Amazon Schedules Fuel Surcharges Across Multiple Fulfillment Services

Sellers using Amazon’s shipping services will be required to pay a fuel and logistics-related surcharge, the company said in a Thursday (April 2) post on Amazon Seller Central.

The surcharge will amount to 3.5% and will be calculated on each seller’s fulfillment fees, not on the sale price of their items, according to the post.

Starting April 17, Amazon will apply the surcharge to fulfillment fees across Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) in the United States and Canada as well as to Remote Fulfillment with FBA from the U.S. into Canada, Mexico and Brazil, according to the post.

Starting May 2, the company will implement the surcharge for Buy with Prime (BWP) in the U.S. as well as for Multichannel Fulfillment (MCF) in the U.S. and Canada, per the post.

Amazon said in the post that the surcharge is “meaningfully lower” than those of other major carriers, due to the work the company has done to lower costs, and that the firm will continue to evaluate the surcharge as conditions change.

“Elevated costs in fuel and logistics have increased the cost of operating across the industry,” Amazon said in the post. “We have absorbed these increased costs so far, However, similar to other major carriers, when costs remain elevated, we implement temporary surcharges on our fulfillment fees to recover a portion of the actual cost increases we are experiencing.”

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) said March 25 that it proposed adding a surcharge for fuel and other transportation costs to some of its products for shipping packages. The proposal is subject to review by the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC).

The proposed price change would add 8% to the base postage prices on certain services and would last from April 26 until Jan. 17, USPS said at the time in a press release.

The Wall Street Journal reported March 25 that the USPS’ proposed fuel surcharge would be the first one ever imposed by the organization.

Separately, the WSJ reported March 20 that FedEx and UPS update their fuel surcharges each week and that during the early weeks of March, these surcharges amounted to as much as 26% of the overall shipping cost.

The New York Times reported Tuesday (March 31) that fuel surcharges are being tacked onto the shipping cost of some items.