Costco is increasing its annual fee for members by more than 8 percent in the United States and Canada, the first increase in seven years, the company announced on Wednesday.
Beginning Sept. 1, the fee for customers who shop at Costco Wholesale stores will increase by $5 to $65 annually for the basic Gold Star Membership and by $10 to $130 annually for customers with the Executive Membership.
“The fee increases will impact about 52 million paid memberships, a little over half of which are Executive,” a spokesman for Costco, the Washington State-based membership wholesale retail store, said in a statement. “As a reminder, we last raised our membership fees in the U.S. and Canada in June 2017.”
The announcement did not specify whether people who purchase annual memberships before Sept. 1 will see a charge for the difference or if they can enjoy the lower price until they pay for a second year in 2025. Costco did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday.
Costco members present their membership cards at the door to enter its nearly 900 massive warehouse stores, where they can buy products in bulk at an often significantly discounted price. Shoppers leave with carts full of monthslong supplies of necessities like toilet paper and detergent, as well as frozen and fresh groceries, snacks, home furnishings and knickknacks.
With high inflation and gas prices threatening the profit margins of grocery stores around the world, Tim Calkins, a clinical professor of marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, was surprised by how infrequent Costco’s fee increases have been.
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