Amazon is adding a fuel surcharge to fees it collects from third-party sellers

ulrashida

I wonder how visible it will be when showing final charges for an order. I'd definitely be more likely to "wait it out" when considering purchases in my cart if I can see what I expect will be a temporary levy.

exabrial

We could immediately provide relief to fuel prices, while doing the climate a huge favor, by immediately suspending the USPS accepting marketing material through the mail. My mailbox is permanently jammed with paper that useless paper that is both produced and hauled away to a landfill by diesel fuel. No I do not want your credit card offer. No I do not want to switch phone plans. No I do not want an extended warranty.

0cf8612b2e1e

Last year, Amazon backed down from sharing tariff pricing. I assume the same will happen here.

t1234s

Does that 3.5% get passed to the seller if they are not using Amazon to ship the product?

gnabgib

Title could really use "for third-party sellers who use fulfillment services" (this is not a 3.5% surcharge on AWS, Prime, or Amazon orders)

jrockway

Sometimes I wonder if we just do these wars so that companies can raise prices and when the war ends, not lower them. Do we ever see "oil prices are down 3.5%, we are lowering our prices by 3.5%"? Never. "But the free market will force someone to do this to gain marketshare." But Amazon is the only Amazon, so I doubt that will happen.

bdcravens

Fuel surcharges are a regular thing for UPS, Fedex, and others https://www.fedex.com/en-us/shipping/historical-fuel-surchar... https://www.ups.com/us/en/support/shipping-support/shipping-...

binarysolo

Amazon third party seller (low 8s) here: last time this happened was during COVID and it ended up being a permanent FBA shipping price increase. Practically speaking shipping accounts for 10-20% of the sale price, so realistically it's the seller who will absorb it and maybe pass on costs to the buyers, but we're talking about 3.5% of 10-20%, which is really a 1% price increase, so a noticeable but not make-or-break issue in the death-by-1000-cuts. The Andy-led Amazon is less forgiving than the Jeff "your margin is my opportunity"-led Amazon on profitability so price shocks have passed through to sellers much more immediately than prior years where Amazon would just move slowly and stably. The bigger Amazon news recently is on DD+7 and how Amazon basically increased their float and delayed payments on all sellers, and that's been kinda a pain to navigate.

jazz9k

I made a living selling on Amazon about 15 years ago. It all came crashing down when they held all of my money (around $50,000) and had to 'investigate'. Nothing ever came of it and they released my money, but banned my seller account for 10 years. It was actually a good thing. I started my own site and made a good living for a decade. Covid shutdown the business. Building a business on Amazon is a mistake.

assimpleaspossi

Please don't tell anyone but I've been a delivery driver for Amazon's Flex program (where we use our own cars). If my route has an especially long number of miles, they slip me an extra $5 in my pay. Normally it's around 100 miles per route, with around 45 deliveries, but if it creeps over 120 or so, that's when I see it.