Husband Not Allowed to Pay for Wife’s Costco Order, Even Though She’s a Member and With Him in Store

A Costco shopper was stunned after an employee of the store told him that he couldn't pay for his wife's items. That's despite the fact his wife was a card-carrying Costco member who was in the store and shopping with him at the same time.

He recorded his interaction with workers of the store and uploaded it to TikTok.

Wes (@qiwesley) begins his video recording a Costco employee approaching him. He writes in a text overlay of his clip explaining his gripe with the popular bulk item retailer. "We are not criminals. The amount we purchased exceeded my wife's credit card limit, and the Costco staff wouldn't let me pay."

As a result, Wes states that store staff members forced him and his spouse to wait in line for an extended period of time. "They made us stay in place for 20 minutes," he wrote.

Another employee can be heard explaining the situation to the other Costco worker who is wearing a festive sweater. Presumably, the store worker is a manager who was called in to assess the situation involving Wes and his wife. It seems that the grievance is due to the fact that while Wes's wife is a paying member of the store and Wes is not, he was being prevented from covering the cost of the groceries.

"So the wife is a member and the husband is not a member," the employee off-camera can be heard saying to the manager wearing a festive sweater.

The manager looks in his direction as Wes describes his situation. "Yeah, I want to pay for the family. We live together, we are married —" the Costco employee with the red and green sweater then interjects. "But are you a member?" she asks Wes.

"I'm not a member, it's under my wife's name," he explains to the bulk retail employee. "Yeah, OK. So usually it's a member payment. So even though it's, you're the family, you're still considered a guest," the manager explains to him, leaning over the counter.

Wes reacts to this statement, "So I paid for her and for the family for the last 10 years. That is the first time that you inquire..." the Costco worker continues to look at him and she repeats, "it's only member payment," while motioning to his wife off-camera.

"So, she's the member so she would have to pay for her guest," the manager explains, intoning that there may be an additional charge, despite the fact that she is already an annual Costco membership holder.

The worker then darts their eyes back and forth between Wes and his wife and continues to speak: "Unless you are the member."

"No, I'm not the member," Wes says after a bit of a delay.

"Yeah, so you do have to be a member to pay," the employee explains to him. Wes seems to say that he's going to make the same order online as the video comes to a close.

This isn't the first time Costco has come under fire its stringent membership enforcement practices. One social media user wrote that his mom was banned from the store after she used his father's card to shop for goods.

Another TikToker said that they were able to get inside a Costco store using their mom's card. However, when it came time to pay since their mother wasn't there with them, they were asked to either leave the items they selected behind or purchase their own annual membership.

They opted for the the latter selection and ended up becoming an Executive yearly cardholder for the bulk retailer.

Wes's case, however, seems to be a bit more extreme. It's not as if the store's cardholder wasn't with him when he was making his purchase — she was.

The main issue was that she wasn't the one making the payment. Perhaps this is part of a new initiative at Costco to help them sell even more memberships. Brittanica writes that as of 2024, the chain has a whopping 132 million cardholders across 73.4 million households.

Additionally, the store has announced the annual cost of its memberships has increased. Executive memberships are now $130, as opposed to $120. Business and Gold Star memberships have jumped from $60 to $65 per year.

The Motley Fool writes that about 73 percent of the store's profits come from the money it charges customers for its membership fees. Costco earned $4.6 billion in cardholder charges in 2023 alone.

And it appears that implementing stringent cardholder rules in its stores have only helped the store to earn more money. Between 2022 and 2023, when it was reported that more and more stores were cracking down on who could and couldn't enter, a whopping 9 million more people became Costco cardholders.