[HN Gopher] Amazon is adding a fuel surcharge to fees it collect...
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Amazon is adding a fuel surcharge to fees it collects from third-
party sellers
Author : lehi
Score : 117 points
Date : 2026-04-02 18:49 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
| ulrashida wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| jackling wrote:
| Not 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/consu...
| rkagerer wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| What percentage of overall vehicular fuel use does junk mail
| (from inception to landfill) constitute, might you suppose?
| Teever wrote:
| It'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 wrote:
| I 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_ wrote:
| Write "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.
| digitalsushi wrote:
| If 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.
| slillibri wrote:
| Stopping marketing mail wouldn't change the number of
| accelerations per mailbox. USPS would still need to check
| each stop for outgoing mail. The only difference would be
| in weight carried.
| jghn wrote:
| Depends. Where I live outgoing mail goes into the closest
| blue USPS bin. And given that most days all mail I
| receive is slop, removing the slop would remove the need
| to come to my house.
|
| Of course, where I live the USPS person stops in a
| general area and does all the outgoing deliveries on
| foot, but it's conceivable that some days an entire block
| may receive no incoming mail. Also, we need to take into
| account things like fuel costs for planes & such
| throughout the entire supply chain.
| mikestew wrote:
| _USPS would still need to check each stop for outgoing
| mail._
|
| No they don't, that's what the red flag on the mailbox is
| for. Everywhere I've lived, if you don't put the flag up
| and there's no incoming mail for you, they don't stop.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Percentage of mass is probably the wrong metric to look at,
| because it assumes that the USPS could simply eliminate the
| X% of mass used by junk mail and save roughly X% on
| fuel/delivery costs.
|
| But of course the issue is that the junk mail is subsidizing
| the actual mail. There's likely no way the USPS could be
| financially solvent, at least with the current level of
| service, if junk mail were eliminated. Personally I'd be fine
| with that. One or two mail deliveries per week would be more
| than enough!
| ssl-3 wrote:
| I think the real issue in this context is the 3.5%
| surcharge that Amazon may add, and whether or not
| elimination of USPS junk mail could ever make a dent in
| that 3.5% figure.
|
| (My gut says that it would not; that the fuel use of junk
| mail constitutes a very small drop in a very large bucket.
| But I'd love to be wrong about this.)
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| In 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 wrote:
| Honestly 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 wrote:
| Mail 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.
| mikestew wrote:
| $8, and that all stops for ten years:
| 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 wrote:
| Sounds like a racketeering operation (not saying it doesn't
| work).
| mikestew wrote:
| It 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.
| usefulcat wrote:
| Reducing 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 wrote:
| Fewer mail carriers could hit twice as many places in a given
| time-frame and reduce overall gas usage.
| lokar wrote:
| A 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.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I 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.
| lokar wrote:
| I think it's mostly not needed, but there are a lot of edge
| cases or narrow situations where it's important. They could
| be fixed, but no one is doing that.
|
| IMO, a better option is to switch to 3 days/week delivery,
| and where addresses are very spread out, require
| centralized boxes.
| michaelt wrote:
| Traditionally, the state has certain duties it needs to
| perform for _every_ member of the population.
|
| Passports, driving licenses, polling cards, draft
| registration, pensions, company registrations, patents,
| copyrights, court summons, speeding fines, inheritance, tax
| paperwork, census, etc etc.
|
| It's much simpler to perform these duties if you have a
| means of communication that can reliably reach every
| citizen.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I'm not sure I'd put "reliable" in any description of the
| USPS. I get my neighbors mail in my box often. I can only
| assume some of my mail gets delivered to them as well.
| stryan wrote:
| Practically speaking, USPS does a lot of last mile package
| delivery that no one else wants to do, including Amazon. If
| USPS wasn't delivering to those locations no one would be.
| And we're not talking middle-of-no-where-Wyoming locations,
| plenty of places east of the Mississippi have only USPS
| too.
|
| There's all sorts of philosophical arguments as well:
| government services shouldn't need to turn a profit, all
| citizens need to be able to interact with the State and the
| post office provides a way to do that, mail-in voting, Post
| Offices can offer stuff like general delivery for those
| without permanent addresses, etc.
| hadlock wrote:
| You need a non-electronic way to bill land owners for
| property taxes. That's it. Physical snail-mail is the de-
| facto way for the government to legally serve property
| taxes and other bills to private citizens. Yes we live in
| 2026 and everyone has email, but there's no legal
| requirement to give the government your email address, or
| even have one. You are however, legally required to provide
| a mailing address for your property tax bill to be sent to.
|
| Sure, by that standard we could probably reduce to weekly
| or even monthly mail service. It's been suggested since at
| least 2008 we drop Tuesday mail service as almost nobody
| sends mail on Saturdays and there's no mail service on
| Sundays.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| Because you can't make money serving rural areas and no for
| profit company would touch deliverying to those areas
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Last year, Amazon backed down from sharing tariff pricing. I
| assume the same will happen here.
| djoldman wrote:
| I immediately thought of that move.
|
| This time I think the surcharge will stay until the war is
| concluded.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Yeah, but amazon isn't going to list it as a line item. Which
| they should.
| t1234s wrote:
| Does that 3.5% get passed to the seller if they are not using
| Amazon to ship the product?
| gnabgib wrote:
| 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)
| zoover2020 wrote:
| It was pretty clear to me. AWS is Web Services after all
| jrockway wrote:
| 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.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _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-ch...
|
| But it's human bias to notice when things get worse, but not
| when things get better.
| jeromegv wrote:
| Absolutely 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 wrote:
| There is an argument to be made yes, but not a particularly
| good one.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Walmart.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.
|
| 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.
| Loughla wrote:
| I disagree. There are many other sites to buy anything you
| find on Amazon. If they raise prices and don't drop them,
| but other online retailers either don't increase or lower
| after they do, Amazon loses.
|
| People Google things they're going to buy. Or at the very
| least they go to other places they're familiar with like
| Walmart (for the US).
| bdcravens wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| zobzu wrote:
| i fully expect it yo be permanent. they know its likely to come
| back down.
| Brainspackle wrote:
| Do you buy off Temu and re-sell on amazon?
| binarysolo wrote:
| I dunno why that's a whole meme, but nobody of any scale is
| doing that. We produce products through factories like most
| established sellers.
| ilamont wrote:
| Amazon still charges ebook publishers the same "delivery fee"
| for each sold digital copy (US$0.15/megabyte) as it did in the
| mid 2000s when Kindles came with 3g chips.
|
| https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200634500
| klysm wrote:
| Maybe the technical requirements at the time were a good
| excuse but as soon as you demonstrate the market will
| tolerate that why on earth would you remove it?
| jazz9k wrote:
| 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.
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