Online sales already have thin margins and this won’t help. Some of the fees will be passed along to consumers, but some of it will impact retailers’ already embattled bottom-lines. I doubt that these additional charges are going to negatively impact online sales in the short-term or even at all – these extra fees will be like bank fees, nobody likes them, but we all pay.

Prices will unfortunately be going up. The USDA expects beef and poultry prices to increase 1 percent to 2 percent this year, and pork up to 3 percent due to disruption in supply chains.

While there may be some relief to businesses from stimulus packages, the costs may ultimately be a consumer burden, which will cause further belt-tightening and more intentional purchasing.

Retailers will want to pass along surcharges, not least because many already struggle to make money online. However, in a highly competitive market where rivals use low-price delivery as a selling point and where consumers have been trained not to pay for fulfillment, the ability to increase prices will be very limited. As an alternative, I think a lot of retailers will try and drive cheaper collection from store options to protect margins.

Retailers need to make every transaction profitable and losing money on shipping is not an acceptable long-term strategy. If the surcharges are temporary, some retailers may absorb the costs or at least some of the cost. Long-term, retailers will need to pass on the costs to consumers and an extra 30-60 cents won’t be noticeable.

You are already seeing services that require employees to have a variety of COVID-19 gear. Food pricing is going up as well – I do not know how this will go on but this may become the norm and unfortunately customers are going to have to adjust or make alternative choices.

Oh, great. Another challenge for retail. Just what we needed. I must confess to being extremely naive to the inner workings of the logistics industry, but my initial reaction to these surcharges is exasperation. UPS and FedEx are seeing unprecedented revenues, with no end in sight. According to George’s report, it looks like most of the revenue increases are coming from retailers that are shipping more packages to nervous, cautious, and homebound consumers. So, instead of supporting their biggest customers in a time of deep crisis, the cash-rich shippers are punishing them with surcharges? It’s unconscionable. With 40 million people out of work, consumers have no capacity for higher fees or prices. Retailers will surely be forced to cover these additional costs.

Retailers that do not offer free shipping will have less problem adding the surcharge – either by increasing the thresholds for free shipping or tweaking the shipping rate bands. For those that offer free shipping without any constraints, it may be bit more complex. Brands may be able to mark up prices, but multi-brand retailers will have to play with discounts. Overall, if the average order value is $30, this represents a 1 percent increase. It may not be insignificant, but it can be managed one way or the other.

This feels to me like the postage stamp increase discussions we used to have. But 30 or 40 cents here is really not a big deal in relation to the convenience. It’s all about the convenience that consumers desire, and I believe it will be rarely complained about.

Pass along they will without a doubt. That may be in the form of minimum order size, bundling promotions, increasing margins, or any other way to minimize a the chance of a profitless transaction. The real challenge is that the consumer in summer of 2020 is not the same as in January 2020 and retailers are fighting to survive as they fix their balance sheets and supply chains at the same time. Rising costs will be passed on to reluctant consumers that are reprioritizing spending on a reduced budget. Not a great situation to be in.

There is a very thin line between the cost of margin protection and the danger of being seen as exploiting a crisis. So if delivery services add a surcharge and retailers than add their own surcharge — in whatever form — on top of that the consumer, who in many cases faces economic challenges of their own like seeing their job go away, isn’t likely to forgive or forget when/if things ever stabilize. Will consumers accept it? What choice to they have? Will they understand it? That’s the real question.

The whole process, the whole game of retail just got more expensive. And given the profitability of retail overall pre-pandemic, the old fee structure is not sustainable. It was never really workable, much less sustainable. “Free” was never free. And any fees that were charged never really covered the whole transaction, especially when you take returns and the attending handling costs into consideration. Something had to give, and now with post-pandemic costs something will. Retailers have jumped through hoops to acquire and retain customers as the pandemic unfolded. Some customers have fallen in love with the newfound conveniences of delivery, BOPIS and BOPAC. Other customers can’t wait to get back into the mall. The accelerated shift to e-commerce will find a new point of equilibrium, but so will the fee structure of that new retail model.

Since everything else in retail is changing right now, I’d add 75 cents onto every order as a delivery surcharge pass through, but note that half is being contributed to a (local) charity — like a food bank. At some point costs and price to the customer have to reflect reality. I think customers, if informed, will pay a “fair” price. I haven’t exactly been filling my car with gas going to the mall these days. If everyone jumped in it could work.

This is on top of the rate hike across carriers in late 2019. The carriers execute this every year with a small rate hike. The coronavirus-induced, mid-year increase is a response to the increased orders that are being placed. Retailers will continue doing what they’ve been doing – either eating up the cost themselves to offer free shipping or passing it to the customer in the form of increased product prices, added shipping fees, or increased minimum free shipping thresholds. The slight increase will not be noticeable, especially for customers already paying large fees and tips to last-mile delivery firms like Instacart et. al. The smartest retailers will continue optimization of packaging and shipping options to lower overall costs to ship. The expectations of free shipping from the consumer will continue.

A set of larger retailers will look toward building their own delivery operations (Walmart, Amazon) and I wouldn’t be surprised if a consortium of retailers invested in a carrier solution to reduce costs across the board.

Why is the surcharge being added? Because of volume? Did you not plan to have volume increase? Because of timing? Change pricing so that quicker delivery times pay more. Increasing the price for delivering a package with a longer delivery time makes no sense.

Retailers need to pass along these surcharges. Let’s face it. Direct to consumer shipping and selling at mass market size is unprofitable.

Unfortunately, Amazon’s investor supported undercutting of retail has raised expectations among consumers that ship-to-home is cheap — when it’s not. If retailers want to emerge from the pandemic healthy (and consumers WANT them to emerge healthy), then they need to obey economics and pass along the surcharges.

It boggles my mind that somehow we are giving companies free rein to lose massive amounts of money as long as they are getting new customers. For a healthy retail economy, we need to charge what it costs.

Another thought: The only way to establish a healthy retail market coming out of the pandemic is to establish an honest one. And that means honesty about costs as well as honesty about retailers having serious value they offer customers.

Thin margins can’t take on additional retail costs. Yet these issues are so dependent on retail categories and the willingness of the consumer to pay for them. I’d like to believe that the consumer is more willing to pay for shipping in these times. Delivery to the home is a luxury, and awareness of COVID-19’s impact on the industry, coupled with the rise of the eco-conscious consumer, could indeed pave the way for willingness to pay higher delivery fees as long as the retailer is transparent about where these costs are going.