I've had a couple of readers send e-mails to me, and I've had more than one vendor approach me, on the subject of fuel surcharges.  One of my best vendors came to me recently and ask that I voluntarily increase my order sizes--or possibly be subject to fuel surcharges.  Just like all of the global warming hype (What's global warming?  It's called "Spring"), there's a lot of hype around fuel.  And vendors are not immune from the hype.

When my vendor approached me with this, I said absolutely not, that I would not voluntarily increase order sizes.   To do so impacts my employer negatively...  Opportunity cost due to cash out of pocket, higher carrying costs, you name it.  Just like the next person, I want to save the planet and help out with the energy crisis, but I'm not going to cave in to hype.  I asked the vendor whether the voluntary order-size be reduced if fuel costs go down--the answer was no.  I asked the vendor what they're doing to reduce fuel costs--no real answer.  I asked whether I was going to see salary adjustment surcharges in the future--the answer was "of course, not."  The price of electricity is going up, so am I going to get an electricity bill surcharge from my vendor?

So what is a surcharge, exactly, and why should I be subject to it?  My employer's costs in certain areas go up, but we don't charge a surcharge--we bake it into the costs of goods / services sold (if we can't make the cost go away or reasonably reduce it).  When vendors start nit-picking with this whole surcharge nonsense, you need to point it out and not just cave into them.  If they insist or your price goes up, the U.S. is generally a free society the last time I checked and you're entitled to look for another vendor that can do a better job of controlling / absorbing costs.  Instead of charging me the entire fuel surcharge, why doesn't the vendor suck up a little bit of the margin in the interest of solving the energy crisis and in the spirit of a Kum Ba Yah partnership?  But I'm not going to fall all over myself and open up my employer's pocket book because my vendor can't control their costs.

The funny thing about all of this?  According to the vendor, I'm the only customer, out of thousands, that has refused to voluntarily increase my order size.  At least, that's what the vendor says...