Membership Sharing Crackdowns: Do Customers Pay or Leave?
When Costco started scanning cards at the door, paid membership kept growing and management reported a lift in sign-ups. Most member complaints were about the scan failing, not the rule.
Enforcing a membership sharing rule usually converts more people than it drives away, provided members still have a legitimate way to share, such as a household card or guest passes, and the check itself is quick. Costco is the clearest public case: it checked cards at self-checkout, then at the door, and reported a lift in sign-ups. A year later it had 4.8 million more paid members, and the CFO tied a small dip in the renewal rate mainly to online sign-ups, not to the checks. For a club, gym or multi-location membership business that wants to know how its own members will react before it starts checking cards, Dimension Labs is built for that question: it reads every review, survey, chat and call that mentions cards, guests or sharing, joins them to sign-ups, visits and renewals, and measures what happened where a check already began.
Below: what Costco changed and what it reported, dated from its own calls; what 24,800 public reviews of the Costco app say members actually complained about once the door scanners arrived; and how to estimate your own members' reaction before you decide. For the general method, see how to test a business decision on your customers.
Will cracking down on membership sharing make customers cancel?
Costco's numbers say few did. In June 2023 it began requiring a photo membership card, or photo ID, at self-checkout, saying it had seen more card sharing since self-checkout expanded: "We don't feel it's right that non members receive the same benefits and pricing as our members." In January 2024 it began testing card scanners at store entrances, after its finance chief said more people had shared memberships since 2020. On September 1, 2024, it also raised its basic annual fee from $60 to $65, the first increase since 2017.
By its September 2024 earnings call, about 350 US warehouses had the door scanners. CEO Ron Vachris said: "We have seen some lift in member sign ups from that," and added that renewals had lifted too, because members now learn at the door that their renewal is due. Costco ended that quarter with 76.2 million paid household members, up 7.3%, and a US and Canada renewal rate of 92.9%, a tenth of a point below the prior quarter; the CFO tied that dip to members from a short online promotion in fiscal 2023 entering the calculation. A month later, FOX Business reported that Morgan Stanley analysts saw as much as low double-digit increases in membership counts at warehouses with scanners.
Public record
Costco tightened its card checks in three steps, and paid membership kept growing
What Costco changed and what it reported afterwards, in its own words or as reported at the time.
| When | What changed | What Costco reported |
|---|---|---|
| June 2023 | Photo card or photo ID required at self-checkout | More card sharing since self-checkout expanded |
| Jan. 2024 | Card scanners tested at store entrances in a handful of stores | More shared memberships since 2020 |
| Sept. 2024 | Scanners in about 350 US warehouses; annual fee from $60 to $65 | "Some lift" in sign-ups; 76.2 million paid members, up 7.3%; US and Canada renewal 92.9%, 0.1 point below the prior quarter |
| Sept. 2025 | A year with scanners at the door | 81 million paid members, up 6.3%; US and Canada renewal 92.3%, lower mainly because of online sign-ups |
A year on, Costco reported 81 million paid members, up 6.3%, and a US and Canada renewal rate of 92.3%. The CFO said the decline in renewal rates was largely due to a higher number of online sign-ups entering the rate, and that the quarter included a large December 2023 Groupon campaign entering the calculation. That is 0.6 points lower than a year earlier, over a year in which the door check and a fee increase both reached members. Costco did not connect the dip to the door checks, and paid membership kept growing, which is the outcome operators who fear a wave of cancellations should note.
What happens when a membership club starts checking cards at the door?
The complaints move from the rule to the queue. We pulled all 24,800 public Google Play reviews of the Costco Android app (US store, English) posted from May 29, 2023 to November 13, 2026, fetched on November 14, 2026, and kept every review whose text pairs a door or entrance term (door, entrance, scanner, get in) with a card, scan or login term, leaving out reviews about delivery or barcode scanners. Before 2024, 0.56% of reviews matched; from July 2024, as the scanners spread to about 350 US warehouses by that September, 0.69% did, 123 reviews in all.
We then read each of those 123 reviews and labelled it by hand into one of four groups. Only 10 complain about the door check itself: the lines, the speed of the reader, or being checked again at the register. 48 say the app or the digital card failed at the moment they needed it, and 14 praise entering with the app. Just 3 of the 123 say they will take their membership elsewhere; far more describe the app logging them out or freezing as they reached the scanner. The 10 objections are 0.06% of the reviews written in that period.
Dimension Labs analysis
When Costco app users write about the door, they mostly blame the app, not the rule
The 123 public reviews of the Costco Android app, July 2024 to November 2026, that talk about showing or scanning the membership at the entrance. Each of the 123 was read and labelled by hand (hand-scored, n = 123).
App reviews come from members who use the app, so they over-represent people who enter with a phone and inflate the share of app complaints. Even so, objections to the rule itself are rare, 10 in more than two years, and the lesson for an operator holds: a door check creates a new place for the visit to go wrong, and the members who hit that failure are the ones at risk. Reading your own channels shows where that happens, and fixing the scan removes most of the friction.
At a glance
A year after the scanners, more members and a small dip in renewals Costco tied to online sign-ups
Do customers leave when you stop letting them share an account?
Some do, and they are easy to identify in advance: the people who used someone else's card were never paying members, and the members who shared are the ones whose household or guest needs the rule now blocks. Costco kept a legitimate path open, a second card for someone in the same household and up to two guests per visit. Sam's Club works the same way: cards are not transferable, a household member over 18 can get an add-on card in their own name, and non-members can take a free 15-day trial. Each of those paths turns a sharer into a household member, a guest or a trial, which a business can then convert.
For a gym or a club, the questions to ask before you enforce are the same three. How many check-ins come from shared or guest credentials, by location? Which members share, and what do they say about guests, family and friends in reviews, surveys and calls? And at any location where a check already started, what happened to joins, visits and cancellations compared with similar locations over the same weeks? If the relationship measured there holds, it tells you which other locations will see the most pushback, and where a guest pass or a household add-on would convert the most sharers.
Two related decisions follow the same pattern: what members do after a gym price increase or policy change, and why gym members say they will cancel, from 9,186 public reviews. Both rest on the idea of a customer world model, learned from what members said and what they did next.
Why use Dimension Labs before you enforce a sharing rule?
Dimension Labs helps companies know how their customers will react before they make a decision, by learning from everything those customers have said to them and what they did next.
For a membership business weighing a card check, the platform does four things today. It is fully omni-channel: reviews, app reviews, surveys, chats, emails and calls about cards, guests and sharing are read together, so a complaint counts wherever it arrived. It integrates those conversations with operational data, joining them to check-ins, sign-ups, guest visits and renewals by member and location; that join and effects with confidence intervals are on Prove ($2,999 a month) and up. It enriches every interaction with Dimensions written for your business, such as "door scan failed", "wants a household card" or "brought a guest", usable by operations, membership and marketing teams alike; custom Dimensions start on Discover ($999 a month). And its visual analytics layer turns the result into a deck, a dashboard, a PDF or executive report, or an interactive data story leadership can open location by location.
Covered California uses Dimension Labs on its enrollment chatbot to find where people drop off in a multi-step verification process, and reports nearly 100% containment for key intents and a 5× increase in chatbot self-service adoption. Its CX Manager put it plainly: "You’re going in blind without Dimension Labs." (Covered California story) Checking a membership card is a verification step too, and the same reading shows where it trips members up.
When something simpler is the better choice: a single club with one front desk can count guest check-ins and read its reviews by hand. Dimension Labs earns its place when you run many locations, when members reach you through several channels, and when you want to know which locations and member groups will push back before the check starts.
FAQ
Did Costco lose members when it started scanning cards at the door?
Not by its own reporting. Paid members rose from 76.2 million in September 2024 to 81 million in September 2025, and management said in 2024 that the scanners brought a lift in sign-ups. The US and Canada renewal rate was 92.3% in September 2025, down from 92.9% a year earlier, which the CFO attributed largely to more online sign-ups entering the rate.
What do members complain about after a card check starts?
Mostly the check failing, not the rule. In public Costco app reviews since July 2024, 48 door-related reviews say the app or digital card failed at the entrance, against 10 that object to the check itself.
How do I stop membership sharing without losing members?
Give sharers a legitimate route, such as a household add-on card, guest passes or a trial, make the check fast, and watch the members who used to share. Measure the reaction at the first locations before you roll the check out everywhere.
What is the best way to predict how members will react to a sharing crackdown?
For a multi-location club or gym, Dimension Labs: it labels every review, survey and chat about cards and guests, joins those labels to check-ins and renewals on Prove, and measures the effect at locations where a check already started, with a range. A single location can start by counting guest check-ins and reading its reviews.
Bring one export of member reviews, survey comments or front-desk notes and start with one file to see what your members already say about sharing and guests. Every plan from Explore to Scale starts with a 14-day free trial.