By now, you’d have heard about the FedEx price hike for Additional handling and Ground Unauthorized surcharges. Effective since September 3, this recent hike comes right on the heels of the January price hikes for additional handling, oversize and ground unauthorized surcharges, third party billing, and FedEx Freight over length surcharge. When carrier rates have been rising left, right and centre, this news can have a major effect on the bottomline of small business owners who have a niche customer pool.
What’s new with this surcharge?
As per this recent FedEx price hike, the additional handling charges for packages weighing more than 70 lbs will increase from $12 to $20. The same will apply for international express package services.
The ground unauthorized package charge will increase from $300 to $675.
What this means for retailers
This hike will be a disadvantage to several shippers, say for instance furniture or automobile retailers. These rate increases specifically target niche shippers who ship heavy or oversized products. This highly minimizes the impact (as it is aimed at only specific industries), and shipping carriers get to escape the brunt of the backlash that is usually inspired by such sudden price increases. If there are around 100 shipments in transit, and a few of them get damaged or unevenly distributed, the change in dimensional weight is inevitably billed to the shipper.
The irony is that shipping carriers try to penalize customers for mistakes, while they do not own up to their own mistakes and offer automated refunds for service errors.
In many cases, the mistake in dimensional weight billing lies on the carrier’s side but is slapped onto the customer and billed to his/ her invoice. It’s high time shipping prices became transparent and these unfair pricing policies came to an end.