Challenge
Do membership restrictions at Costco & Sam’s Club diminish freedom?
Shopping at Costco is a normal part of life for thousands of Alaskans. A Costco employee guards the entrance, checking for membership cards, which cost $45 yearly.
Is it legal to limit access to stores to American citizens? Is it fair? Does this practice diminish our freedom? Does it degrade our democracy?
It is a great benefit to consumers to be able to buy cheap goods at warehouse stores. We heap up our shopping carts, and even the carts are oversized. This is an era of prosperity - at least for the people at the North and West end of the global wealth spectrum.
The benefits are tangible, but the deficits are intangible. It’s the subtle factors that are hard to define—but this does not mean that they are any less important. The hum of the halogen lights in the great box sets off our greed-neurons. What is the inner effect, the impact of hyper-consumerism on our own minds and souls?
No one at the Anchorage Costco and Sam’s Club stores was authorized to respond to our questions. But we were able to speak with Sam’s Club spokesperson Jolanda Stewart.
Humanity News: There is a guard or greeter who checks for membership cards at the entrance of your stores. Does this mean that it is necessary to pay to simply enter your stores?
Jolanda Stewart: You should never be denied entrance to check out the selection. But you should enter with the understanding that as a non-member you’re being allowed to browse.
It’s a quality control issue. If you want to browse, you should enter the club and let the greeter know that they should direct you to the membership desk.
Humanity News: Is it fair to require people to purchase a membership before shopping?
Jolanda Stewart: The warehouse industry historically, since Day One, is a membership-based business. Therefore it’s not a question of fairness, it’s a question of choice. We are a wholesale club, and there is a level of saving based on its being a bare-boned operation. Consumers make a decision about whether they want to join or if they don’t. It is a membership organization, just as it is with health clubs, church organizations, or country clubs.
We do offer guest passes for people who have never tried our facilities and would like to go in and shop. They pay a 10% upcharge. It’s one of those things where membership has benefits. Members have access to products and services and prices that are typically 40 to 50% lower than retail. It’s a choice, a decision.
Humanity News: Do you think this policy has a negative effect on people who are poor, and who might not be in a position to pay the membership fee?
Jolanda Stewart: Having a membership is a choice, and I cannot speak to socio-economic backgrounds. We have a variety of members from all across the country, of different socio-economic backgrounds, so I would not be able to answer that question for you as it relates to an effect on the social class.
It seems that part of the vitality of democracy is the ability to enter businesses as you please. Do you think that requiring a membership diminishes our actual freedom, or even a feeling of freedom?
Jolanda Stewart: There is no freedom that’s taken away. Again, it’s a choice. It’s the same as in a fitness center, where you pay a fee to enter, and you get a card, and you have to utilize that card to enter the facility. It’s no different at Sam’s Club. You make a choice. If you wish to shop, you become a member. If you don’t wish to shop, you don’t shop with us.
According to Wes MacLeod-Ball of the Alaska Civil Liberties Union, the membership policy of warehouse stores is probably not a rights violation. But he pointed out that it could be discriminating against low income people. “If a policy like that limits folks at lower income levels from access to lower price goods, that simply contributes, at least in some marginal way, to making the rich richer and the poor poorer, and I think that’s probably a bad thing for society.”
A goal of Alaska Humanity News is to explore the ways that debilitating situations are imposed on us by bureaucracies and corporations. It often seems that we have little control of these small but omnipresent influences. But we do have control, if only we step up to the monoliths, and challenge them to justify their decisions (in ways other than pure economics). Next month: Will Safeway and Fred Meyers help local farmers sell products in their stores?