Posted on 04/13/2022 9:22:41 PM PDT by bgill
Amazon said Wednesday that for the first time in company history it will charge sellers a 5% fuel and inflation surcharge.
The e-commerce giant said the new fee will begin April 28 and is being imposed because inflation has worsened significantly in recent months.
“In 2022, we expected a return to normalcy as Covid-19 restrictions around the world eased, but fuel and inflation have presented further challenges,” Amazon wrote in memo that was provided to CNN by the company. “It is unclear if these inflationary costs will go up or down, or for how long they will persist, so rather than a permanent fee change.”
Amazon spokesman Patrick Graham told CNN that the fee surcharge applies only to fee rates paid by sellers that choose to use Amazon’s fulfillment services, which include storing, packing and shipping products. Others sellers that do not use Fulfillment by Amazon will not be impacted. News of the surcharge was first previously reported by Bloomberg News.
(Excerpt) Read more at eastidahonews.com ...
Amazon's business plan may be a good one but one had to wonder when the excess packaging would haunt them....
For me its the reverse
Where I am, Fedex is much better than ups. ups beats the hell out of my packages. its sad because the people you interact with at the stores, are great and helpful. they are not the drivers.
As someone else said, I guess it depends on where you are, and it can even get more specific to a neighborhood.
I’ve just had no problem with UPS at home, or in my workplace.
i havent run into that problem yet- just the delays and losing stuff so far- usually htough amazon is very good at resolving, BUT if the driver says it was delivered when it wasnt, that could be a problem -
One good thing about Amazon is that they take pictures of the packages usually and send them to you. However, they’re also often followed by thieves that’ll grab the package in minutes.
We are so screwed.
I haven’t forgotten and bring it up whenever I can. I’ve told numerous people that he was on maternity leave and was nursing the baby.
You’re right. The more they leave things alone, the better.
None of that requires a conspiracy. I’m working with a client here in DFW that is attempting to get a series of new exercise devices to market. Amazon has made themselves a supremely attractive distribution partner by making the extent of our customer side delivery interactions be “send it to Amazon and let them deal with it” - *for less than the cost of the company warehousing, packing and shipping it ourselves, Amazon does that for us.* We don’t even have to have a company warehouse, the contract manufacturer drop ships it to Amazon on our behalf. If Amazon decides to carry the item themselves instead of just being the fulfillment system and marketplace we sell through, they even deal with all the customer service for that item, reducing our costs.
No other distributor/reseller has anything nearly that attractive. Walmart’s Marketplace is a nightmare, selling *to* Walmart itself is even worse. Jet is trying but they’re still not good, etc. So we end up sending product to Amazon and if someone else wants the product in large quantities without Amazon being involved... well, we’d have to set up special measures and actually charge more.
When Amazon is making itself that attractive to work with and reducing costs that much on the seller’s end... yeah, it doesn’t take much to see why Amazon has the supply it does. No conspiracy needed.
True!
I buy from Thriftbooks.com
Agree. Always shop the price!
Can’t disagree
See my post 29 above.
generally i think fedex is overall better, heres why
the fedex drivers own their routes, ie they are franchise owners
if they don’t do well, fedex can actually take their route away
so its a bigger incentive for them to high good service metrics than ups drivers who don’t own their routes, are not franchise owners
ups is union and there isn’t quite the same scrutiny or responsibility on the route driver with packages.
Yeah, that's true. I once mentioned to a UPS driver that UPS really stands for Untied Pulverize and Smash. He just laughed like he was proud of that. UPS always likes to pile the packages right up against the front storm door, too. A$$holes!
Fed-x has always been good in my area though and telling a UPS driver that does piss them off.
my longtime buddy worked for ups a loooong time ago.
He described how they used to unload the big transfer trucks.
total wall of packages at semi rear door. they just pulled a bunch right from the middle center and let them all fall out/in on each other.
He said watch the opening of Ace Ventura Pet Detective and you’ll get an idea of a realistic way many packages are treated.
They clearly think the a average American consumer is stupid.
It will alway go up and will persist forever so yes, it’s going to be a permanent charge.
Just liek taxes. They will never get rid of a profitable cash cow like that.
We found the same thing and have been doing that for quite a while.
We no longer buy from Amazon unless there is literally no other choice.
These companies are more than happy to avoid losses in the Biden recession by passing if off to the little guy, who has no ability to absorb it or pass it off to anyone else.
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