New Colorado retail delivery fee causing issues for small businesses

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KKTV) - Colorado has a new 27 cents retail delivery fee that applies to all deliveries by motor vehicles. This includes Amazon deliveries, florist deliveries, food delivery and more. Many small business owners in Colorado Springs are not happy with the new fee, and one small business owner tells KKTV 11 News that it’s costing her more than $100,000 to implement new software and systems around the fee for all her business.

While 27 cents may not seem like a pricey addition to deliveries, Sheri Cervantes, owner of “A Flower Girl’s Dream,” tells us it adds up over time. She hasn’t done her own calculations just yet on how much this will cost her in the coming months.

“That 27 cents can absolutely add up, and I can’t really imagine what that could possibly be,” Cervantes states.

Cervantes also outlines the money that comes right out of her business due to this fee, especially when dealing with non-profit customers.

“Basically what I have to do is I have to go to the delivery fee and minus 27 cents, so I’m actually losing the 27 cents, and then I charge them whatever the delivery fee is and then I go on and add the 27 cents fee,” says Cervantes.

Additionally, with the number of customers expected to be affected by this issue, business owners are faced with the problem of having to take the time to explain the added fee or pass it on to the customer.

“A very large percentage of my customers will be affected by this. I’m sure once they end up on the website and they see an additional fee, I will be getting phone calls on that,” Cervantes tells us. “There’s so many hats involved in being a business owner, it’s really hard to kind of start to have to educate my customers now that we have this whole new fee and it’s just a whole extra thing. And it’s very time consuming.”

The fee will go towards public services such as bridges and roads, air pollution mitigation and a “clean transit fee”, among others. A full breakdown of the fee can be found by clicking here. We reached out to the sponsors of the law for further clarification, but have not yet heard back. We’ll provide further information as it becomes available.

The new fee went into effect on July 1.