and the people at the door never have bothered checking the cards all that hard. This meant people could in theory sneak their card to friends/ family as long as they used self checkout. The people at the register were always hardcore about people using membership cards that don’t belong to them. (I know because I have tried in the past before I had a membership) This is only going to cause a line to get in the store, and deter customers. Real forward thinking by the MBAs as always. Instead of getting rid of self checkout, this is their solution. Absolutely moronic.
Costco in the UK have been scanning cards since covid. It started as a way to limit numbers in store then someone probably went and looked at the data.
Hot dogs aren’t wrapped anymore and buns got smaller. Fuck the new guy.
still a really good deal imo. changing the price is absolutely off the table but it’s still a solid price for what you get given the current state of fast food prices.
It’s 1000% a bellwether of the general state of approaching enshitification at Costco. Light justify all you need, the hot dog and the rotisserie chicken are sacred idols in that space and frankly, maintaining the exact experience and price of those, COMPLETELY in tact, should be factored in indefinitely as the basic cost of doing business for Costco - they know that. There is no way they do this unless they have decided that they want to send a clear, “fuck you, we’re the new guys and we’ll do what we want to boil you fucking frogs in the pot!”
Wait you guys got conned into paying to go shopping?!?
All those leaded petrol fumes really did a number didn’t they lol
I guess you don’t realise when someone’s profiting off you left, right and centre lol
Think about it; what does the membership fee actually cover?
Employee benefits and wages, mostly. The membership fees are the primary profit of Costco. Without that wages would go down, and prices would rise. You do know that businesses need to turn a profit to stay in business, right?
The fee might be an upfront cost, and if you don’t buy enough goods during the year it may not be worth it, but I can tell you from my experience of just my wife and I being empty nesters, we have an “Executive” membership which costs even more than a regular membership (gasp!)with the added benefit of getting a small percentage of our annual spending coming back to us as essentially a gift certificate. That gift certificate pays for our membership, so, yeah, it’s worth it.
Boo. I’d been using an expired card to get in to buy pizza.
Food court and pharmacy are areas of the store you do not need a Costco membership to get to.
