It creates a horrible situation for the customer. The Company gets to absolve themselves of responsibility by offering Route. 98% of customers forego the extra charge because they're already paying a premium for a "premium" product, and add-ons like this often suck.

But now, the company has no incentive to take the extra step/$ for better packaging, and can point the finger at the customer if anything goes wrong.

I work for a (very small) company that does e-commerce and Route is really stupid. From the company perspective it sounds great because recuperating losses from FedEx is a PAIN, and often impossible in a situation like this - because hey, the company packaged it like crap.

We ended eating the costs and reshipping damaged product even when customers didn't use Route. We would have lost them as a future customer and would likely get bad reviews, etc. It's something where the fee should either be built in, or not offered at all.