We want to lead off this announcement by asking any of our small business customers who rely on our service to serve their customers that may not be able to manage the following change to contact us and discuss their specific needs with us.
We also want to remind customers that our software has been set to apply our slightly lower weekly customer rate to every other week customers, so long as they remain on a regularly fixed schedule. To offset the impact of the following additional charge, we invite customers to contact our customer satisfaction team by phone or email or log in to your account online to change from weekly to every other week service. Our software will automatically exclude you from our manifest every other week and include you every other week.
As most of our customers may have concluded by watching the news about inflation, most all of our costs have been increasing significantly, including and especially fuel. We also are aware that our team members who work to serve our customers are feeling a similar effect on their budgets.
We will be adding a $4 inflation adjustment and fuel surcharge to each invoice (equivalent to about an extra two pounds of laundry for our weekly customers and less for our by request customers). This will begin February 1st. We will assess at the end of 2022 whether this will continue or end at the end of the year.
Customers who regularly have invoices under our $35 minimum may also see on their invoice an adjustment related to minimum charges. This will be required in order for our software to be able to actually add the charge (rather than just applying it toward the minimum).
This will be used for two purposes: to offset our increased fuel and other inflation related operating costs and to provide a pay increase to our team members.
We feel based on our deep knowledge of compensation in analogous companies to ours around the country that our production team members are paid well, compared with both other laundry service companies and alternative lines of work. We have also strived to assure that our driving team members are paid at or toward the top of what people with similar driving experience might be paid elsewhere. That said, our driving team members are choosing to be part of our team and our business culture, serving our customers. They have the ability to be with Amazon or Amazon outsources carrying lighter weight items. We will be applying some of this surcharge toward a pay increase for them.
We hope that our customers will continue to view the time saving and convenience benefits of our service as worth this additional charge. We hope to continue serving you and your referrals well into the future. Yet, we must assure that we can cover our costs and operate profitably in order to do that.
Sincerely,
The Marin Wash and Fold Team