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Amazon is adding a fuel surcharge to fees it collects from third-party sellers

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Re: Amazon is adding a fuel surcharge to fees it collects from third-party sellers

#71

Post by joemi »

binarysolo wrote: post #52
Brainspackle wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you buy off Temu and re-sell on amazon?

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.

It 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.

Re: Amazon is adding a fuel surcharge to fees it collects from third-party sellers

#72

Post by exabrial »

lokar wrote: post #25
exabrial wrote: post #3

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 warrant…

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.

yeah... I'll take clean air and pay a few extra bucks the 3 times a year I actually need to mail something.

Re: Amazon is adding a fuel surcharge to fees it collects from third-party sellers

#73

Post by exabrial »

hadlock wrote: post #47
SoftTalker wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dri…

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 p…

I pay all of my property taxes online.

Re: Amazon is adding a fuel surcharge to fees it collects from third-party sellers

#74

Post by morelandjs »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #69
klysm wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

To turn around the famous quote: "Amazon's margin is someone else's opportunity". :) The Amazon flywheel is all about reducing costs to consumers. The moment that stops happening, consumers can get caught by offers elsewhere, and the flywheel can start to go backwards.

I physically twitch every time I hear a flywheel mentioned. Intended to be evocative of certain physics without actually substantiating any of it.

Re: Amazon is adding a fuel surcharge to fees it collects from third-party sellers

#76

Post by sidrag22 »

jazz9k wrote: post #50

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.

It 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.

Re: Amazon is adding a fuel surcharge to fees it collects from third-party sellers

#77

Post by joemi »

SoftTalker wrote: post #48
michaelt wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

That's still far more reliable than trying to email someone who doesn't have a computer or smartphone.

Re: Amazon is adding a fuel surcharge to fees it collects from third-party sellers

#78

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

youarentrightjr wrote: post #68
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about?

On the off chance you're sincere but not well educated on this topic: > What are you talking about? Kamala Harris was DA for SF during the early 2010s, where she explicitly backed the city's sanctuary policies. As CA AG she opposed the "Stop Sanctuary Policies and Protect Americans Act", which was aimed at deterring sanctuary cities through withholding of federal funding. In the 2024 presidential election she was the…

Well, your original statement was “Let's not enforce any immigration law, and subsidize those here illegally” and then brought up sanctuary cities.

It’s not the city or states job to enforce federal immigration laws. This was confirmed by the Supreme Court

https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/07/supreme-court-denies-flor...

In other words your argument is prima facie irrelevant. The city or state is not responsible for “enforcing immigration laws”

Just on the off chance you don’t know this…

Re: Amazon is adding a fuel surcharge to fees it collects from third-party sellers

#79

Post by binarysolo »

joemi wrote: post #71
binarysolo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It 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 goo…

It's prob the other way around -- for almost a decade, Amazon's made it incredibly accessible for any Chinese factory, trading company, and middleman to spin up new brands on Amazon to reduce American brands and resellers' pricing powers. So the guys on Temu are selling their stuff rebranded on Amazon because it's fairly easy to spin up new stores and brands, while making it difficult for US sellers to do likewise.

Even worse (this actually happened to us a couple years back), Chinese companies outright steal our images/assets and then put them on other channels like Temu or Aliexpress, selling their knockoffs there pretending to be us. We were only made aware of this when we noticed products asking to be RMA'd from our support email, but with order receipts coming in from Aliexpress.

I digress, but the beatings will continue until morale improves...

Re: Amazon is adding a fuel surcharge to fees it collects from third-party sellers

#80

Post by assimpleaspossi »

Please 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.

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