by Neville Chaney
Every day we are inundated with “fees” that seem unfair. If you still get your television service from cable, you know what I mean. Or, if you fly to another location for business or pleasure you may pay luggage fees, resort fees, or convenience fees. The list can get quite long. Trucking companies have added fuel surcharges in the face of rising fuel costs. Perhaps, your vendors have added fuel surcharges as a result. Have any of those surcharges been reduced or eliminated now that fuel is available at a lower price?At WJ Office we receive daily deliveries from our largest vendor. We place our orders electronically multiple times a day and deliveries arrive through a contract carrier each night into a secure area of our warehouse.
We pay a charge for this service along with a separate charge for products shipped to our contract delivery service in Hudson, NC. When the price of diesel fuel started to climb, the vendor added a fuel surcharge to offset that additional cost that the contract delivery service was charging. Obviously, this was not particularly popular with the vendor’s customers. However, the vendor did something a little unusual. It tied the fuel surcharge to the price of diesel. In other words, if diesel fuel hit a particular price range, the fuel surcharge was at a certain level. If it dropped, that surcharge was lowered. There was even a floor put in whereby the surcharge would disappear altogether if the price of diesel fuel dropped below that level.
I really like this company and I admired the fairness applied to this system. In an era in which these surcharges (which I think should be temporary due to unusual economic conditions) become a permanent “tax” – it’s simply unfair and we need to express that sentiment to those firms where appropriate. An “ordering fee” is another example that’s difficult to swallow. With this tax, each order that you place gets a $5 charge or more just to place an order with your vendor!
December 2022 marked the 46th anniversary of WJ Office. Though we have paid these fees (grudgingly) to some of our vendors, we have never instituted a surcharge or ordering fee.
The last three years have been interesting. Our prices get compared to the vendors who are charging a surcharge and/or ordering fees. In most cases customers don’t realize that they have to calculate those fees/taxes into the price that they are paying for goods! It’s hidden. It’s unfair to the customer, and if it’s necessary to cover some unusual costs, it needs to be temporary and go away when the “cost crisis” is over.
This is another example of doing business “The WJ Way.”