Costco’s a weird company. They email me all the time and somehow manage to offer nothing even remotely connected to anything I bought in the last 10 years or so. And they do know what I bought.

But they desperately want me in their loyalty program.

Maybe this has happened to you. When you check out, you hand over your Costco membership card. About every 5th time, the checkout clerk yells for a roving nag who races over to importune you to sign up for the loyalty program. The program costs $100 to join and gives you 2% back on your purchases over the year.

I ask the nag how much I spent with Costco last year. $5,100, she tells me after checking her hand held customer monitoring device.
So the deal is I give Costco $100 now and in a year they give me back $102? And if I slow down a bit, to, say, $4,900, I lose two bucks.
They actually want me to give them $100 to inspire myself to shop more at Costco. Does this make any sense? Am I missing something?