I don’t like this new thing they implemented at Costco - at least, the stores in the Denver area.
The new thing: scan card, it shows your picture from the membership card and indicates if your membership is active.
This is to ensure people gaining entry to the store have an active membership and/or are not borrowing someone’s membership card.
I declined and worked something out with the manager. We are thinking of canceling our membership.
Is this in place at all Costco stores nationwide? How are you handling it?
I read they are rolling it out to all Costcos. I'm due for renewal but will not be renewing because the only way it works is if they use facial recognition to match the picture on the card to the person. In the good old days, the person at the door would look at the card and picture.
The Costco scan of your card shows your picture on the card to the door clerk who verifies the picture looks like the person on the card. It is NOT sophisticated at all. It is not a facial scan, it because they have found many people paying with credit and debit cards of people not matching the card presented. The Costco business model is of a private membership with dues and theft protection (one checked door in, one checked door out.). These non-members using other peoples cards have been a problem and Costco does NOT like dealing wtih problems publicly at the check out. Anyone reading more than that into it has a wandering mind...
Came here to say this. When you shop at Costco you get rewards back. We get on average 850-$1000 a year on our account. People who lend out their cards stack the deck and get way more in rewards without shopping there. Costco is protecting their brand and want to prevent non members who pay zero dollars in dues to shop and add cash back rewards to the account holder.
What does that even mean? If they sold that product, a member would get cash back regardless, so there's no money savings to Costco with this. THEY'RE STILL SELLING THE PRODUCT FOR PROFIT. I've gone with friends before to buy collectively, it just saves the trip. Now, I haven't been a member in years, but my mother insists on maintaining her membership. What happens if she's sick but needs stuff from there? I can't get her prescription now?
They do delivery I think at this Costco, but when we tried it awhile back, the credit card number was stolen and used fraudulently before an hour had passed.
The door people used to look at the picture on our cards without the use of technology. The last decade or so they stopped looking at our cards. If you flashed a card they just nodded. Why do they now need technology to compare our happy smiling faces to the ones on the cards?
They were unable to process compare the tiny picture fast enough to matter with multiple people entering. Look, quit them if you want. Costco is a very liberal, but fair company and they want to protect their business model and non members using other peoples cards is a problem for them and is unfair to the people who actually pay their dues. Plus the people letting others use their cards profited from the increased rebates the other peoples use of their card generated. Again, unfair to the paying members.
As a paying member since the early 1990's I agree that it is unfair for people to lend out their cards but they have to be using facial recognition in order to speed up the process. Especially given we don't take new pictures for our cards at renewal time. I think that's the point the OP is making. If you're fine with facial recognition being used then that's your choice.
Sounds like the paying members did just fine! If you get stuck with buying stuff for the office, as I once did, by all means, collect the rewards! And the coke codes, I got some decent giftable swag back then. The rebates would have been paid out REGARDLESS of who used the cards.
I handed my card to them to confirm my identity rather than scan- this was not sufficient.
I’m super not into the scan.