Costco.com: Play Guess Your Membership Renewal Rate

Having a couple extra minutes today, I thought I’d renew my Costco membership online.

Here’s the process I expected:

  1. Click Membership in the top nav of Costco.com
  2. Click on a ‘Renew Now’ button
  3. Enter my membership number and a credit card number
  4. Get back to work

Instead, they made it much more “engaging”:

  1. Click Membership in the top nav of Costco.com
  2. Create an “online” Costco account with a bunch of profile info they already have in my existing membership
  3. Create a password. Such a bad idea, if passwords are to be meaningful, they need to be generated by the site - not the person.
  4. Click ‘Renewal’ in the left-hand nave of the resulting page
  5. Click the only option they offer me in the main page body
  6. Then, they want me to guess how much my membership fee is (seriously). They know my membership number, they can just tell me.
  7. After guessing a few times, I decided to call them
  8. They were experiencing “heavier than expected call volumes” and my hold time would be 20 minutes.
  9. I hung up, closed the browser window and got back to work

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to renewal anyway. They made it easy to decide.