Costco membership scanners coming to clubs in sharing crackdown
axios.com
axios.com
Interestingly they had the same items except they had jalapenos instead of relish
You can only order food at the self-pay kiosk that doesn’t check your barcode and there is generally no enforcement of memberships at the food court as no one has ever asked for my card.
Restricting the food court would generally require checking id cards at the exit and/or demanding a membership card at the self-pay kiosk or upon pickup of food. Nothing described in the article actually does this, so I’m not sure this is what’s being described.
Apparently there are some Costco’s on the West Coast or Southwest where the food courts are outside and don’t require a membership check, so my analysis might not apply to the different setups.
As is the checkout person will essentially never deny someone based on a mismatch because it causes quite a logistic issue to deny someone who has a big cart of goods, most of which are sitting on the belt, then to suddenly refuse their service.
it's just a barcode reader. Nothing more.
And nope on your 2nd point - I've seen cashiers deny a purchase due to some membership problem, the cashier puts everything back in the cart
"it's just a barcode reader. Nothing more."
This is hugely presumptive and profoundly technically ignorant (are you actually in this industry?). When someone scans in the image can be displayed anywhere else. As infecto mentioned, a tablet for instance. Again, it's a risk for people using someone else's membership. Otherwise it's completely useless because we know they scan at checkout.
"And nope on your 2nd point"
Pointing out an exception is pretty ridiculous logic. I've never, in my life, seen someone's card denied at checkout. Ever. I guarantee I have been near hundreds of people using other people's cards. That it happened somewhere at sometime is pretty lazy contrarian nonsense. Further, I would wager that what you saw was actually someone who thought they could use a visa or didn't realize their membership expired -- where the cashier is left with zero options -- and not someone using someone else's membership.
It was a busy saturday. 10th Street San Francisco
Someone (mananger?) came over and checked the card and then the manager and the cashier recarted everything on the conveyor. The manager took the cart.
Said another way, they break even or have slight margin on selling products, this includes the executive membership annual check.
The mark-up on products tends to be so big that it looks impossible to buy at Costco prices without costing them money.
Since the products that are being sold in Costco are close to wholesale they also carry a margin, just not as high. So even if 100% of the memberships were used, they would still make a nice tidy profit. Purely because the products literally pay for themselves. This is primarily due to how Costco has low costs to having little need for additional warehouses outside of their public warehouses. Their cost of goods sold vs revenue is about 87%. So about 13% profit. That is just the goods themselves.
So the more I think about this, there has to be some sort of cost to memberships. Especially for people arriving, because if there was no cost, why implement these scanners? While memberships help with profit, there is a huge cost to implementing something that could scare your customers away.
I also think the whole "makes a majority of their money" needs further explanation. The highest percentage of their profit is from the membership fees. The highest percentage of revenue is from the goods sold is my bet.
Circling back to the insight that costco is designed to make profit from its memberships and not its merchandise, though they are certainly making margin off selling items as well. That's why they go through phases of cracking down on memberships.
Or something like a hand-bag / purse / backpack?
> Costco reserves the right to inspect any container, backpack, briefcase, or other bag, upon entering or leaving the warehouse and to refuse entry to anyone at our discretion.
Which makes me wonder, can I refuse a Walmart receipt check? I never agreed to their inspection.
Doesn’t work at gas station though.
Additionally, anyone with a gift card is entitled to shop there without a membership.
I don’t see how the burden on cashiers is changed.
> "It helps speed up the process," Richard Galanti, Costco's former chief financial officer, told Axios in January.
> "When you go through checkout, particularly self-checkout, there's not someone there having to review the card again," Galanti said.
As far as I can tell, it's not going to prevent reviews at checkout (unless there are scanners there), not to mention the card still needs to be used to tie the purchases to the member... it's not like they are going to be like Amazon Go. Even if it does speed up checkout, it will just move the slowdown from checkout to store entry, so it doesn't seem like anything is actually being saved.
There definitely is savings but I think you are reading it the wrong way. The ultimate goal here is to prevent people from using someone else's card. Costco makes all their money from the annual membership dues. I suspect they have tested this and there is savings with doing proper checks at store entry and saving the hassle of carts full of goods when denied at checkout. Ultimately driving more memberships.
Absolutely has a strong chance of savings.
Maybe that's because of the stricter eligibility rules.
https://customercare.costco.co.uk/app/answers/detail/a_id/85...
Apparently, by targeting the Wholesale market - plus a limited range of general consumers, they are able to class their stores as wholesale warehouses, which can be opened in locations where a general retail store wouldn't be permitted. That makes purchasing or leasing land for the store much cheaper.
Looks like you need to be employed in certain sectors, or have your company hook you up. Sounds almost like a credit union.
But they stopped doing that ~10 years ago or so.
Their stores are so damn frustrating and I hate spending whole afternoons shopping there.
Having said that, this will probably piss me off. Why can’t the cashier do this and deny at the time of purchase.
Costco’s customer friendliness is why I shop there, and this is not customer friendly. Seems like a bean counter had a brilliant idea. /s
As for the customer friendliness of the proposed scanner, in my mind it depends on how quick and easy it is. If it's not too much of a slowdown relative to the current "flash my card at the staff person", then I don't think I'd mind it. However, if it starts causing lines to get in, yeah that's going to be a problem.
Additionally, I agree with the other commenter that, just from the details as provided, I don't even see how the proposal will solve the problem. A scanner will check that the card is a valid card, but unless it's paired with some kind of facial recognition, I'm not sure how it will prevent card sharing.
Of course your picture is on your card but I think we would all agree that a picture on a 3x2 credit card that can be B&W is inferior to the color picture displayed on an ipad. Having an associate look at a picture on the back of a credit card is slow.
It depends on store location but they have always had varying degrees of checking that you are the owner of the card. Costco makes a majority of their profit from Membership fees, hence the desire to enforce the long standing rule.
I ended up in a shouting match with the tire center manager who claimed I was in a "car accident", and thus my road hazard warranty was void after I took a nail on the freeway. I was not in a car accident, I would have known -- I was there.
30 minutes of my life I'll never get back grappling with him and the store manager -- for them to try saving a $90 pro-rata credit. My tire business has been pulled out of costco after like 25 years. It's getting tough to justify the rest of the membership. It's always a shopping hellscape there, and everyone is rude/grumpy.
No, your kids do not need to constantly be in the Costco.