{"id":412447,"date":"2026-05-05T06:13:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T06:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/412447\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T06:13:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T06:13:10","slug":"how-fuel-costs-and-surcharges-are-hitting-nz-retailers-the-front-page","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/412447\/","title":{"rendered":"How fuel costs and surcharges are hitting NZ retailers \u2013 The Front Page"},"content":{"rendered":"

Journalist and publisher of the K\u0101k\u0101, Bernard Hickey, told the Front Page<\/a> that a lot of people were hopeful that this would be a short-term blip.<\/p>\n

\u201cA bit like the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, where prices shot up for about a month, maybe two months, and then they started to come down.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, we are into the third month now, and all of the noise we are hearing from the Strait of Hormuz is that Donald Trump is in for the long term.\u200aThe Iranians are definitely in for the long term.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf that\u2019s the case, that will create more damage in the stream of oil and products downstream and also upstream, because every time you have to turn off one of these wells, you actually destroy future production. <\/p>\n

“\u200aTo do anything really that\u2019s used in the retail economy, and it\u2019s gonna flow through into all sorts of prices.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo you get a double whammy. Not only do you have to pay more to fill up your tank. But then, when you buy something from someone else, they\u2019ve added a surcharge on as well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Firms have run into the precarious position of having to determine how, and whether, to pass on the rise in fuel costs to customers. <\/p>\n

Hickey said there are interesting ways that companies can pass on these costs without taking blame. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s some really interesting behavioural finance going on \u2026 this is the psychology of pricing.<\/p>\n

“\u200aWho should pay? Should it be the consumer, the company, or the government? And at the moment, the surcharge language is being used to layer on a cost directly to the consumer with the expectation that the firm that\u2019s doing it won\u2019t get blamed and that, in theory, it\u2019ll go away soon.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat will be the interesting thing. We need to go back to people in two or three months and ask if the surcharge has gone away yet. <\/p>\n

\u201cAt some point, the surcharge thing becomes a bit of a wheeze, and we\u2019ll have to revisit it, because a bit like the credit\/debit card\/payWave problem; it\u2019s sneaky.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis idea that the prices of things you can rely on, that they\u2019re gonna be there the next day and the day after that, that\u2019s gone. And so when you get these little add-ons and nips and tucks and little scratchy bits of paper stuck on machines saying there\u2019s a surcharge, you get very grumpy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Listen to the full episode<\/a> to hear more about:<\/p>\n

Effects on SMEsFuel surchargesSludge economicsHow oil markets are like Wile E. Coyote.<\/p>\n

The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5pm. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime\/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.<\/p>\n

You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio<\/a>, Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a> or wherever you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Journalist and publisher of the K\u0101k\u0101, Bernard Hickey, told the Front Page that a lot of people were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404298,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[534,95,192,10166,6932,802,25343,1668,2678,2070,25282,193025,25901,20557,221,6964,111,43,139,69,28630,12937,25344,6492,8808,91624,16746,78776,223,102,9184,80],"class_list":["post-412447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-amid","tag-and","tag-are","tag-businesses","tag-cash","tag-costs","tag-dwindling","tag-front","tag-fuel","tag-full","tag-fully","tag-fumes","tag-hasnt","tag-hitting","tag-how","tag-kiwisaver","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-page","tag-prices","tag-reserves","tag-retailers","tag-running","tag-shockwave","tag-surcharges","tag-surging","tag-the","tag-with","tag-yet","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}