When a membership expires, I think their membership barcode should expire for good as well. If you upgrade/downgrade membership level, your barcode changes. If you let your membership drop and you rejoin, your barcode changes. But for those loyal members who have retained the same level and have renewed on time, their barcode remains the same.

The problem is that this allows members to use old member cards from previous years of membership.

At our organization, there is growing concern that a number of our members have figured out that their old cards work and are abusing their membership by sharing their new cards with family/friends. We don’t know this for a fact, but my visitor services staff shared that by what some members say and by their gut feeling, they have good reason to be suspicious.