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Amazon is adding a fuel surcharge to fees it collects from third-party sellers
- jeremie_strand 6mo ago[dead]
- GeoSys 6mo agoI'm sure they'll pass it on to the end consumers - there goes the inflation bit by bit on every front ...
- ulrashida 6mo agoI 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 6mo agoWe 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.
- jackling 6mo agoNot sure how it is in America, but in Canada you can post a note inside your mailbox stating that you don't want unaddressed mail. https://www.canadapost-postescanada.ca/cpc/en/personal/consumers-choice.page https://www.canadapost-postescanada.ca/cpc/en/personal/consu...
- rkagerer 6mo agoI'm tried that, I've even plasterd the inside of my mailbox with a mini-poster directing to not leave it, and it hasn't worked at all.
- ssl-3 6mo agoWhat percentage of overall vehicular fuel use does junk mail (from inception to landfill) constitute, might you suppose?
- Teever 6mo agoIt's not just the vehicular fuel that goes into this process, it's the growing the trees, harvesting them, making them into paper, then combining that paper with ink that likely has a similarly complex supply chain on a printing press that consumes a lot of power. Getting flyers that are subsidized by the post office for stuff like lawnmowers and patio furniture even though I live in an apartment is peak absurdity.
- lenerdenator 6mo agoI live in what was a family member's house before her passing in 2014. I still receive her mail. Here's the kicker: the mail is addressed to a name she hadn't legally had since the late 1970s. She divorced and remarried - which meant taking her new husband's last name - then lived another 30-ish years, died, I moved in, and it's been ten years of me there. It's an insanely wasteful practice.
- singleshot_ 6mo agoWrite “rejected” on all the mail you don’t want and leave it unopened in your box. Cuts it down nearly to zero after a few months.
- lenerdenator 6mo agoWill give that a try, thanks
- digitalsushi 6mo agoIf the majority of mail stops are junk mail only, I would love to see some napkin math of the effect of all those diesel/gasoline accelerations per mailbox, dropped across the daily fleet of drop offs.
- calvinmorrison 6mo agoIn FY2022, fuel consumption was 221 million gallons of gasoline equivalent, with gasoline or diesel making up 99%. USPS fleet greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) made up 70% of overall GHGs for federal fleet vehicles in FY2022. 50-60% of all mail is marketing slop
- exabrial 6mo agoHonestly I'd be surprised if it's that low. My guess is by weight its closer to 85%-95%. Your numbers show exactly what I was guessing to be true though. Incredible this has never been enforced.
- mrguyorama 6mo agoMail delivery vehicles have to travel roughly the same paths as long as there is most anything to deliver. That's what makes it a public service. Junk mail just makes stamps cheaper. That route had to be driven anyway. You have generally what amounts to a right to put a stamped letter in your box at the end of the driveway, put up the flag, and get serviced. The route has to be driven regardless. We could eliminate all marketing mail, make a large push to make all billing digital, and USPS would still have to drive most routes most days. A fix would have to reduce service significantly, or introduce a new "Register for pickup" process to signal your need of service. We could have also made those brand new mail vehicles hybrid or something.
- calvinmorrison 6mo agoyes a public advertising delivery service
- mikestew 6mo ago$8, and that all stops for ten years: https://www.dmachoice.org/static/consumer_choice_tools.php https://www.dmachoice.org/static/consumer_choice_tools.php I’ve done it (several times, ‘cuz ten years), you’ll notice an almost immediate reduction in junk mail.
- youarentrightjr 6mo agoSounds like a racketeering operation (not saying it doesn't work).
- mikestew 6mo agoIt indeed has a fishy smell to it. But as I thought through it, if it were free then some bozo would spam an entire address database and then we can't have nice things anymore. The ten year expiration is sketchy, but I guess someone is hoping you'll let it expire (I've never received a "renewal notice", as it were.) And, yeah, "nice mailbox, shame if it got filled with shit you didn't ask for." OTOH, for less than a dollar a year, I can go find other clouds to shake my fist at.
- culi 6mo agoSmells fishy indeed by it's just $8 per 10 years... Also I'm sure that if a bill were ever passed to stop junk mail by default, it would be utilizing the infrastructure built by this service
- usefulcat 6mo agoReducing the frequency of mail delivery would have a much larger impact, since most of fuel is probably consumed by last mile delivery. Delivering less mail each day doesn't really make much difference if the mail carrier still has to come to my neighborhood 6 times a week.
- browningstreet 6mo agoFewer mail carriers could hit twice as many places in a given time-frame and reduce overall gas usage.
- lokar 6mo agoA lot of the USPS budget is from delivering bulk mail. They already fail to break even (albeit with absurd retirement funding rules imposed on them). Without the fees from bulk mail they would need to raise prices, and it's not entirely clear they could given they face strong competition.
- duskdozer 6mo ago>They already fail to break even It doesn't need to make money or "break even." We just pay the cost in tax or postage that is needed to run the service.
- lokar 6mo agoI don’t mind a public subsidy, but that’s not current law or the majority attitude
- SoftTalker 6mo agoI don't really understand why we need a US Postal Service in 2026. Yes, the Constitution grants congress the power to establish "post offices and post roads" but it doesn't mandate it AFAIK. Other countries (Denmark is an example) have completely privatized physical mail delivery. All official mail is electronic. There's some nostalgia for the postman on his red bicycle (or in the USA, walking the neighborhood or driving their funny looking trucks) but are they really necessary? Edit to add: since running post offices is explicitly a Federal power, a conversion of US Mail to being electronically based would be completely within scope. There would be no arguing over "states rights" that tends to become a logjam for any other national infrastructure or policy changes.
- conception 6mo agoDenmark is like twice the size of Massachusetts.
- 46493168 6mo ago> I don't really understand why we need a US Postal Service in 2026 Mail in voting.
- culi 6mo agoIf you live in the US you can stop almost all junk mail for $6 for a 10 year registration to DMA Choice https://consumer.ftc.gov/node/77522 https://consumer.ftc.gov/node/77522
- 0cf8612b2e1e 6mo agoLast year, Amazon backed down from sharing tariff pricing. I assume the same will happen here.
- djoldman 6mo agoI immediately thought of that move. This time I think the surcharge will stay until the war is concluded.
- LightBug1 6mo ago[flagged]
- etiennebausson 6mo ago>> (generous exemption for those who didn't vote for the orange dildo). Those who could but didn't vote aren't blameless either.
- youarentrightjr 6mo ago> Those who could but didn't vote aren't blameless either. The harsh reality is that "lesser of two evils" thinking is what got us here. In the 2024 election, the two mainstream party positions on immigration were: - Let's not enforce any immigration law, and subsidize those here illegally - Let's round up illegal aliens, indefinitely detain them without habeas corpus, maybe deport them to a country they aren't from These are both insane, radical policies, neither of which represents the vast majority of the voting populous. But since the picture is painted as "you just gotta pick the lesser of two evils", we end up with parties continually toeing the line of policy sanity.
- kentm 6mo ago> - Let's not enforce any immigration law, and subsidize those here illegally This isn't an accurate description of the Democrat party's platform and repeating it uncritically is contributing to the problem.
- youarentrightjr 6mo ago> This isn't an accurate description of the Democrat party's platform and repeating it uncritically is contributing to the problem. I welcome your critical interpretation of the existence of sanctuary cities and CFAP/California DREAM Act/related programs.
- raw_anon_1111 6mo ago
- rdevilla 6mo ago[flagged]
- t1234s 6mo agoDoes that 3.5% get passed to the seller if they are not using Amazon to ship the product?
- binarysolo 6mo agoFBA products only
- gnabgib 6mo agoTitle could really use "for third-party sellers who use fulfillment services" (this is not a 3.5% surcharge on AWS, Prime, or Amazon orders)
- zoover2020 6mo agoIt was pretty clear to me. AWS is Web Services after all
- jrockway 6mo agoSometimes 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.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- crazygringo 6mo ago> Do we ever see "oil prices are down 3.5%, we are lowering our prices by 3.5%"? Never. Companies lower prices all the time. It's the competitive market at work. They just don't tend to say why, because nobody cares about the reason, so it's not necessary. E.g. snack prices are coming down, to pick one recent example: https://www.npr.org/2026/02/03/nx-s1-5697941/pepsi-prices-cheetos-doritos-super-bowl-snacks https://www.npr.org/2026/02/03/nx-s1-5697941/pepsi-prices-ch... But it's human bias to notice when things get worse, but not when things get better.
- jeromegv 6mo agoAbsolutely in a competitive market. There’s an argument to be made that Amazon has so much of the online buying market that’s it’s not competitive and can likely get away with increasing price. And I tend to agree with that
- tt24 6mo agoThere is an argument to be made yes, but not a particularly good one.
- crazygringo 6mo agoWalmart.com is a major competitor to Amazon, including for third-party vendors. So are brands choosing to sell direct. Lots of people regularly compare prices like that. And tons of people use Google Shopping for price comparison. Amazon is in an extremely competitive market. They can raise prices for fulfillment because everybody has to because everybody's fuel prices are going up.
- bdcravens 6mo agoFuel surcharges are a regular thing for UPS, Fedex, and others https://www.fedex.com/en-us/shipping/historical-fuel-surcharge.html https://www.fedex.com/en-us/shipping/historical-fuel-surchar... https://www.ups.com/us/en/support/shipping-support/shipping-costs-rates/fuel-surcharges https://www.ups.com/us/en/support/shipping-support/shipping-...
- binarysolo 6mo agoAmazon 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.
- zobzu 6mo agoi fully expect it yo be permanent. they know its likely to come back down.
- Brainspackle 6mo agoDo you buy off Temu and re-sell on amazon?
- binarysolo 6mo agoI dunno why that's a whole meme, but nobody of any scale is doing that. We produce products through factories like most established sellers.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- joemi 6mo agoIt may or may not be anyone of scale (I haven't been keeping track of the seller names), but there sure are a LOT of sellers who do that. Practically every search result I've looked for on Amazon in the past few years is flooded with people reselling Chinese brand goods or Chinese no-name brand goods. Even when I search for a specific US -brand product, the results are filled with similar (or similar-ish) Chinese goods that are all selling the same few product variations. Glad to hear that's not you, though. Amazon definitely doesn't need any more people reselling like that. And good luck! I used to sell used books on Amazon (both seller-fulfilled and FBA) when I worked at a book store and year after year it became more and more of a nightmare until it simply wasn't worth our time anymore.
- jazz9k 6mo agoI 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.
- sidrag22 6mo agoIt seems like there are still healthy ways to do it, I see some products sold by third party sellers that clearly are real small businesses. I google them find their real site and sometimes they offer pricing better than what they can offer after amazon fees etc. I see that as the absolute best approach for someone like that, leverage the platform but don't allow it to be your entire online presence. My own use case was sadly, just leveraging the platform and as all the margins tighten not only on the amazon platform itself but on shipping costs, it just gets tougher and tougher. Happy for the experiences they offered me freedom wise, but also happy to be moving on.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- assimpleaspossi 6mo agoPlease 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.
- The_SamminAter 6mo agoHow much does it pay on average? And how is the payment broken down/do you earn per mile or package?
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]