Planning ahead for your REI rewards
Recreational Equipment, Inc. rewards cannot be transferred and have no beneficiary option — here is what you can do while the account is active
REI Co-op Customer Service
REI Co-op Customer Service
(General customer service)
Recreational Equipment, Inc.'s terms state that rewards are forfeited when the account holder dies. Lifetime planning is the only path to extracting value from the account before that happens.
How to protect your REI rewards
6 steps for managing your REI rewards during your lifetime:
Family sharing
REI has no family-sharing, household, or pooling mechanism for the Co-op Member Reward. Each membership is individual: the member number "is issued only in your name," only the primary member — expressly "not spouse or other family member" — may redeem Promotional Rewards, and only the member may vote in the board election. The Program Terms add that "Participation in the Program may not be sold, transferred, or assigned to family, friends, or others." Each household member who wants REI member benefits buys their own lifetime membership. REI does publish a Membership name change form, but that is a correction to the existing member's own name handled by REI staff, not a transfer — the form's own page states "REI Co-op Memberships are non-transferable."
Should you save your passwords for your family?
Some people store account passwords so a family member can sign in later. The practice has three practical limits:
- Two-factor authentication often blocks it. Most accounts require a second factor — a code sent to a phone, an authenticator app, a passkey, or a physical key. A saved password alone frequently does not grant access, and the recovery codes that would are easy to lose or let go stale.
- It usually conflicts with the platform's terms. Most operators prohibit account sharing and signing in as another person, including after a death. Stored credentials are not the operator's recognized access path, and using them can violate the terms of service.
- Operators provide other paths. Where an operator offers a designation tool — Apple's Legacy Contact, Google's Inactive Account Manager, a beneficiary designation — that mechanism grants access the operator recognizes. A password manager's own emergency-access or legacy feature passes credentials through a controlled process. Digital assets named in a will or trust give a fiduciary authority under each state's Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA).
Frequently asked questions
Redeem each annual Co-op Member Reward while you can — only you can use it, and each one carries an expiry date. Do not list the membership or the rewards as an inheritable asset: the Articles of Incorporation bar membership from passing by any form of succession, the $30 fee is non-refundable, and the membership is not returnable. If you want your spouse or children to have REI benefits, have them buy their own $30 lifetime membership now. Leave your executor the member number or account email, plus one of the identifiers REI uses to verify a membership, so the account can be closed and the mail stopped.
Listing the REI account in an estate inventory identifies it for a fiduciary, who works through the operator's official channels to manage or close it.
REI does not support beneficiary designations. Unlike financial accounts, there is no way to name a beneficiary on this type of account.
Sources
Data sourced from Recreational Equipment, Inc. primary sources (8 pages reviewed). How we research.
REI Co-op Customer Service
REI Co-op Customer Service
(General customer service)
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