Recently, a woman from Seattle found that Costco was up to something new.
Author：Omar Abascal
When you went into Costco, all you had to do was show the clerk your membership card. But now, you need to take your card out, scan it through the machine, and the employee needs to confirm that the photo is yourself before letting you in.
The only advantage is that after scanning the card at the entrance, there is no need to be manually checked in the autonomous checkout channel, and you can pay yourself.
In response, Costco acknowledged in a statement that they have launched the pilot program in a “small number” of stores. Since Costco introduced self-checkout lanes, the abuse of membership card sharing has increased dramatically. Costco, however, makes most of its money from membership fees, which alone brought in $4.6 billion in its last fiscal year.
Author：Marques Thomas
Last summer, in an effort to combat loyalty card abuse, Costco required people to provide a photo ID and membership card at checkout, which led to long lines at checkout.
After the new pilot program was exposed, it also triggered the views of some ERHS students:
ERHS student Natalia Nguyan said, “It doesn’t make any sense, you have to scan your membership card when you check out. Now I have to swipe when I enter the door, doesn’t that mean I have to queue when I enter the door?”
ERHS student Jessica Ye thinks there’s nothing wrong with that.
“Costco has a system, and they need to make money from it,” Ye said. “Because some people didn’t follow the rules in the first place, Costco was forced to do this to cut its losses.”
Author：tokaijiru
What do you think about these changes at Costco?
