Attn Costco members - Aug 11, 2009 deadline to opt out of Class Action

[Duer 157099]

I didn't know anything about this until I just got an email from Costco about it.

But I'm glad someone finally got upset enough about this to do something. The lawsuit has to do with Costco's practice of renewing lapsed memberships but not changing the renewal day (for example, if your renewal is due on April 1st but you don't renew until June, the following year your membership will still expire in April, not June - so you effectively don't actually get 12 months for what you pay).

The lawsuit, rightly, claims this is unfair. However, upon reading what their proposed settlement is, I'm considering opting out of this settlement. I'm fairly certain that every single year I've been a member, this has been the case for me - and the settlement period is from March 2001 through now - but the settlement says that if this happened to you on more than one occassion, then they will use the first occurence to determine how they compensate you. It's not yet clear to me what that actually means, but if it's what I think, then I still think it's unfair.

Cripes, they are completely computerized and it would take some relatively simple programming skills for them to completely, fairly compensate for this!

Anyway, the point of this post to to say that if you (like I do) disagree with this settlement, then you have until August 11th to notify them that you want to opt out of the settlement - and thus leave your options open if future class actions arise.

I love Costco dearly, but I have to say, this has been the one issue that has always really bothered me about them.

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"The settlement provides additional periods of membership to eligible Settlement Class members who renewed their memberships more than 21 days after their previous expiration dates and were affected by the renewal policy. If a Settlement Class member renewed their membership more than 21 days after the expiration date, and was affected by the renewal policy on more than one occasion since March 1, 2001, then that Settlement Class member's benefit will be based on the first such occasion."

-- Costco members who renewed ... more than 21 days but less than 2 months after their prior expiration date will receive one month of free membership
-- ... 2-3 months = 2 months free
-- ... 3-5 months - 3 months free

http://www.costco.com/renewalsettlement.pdf

[Just-plain-Kathy]

1. BJ Wholesale Club works the same way.

[hyphenate]

2. It's pretty much across the board for a lot of memberships

like this. I just re-upped on my AAA membership, which was due in February, and I paid the year off, but my membership is in February, 2010. So I will assume that most all memberships in different organizations works the same. I paid my membership in Costco in February which was ontime, so I doubt if I would be included in any class action suit.

[Duer 157099]

3. Well, if there were a membership discount for renewals...

then I could see such a policy. Lots of memberships are like that, where the initial price is different from the renewal price.

But in this case, if you let 4 months lapse and then want to get a 12-month membership, you'll pay for 12-months but just get 8.

Just not fair in any way.

[Duer 157099]

4. kicking for the Saturday folks n/t