Costco cracking down on card sharing

[ClownLoach]

I'm pretty sure I made mention of this before. My location removed the LED bucket lights and replaced them with the light panels (I've seen a lot of stores over the years replace their lighting with this style). If anything, they made my location unnecessarily brighter. Our skylights weren't painted over either so not sure what is with that, unless they are trying to block heat from the sun? The lights still dim here and there based on sunlight, but it doesn't seem to be adjusted quite right. About 20 minutes before the store closes, all the lights dim to an uncomfortable level (obviously on purpose to signal people we close soon, but it's a bit strange).

They were testing some light panels with LED tubes similar to Sam's that dim and such, but they've moved on to a rectangular panel with four exposed LED strips glued to it and no diffuser at all. They install this and paint over all but maybe a dozen skylights at the same time. No dimming that I've seen because the natural light is almost all removed. The store feels much darker, yet if you look up at this fixture it is blinding. I'm calling this project the Costco Lighting and Skylight Disaster.

I went to my local Costco today (for the first time in about a month and a half) and I noticed that in that time they did implement the "skylight disaster" but didn't touch the lighting (still LED bucket bulbs). All of the skylights over the center portion of the store were painted over and a handful of skylights over the steel risers on the sides of the store as well as the electronics area near the entrance were not painted over. The store was extra dark and somewhat eerie due to the lack of natural light.

Back to the original topic, It didn't appear that when I went that my Costco was enforcing the "membership crackdown," Nobody was checking memberships or cards prior to the self checkout area and the 2 associates in that self checkout area were simply scanning members baskets with handheld scanners (like has been commonplace ever since the self checkouts were implemented). The door checks (both coming and going) were absolutely 100% routine business as normal.

When you think about it, they should paint over the skylights in electronics to reduce glare on TVs. So of course they would leave those alone. Must have hired the Safeway lighting people to design the worst lighting and skylight situation possible. The few Safeway/Albertsons stores that I'm aware of with skylights also painted over or even drywalled over them.

[ClownLoach]

This seems to have gone quiet in July. The aggressive checks have stopped at all of the Costco locations I visited in OC, Riverside and San Diego counties over the last three weeks.

If I had to guess, they saw more sales loss than expected which of course wouldn't go over well with Wall Street. But it seems this story is dead aside from the promised pending ban on trying to use a Costco gift card as a membership bypass. I believe that policy was to go into effect on August 1st.

[SamSpade]

Still very much a thing in this area (Oregon).

[ClownLoach]

Still very much a thing in this area (Oregon).

That makes sense as they're in the Northwest division which is at corporate. But it seems to have stopped in both the Los Angeles division and the San Diego division which stretches across the Southwest plus Colorado. If I had to guess they were probably threatened with lawsuits for discrimination in the enforcement of the program (or at least recognized the risk in California).

[storewanderer]

Still very much a thing in this area (Oregon).

That makes sense as they're in the Northwest division which is at corporate. But it seems to have stopped in both the Los Angeles division and the San Diego division which stretches across the Southwest plus Colorado. If I had to guess they were probably threatened with lawsuits for discrimination in the enforcement of the program (or at least recognized the risk in California).

The rotten behavior of their employees, even if they stopped, will not be forgotten.

I see they have a Groupon going for Costco membership. Free $40 gift card if you join or something. I was considering joining again (on or after August 1) as mine lapsed more than six months ago, so I'd qualify for the promotion, but I don't think I want to deal with or support Costco at this point. I'll just stick with Sam's.

[rwsandiego]

This seems to have gone quiet in July. The aggressive checks have stopped at all of the Costco locations I visited in OC, Riverside and San Diego counties over the last three weeks.

If I had to guess, they saw more sales loss than expected which of course wouldn't go over well with Wall Street. But it seems this story is dead aside from the promised pending ban on trying to use a Costco gift card as a membership bypass. I believe that policy was to go into effect on August 1st.

The card check was much less aggressive yesterday than it was the last time I went to Costco (maybe a month ago). My last experience was very, very bad. They employee was rude, demanding to see my card and then chit-chatting with someone while I was showing it to him. He then got nasty with me when I placed my own bag on the register platform. The register said I had placed an unscanned item (my bag) and he proceeded to argue with me that it was an unscanned item. After I complained to a manager, I saw him getting a rather animated talking to.

[ClownLoach]

Still very much a thing in this area (Oregon).

That makes sense as they're in the Northwest division which is at corporate. But it seems to have stopped in both the Los Angeles division and the San Diego division which stretches across the Southwest plus Colorado. If I had to guess they were probably threatened with lawsuits for discrimination in the enforcement of the program (or at least recognized the risk in California).

The rotten behavior of their employees, even if they stopped, will not be forgotten.

I see they have a Groupon going for Costco membership. Free $40 gift card if you join or something. I was considering joining again (on or after August 1) as mine lapsed more than six months ago, so I'd qualify for the promotion, but I don't think I want to deal with or support Costco at this point. I'll just stick with Sam's.

The aggressive membership discounting not only indicates they must have upset quite a few people with this ploy, but also they didn't really gain anything from it if they're now having to practically give away membership to offset customer losses.

I'm betting that this was really a very isolated problem that they could easily use data mining to narrow down to a very few stores then take the appropriate action (maybe take out self checkout in the problematic stores, plus address any member with one of the "no photo" cards or unreadable photo by setting up the "new store" type stations with multiple cameras and card printers so they can get new cards in less than a minute on their way out the door. And the unwritten policy that they were allowing customers with gift cards to shop even though they weren't members made no sense, was inconsistently enforced, and could have been completely eliminated without all the other problems.

There is a great myth that Costco takes great care of their employees and also they pay exceptionally well. The fact is that Costco has amongst the lowest payroll of all retailers. Yes a employee might be getting paid 50% more than industry average but they're expected to deliver about 300% more productivity. They have disciplinary action policies that are draconian in nature and could really hurt some employees like parents - it is my understanding from employing former Costco employees or the spouses of active ones that many issues are handled with unpaid suspensions up to a week, such as missed items found at the door audit. These disciplinary actions and expectations are what creates the compliance culture in which employees somehow feel that they are required to mistreat the customer - for example the employee assigned to checking cards at Self Checkout who took it upon themselves to racially profile my wife. They probably were genuinely afraid for their job. And if people are so afraid for their jobs because of the way discipline is handled then is it really such a great place to work?