USPS is going to put and 8% surcharge on packages due to fuel prices. I assume many shippers will follow. Diesel is $7 in California. I feel bad for wineries as this is just another hit that will affect them and consumer. I assume the shipping discussion will continue
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Sigh, so Iâm going to rant a little ⌠why are all purveyorsârestaurants, hotels, shippersâtacking on surcharge after surcharge after surcharge. Everyone seems to be trying to shirk their responsiblity by reassigning blame to othersâthat having to pay more for their goods and services is someone elseâs fault. Stop it! Please, please no more autograts, no more kitchen appreciation surcharges, no more hospitality fees, no more tourism promotion assessments, no more employee sick leave fund contributions, and on, and on, and on. Just be honest: raise your a la carte prices! I dontâ want to see on my check or invoice the details of whatâs driving up your costs. Donât try to hide it: the cost of what youâre selling is a lot more than what it was before, and itâs increasing far more and much faster than your customersâ disposable income.
As with any rant, I offer this with an underlying positive spirit. I invite any and all feedbackâespecially opposing views.
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I get the rant, but cost increases are cost increases. This thread is about shipping - and we have already received notice that our shipping costs are going up. We can continue to eat this and shrink our already small margins as a very small winery with quite reasonable bottle prices, or we can pass some of this on to our customers. Truly puts us in a precarious situation.
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I mean, in this case, it is very much someone elseâs fault.
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Iâm fine with paying more for shipping. I get itâcosts increase over time. What I object to is the way that increasing costs are being presented.
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You forgot BIDs. From what I hear, that one is all @larry_schafferâs fault! 
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It might be a way for them to signal something along the lines of, âHey, itâs not just us. Youâre likely going to run into this elsewhere, too, so you might as well keep buying from us because the grass is not greener on the other side.â
So, to answer your question more succinctly, âIt may be an effort to retain business.â No comment on whether thatâs a good/effective idea.
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Au Contraire, my friend . . .
Thatâs part of what Iâm wondering: whether adding surcharges instead of increasing a la carte prices is aimed at retaining customersâflowing from the hope that an âI wouldnât be doing this to you unless someone was doing it to meâ explantion will engender sympathy/loyalty and keep the customer coming back instead of leaving.
Except⌠weâve been paying shipping fuel surcharges since oil went through the roof before the dotcom crash. And then it came back down and naturally they didnât remove the surcharges. In fact theyâve been increasing them every year the past few years as fuel prices went down substantially. So now they are kind of in a bind. They used to be 5-8% but even before this latest war, they have been over 20%.
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I like the cut of your jib. Bravo.
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He didnât forget.
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Iâm not happy about increased costs but I donât care at all where they put it on the bill or how they try to explain it. If the bottom line is more than Iâm willing to pay, Iâm out.
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I dunno. Iâm sure some there are various reasons for this dynamic, and not all businesses do it for all the same reasons.
It doesnât really matter, though. Customers should always just look at the all-in cost (both monetary and otherwise), and decide from there if itâs âworth itâ to them to make the purchase.
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Got a better idea. You want them to just jack up prices to reflect their costs. I bet you would get up in arms about that too!
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I am hoping that as a âsurcharge,â this cost to me will go away when prices come back down, eliminating the need for the âsurcharge.â
My superstition is that if they simply raised the price to accommodate fuel costs, this expense would never go back down.
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That is a great point - and one that always concerns me as well. Many businesses are somewhat âforcedâ to increase pricing due to increases in productions costs including gas prices; but many choose not to go back even when those costs decrease - and thatâs upsetting for sure . . .
Cheers
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Or perhaps Iâm simply on here talking about it without bashing other winemakers in our area - but instead trying to have logical discussions about it . . .
But no, I did not come up with the idea - and I am not passing these charges along to the customer but instead eating them myself . . . so there! 
Cheers
The fuel surcharge was 57.5% this week on a west coast pallet move.
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This is the key to me. I get calling it a surcharge if it is a temporary measure taken because of increased costs directly related to the now-concluded (s/) war in the Middle East. If the surcharge then disappears, I get both the up-charge and the nomenclature.
We shall see.
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