Costco hikes annual membership fees
Costco is hiking its annual membership fees.
The company announced that, effective Sept. 1, it will increase annual membership fees by $5 for U.S. and Canada Gold Star (individual), Business, and Business add-on members.
With this increase, all U.S. and Canada Gold Star, Business and Business add-on members will pay an annual fee of $65. Also effective Sept. 1, annual fees for Executive Memberships in the U.S. and Canada will increase from $120 to $130 (Primary membership of $65, plus the Executive upgrade of $65), and the maximum annual 2% Reward associated with the Executive Membership will increase from $1,000 to $1,250. The fee increases will impact around 52 million memberships, a little over half of which are Executive.
[Read more: Costco, H-E-B, Publix see customer satisfaction spikes in new annual study]
Costco also reported net sales of $24.48 billion for the retail month of June, the five weeks ended July 7, an increase of 7.4% from $22.78 billion last year.
Net sales for the first 44 weeks were $210.55 billion, an increase of 6.9% from $196.93 billion last year.
Costco currently operates 882 warehouses, including 609 in the United States and Puerto Rico, 108 in Canada, 40 in Mexico, 33 in Japan, 29 in the United Kingdom, 18 in Korea, 15 in Australia, 14 in Taiwan, seven in China, four in Spain, two in France, and one each in Iceland, New Zealand and Sweden. Costco also operates e-commerce sites in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Mexico, Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Australia.