Very high on my list of Pet Peeves of how to irritate a customer: Add a surcharge to your bill for oil, gas, delivery, etc. because the price of fuel has gone up.

Excuse me, but when oil is $100 a barrel, it impacts everyone. So not only has your cost gone up, but so have the costs of your customers and the people who work for you. Yet most of us don’t go around adding “fuel surcharges” to our invoices.

The cost of delivering your product is part of your cost of doing business. If you’ve priced your product appropriately, you shouldn’t have to tack on these irritating little surcharges.

Besides, when was the last time a company gave you a fuel credit because the price of fuel went down?  Instead, these charges become a permanent part of the invoices and another way for companies to generate revenue.

If you’re going to charge me for these types of things, at least have the courtesy to credit me for all the things I do that help save you money (starting with the fact that it costs less to keep and grow an existing customer than to have to go out and market to get new business).

Or deep six the surcharges.