Costco Announces Crackdown on Card Sharing

If you've been borrowing your pal's Costco membership card every time you need to save a few bucks on a vacuum, massive box of Cheez-Its, or a stand-up paddleboard, watch out: The warehouse club says it's time for a crackdown. Since expanding its use of self-checkout lanes, Costco says it has noticed an increased amount of card-sharing, NBC News reports. So a change is coming: Shoppers at self-checkout registers will be asked to show a membership card with a photo (or a photo ID if the membership card does not have a photo), just like those in the regular checkout lanes are asked to do.

"We don't feel it's right that non-members receive the same benefits and pricing as our members," the company says in a statement cited by USA Today. "Costco is able to keep our prices as low as possible because our membership fees help offset our operational expenses, making our membership fee and structure important to us." The majority of Costco's profit is made from memberships, which run $60 per year for the basic level or $120 per year for the "executive" membership, which has more perks. "first it was the netflix pw sharing now it's costco," reads one sample Twitter response to the news. "the world is getting worse." (More Costco stories.)