A quiet issue has been circulating at the Costco Wholesale store in Brooklyn and we did not want it to continue longer. Costco Employee’s have been denying immigrants, specifically Asians, of using family members club cards, simply because the language barrier which makes it easier to turn them away. We felt that this was very unfair and decided to take advantage of a specific policy that allows NON-members with cash cards to go into ANY Costco and make purchases. We want to educate the community that If the cash card is depleted at the time of purchase, you may pay the remaining amount in Cash,Debit or Visa, without a MEMBERSHIP.

To confirm this story we had purchased a Costco Cash Card with our own membership and provided to one of our clients as a gift. We appeared in person two days prior at Costco before hand to confirm that this would be OK to do and we got the approval of the policy.

After spending a couple of hours shopping with his wife and baby they finally reached the register and were denied the use of paying with cash for the remainder of the sale. The cashier said this was a new policy that they no longer accept cash for remainder for payment with the cash card and decided it was okay to turn our client away because of the assumption he did not speak english and would walk away passively. This was unacceptable and we were not going to let this happen to any of our clients or to the community we represent. This was blatantly discriminatory as when they had a new policy change with American Express credit cards, they had signs everywhere for almost a year before turning customers away. This was 2 days from the day we confirmed the validity.

Our CEO reached out to the CEO of Costco and let him know what was going on at this chain and voiced the Chinese American community. He will not accept or tolerate discrimination in the land that we were promised equality. He was then directed to the Vice President of the East Coast chain and had personally voiced this story to him and demanded accountability with a increase in diversity in staff, to service the growing community in the neighborhood . He assured our CEO that this Payment policy paying in cash along with the cash card is 100% valid and personally apologized for the employee and manager that tried to discriminate this customer and issued a new Cash Card to us.

This story is to let you know your voice will be heard! Our CEO now has contact information to the general manager of this Costco and vice president , If something of this nature happens to our customers at Costco again, we will speak for you!  Do not let a language barrier stand in your way!

We will offer Costco cash cards for purchase to our customers wishing to shop at Costco without a membership. We will guarantee that these will be valid upon checkout if you do not have a membership, and we will be giving away Costco cash cards once a month this year to our customers in our Brooklyn ShipSpace location, so please spread the word to all people that was ever turned down at a Costco location for using someone else’s member card.