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Consumer Confidential: Costco fees, Taco Bell, Four Loko

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Here’s your way-we-were Wednesday roundup of consumer news from around the Web:

-- Are you a Costco member? If so, get ready for higher fees. Costco is increasing annual membership fees by 10% for 22 million members, beginning Nov. 1. The largest U.S. warehouse club operator hasn’t raised its main fees since 2006. Now that some higher costs, such as cotton, food and gas, have subsided, it may have seemed like more of an appropriate time for the increase, analysts say. Costco’s fee hike follows a similar move by competitor BJ’s Wholesale Club. BJ’s raised its membership fee by $5 to $50 in January. Costco’s U.S. and Canadian household and business memberships will cost $55 a year, up from $50 for most of those memberships. Costco’s Executive members, who receive rewards such as an annual rebate check to use in the store based on what they spend, will now pay $110, up from $100.

-- A new day is coming for Taco Bell. Fast-food restaurant operator Yum Brands is predicting a turnaround at the chain next year with the planned launch of new products meant to reinvigorate the slumping brand. The company is pinning hopes for a sales rebound on a pipeline of new products that Taco Bell plans to start introducing late in the first quarter of next year. The aim is nothing less than ‘reinventing the taco.’ Taco Bell accounts for about 60% of Yum’s slumping U.S. profit, but the chain is struggling to overcome publicity from a lawsuit earlier this year that claimed the filling in its tacos and burritos didn’t contain enough beef to be called beef. The suit was later dropped, but the company has blamed it for the sales decline.

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-- It’s a new day as well for Four Loko, the high-alcohol, fruit-flavored beverage that’s drawn criticism from state and federal officials for contributing to drunkenness among young people. The marketers of Four Loko have agreed to relabel and repackage the drink to resolve Federal Trade Commission charges of deceptive advertising. The agency alleges that Phusion Projects and its principals falsely claimed that a 23.5-ounce can of Four Loko contains alcohol equivalent to one or two regular 12-ounce beers, and that a consumer could drink one can safely in its entirety on a single occasion. In fact, according to the FTC, one can of Four Loko contains as much alcohol as four to five 12-ounce cans of regular beer and is not safe to drink on a single occasion.

-- David Lazarus

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