A California man is suing Costco over its handling of automatic membership renewals.
Russel George, the named plaintiff in the proposed class action, received a renewal notice 60 days before Costco charged his card. According to the lawsuit, under California’s Automatic Renewal Law (ARL), for memberships with an initial term of one year or longer, the notice is supposed to be sent at least 15 days but no more than 45 days before renewal.
George says he’d been on the fence about renewing anyway, as he wasn’t shopping there much. A proper notice, sent at the right time, would have been enough for him to cancel, but instead, he only discovered the renewal after Costco had already charged his card the $65 fee for his usual Standard Gold Star membership subscription.
The Legal Side
The lawsuit names four California statutes: the ARL, the False Advertising Law (FAL), the Consumers’ Legal Remedies Act (CLRA), and the Unfair Competition Law (UCL). George wants a jury trial and is seeking damages for other members who got the same notice.
Costco, though, has not commented so far. The company has had a busy few months in court. One lawsuit filed in February claims Costco sold rotisserie chickens with Salmonella.
Another says the chain charged customers prices inflated by federal tariffs that were later struck down. Costco has stated that it will return any recovered tariff funds to members through lower prices and better value.
Unlike the broader Salmonella and tariff-related lawsuits, this new class action is one that is smaller in scope. It’s about an email that came two weeks too early and skipped some required language. The warehouse chain currently has about 82 million paid members, so even a narrowly focused case may still involve a good number of its California customers.
Sources: PacerMonitor, Seattle Times, Costco, Reuters, The Sun