World's smallest violin to be played for opportunistic sellers banned from eBay and Amazon for price gouging
- Reference: 1585127708
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/25/pricegouging_which/
- Source link:
For those emerging from a period of hibernation, things aren't too good in the world at the moment. Panic buying has left some essentials in short supply as shoppers, fearful of lacking sufficient tissue with which to polish their posterior during a period of isolation, cleared the shelves.
As is sadly so often the case, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought the opportunists out to play, and Which?'s snapshot survey of the online bazaars of Amazon and eBay conducted between 16 and 19 March makes for disappointing reading.
Despite the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) dispensing a stern warning against exploitation of the current panic through price gouging, some third-party sellers have continued to inflate prices because, heck – prices set themselves, right?
Indeed they do, but this hack can but hope there is a special place in hell reserved for the individual found selling £10 infant formula for £100 on eBay. 50ml bottles of Carex antibacterial hand gel were also spotted on the bazaar selling for £100 (normal price £1.50).
A digital thermometer, which normally retails for £40, was sighted going for £150 on Amazon and £300 on eBay.
The retailers, who also collect commission on these sales via its platforms, should perhaps reward the sellers with mirrors in which to take a long, hard look at themselves, though shoppers must also shoulder blame.
Which? spotted a bundle of three Dettol Sprays and three packs of antibacterial wipes in an eBay auction that started at £0.01 but had hit £210 with less than an hour to go.
The watchdog said it had asked eBay on 9 March "what action it was taking to protect customers from price gouging on antibacterial gel?" The online souk replied that filters were in place, but it appears that traders were able to circumvent them.
Amazon, on the other hand, seemed to be having a little more success as Which? noted that some inflated items were taken down during the investigation period.
Which? called on the companies to institute more manual checks if automated systems are letting miscreants through. The Register understands that Amazon has indeed inserted some manual audits into its processes as well as machine learning models to keep an eye on things.
Bezos' boxshifters told The Register : "There is no place for price gouging on Amazon. We are disappointed that bad actors are attempting to artificially raise prices on basic need products during a global health crisis and, in line with our long-standing policy, have recently blocked or removed tens of thousands of offers. In addition to removing these offers, we are terminating accounts."
As for eBay, the online bazaar told Which? that the items spotted had been removed and action taken against the sellers.
It told El Reg that it had announced on 24 March "Emergency Listing Restrictions on products including baby formula, toilet roll, nappies, baby wipes and tampons. This follows an announcement on Friday that we would also restrict sales of masks and hand sanitiser products. We have been deploying increasingly aggressive measures against price gouging for almost two months now."
eBay UK's [2]Twitter feed has been a stream of finger wagging at those profiting from the panic.
While it is easy to give online giants a kicking over inflated listings, the most distressing aspect of the Which? research is not so much the behaviour of the tech behemoths, but that of the humans who have seen fit to take advantage of the desperation of others.
Sue Davies, head of consumer protection at Which?, gave some credit to the marketplaces for their efforts thus far, but insisted: "These companies must make good on their pledges to stamp out coronavirus profiteering, and if they fall short the CMA must be ready to take strong enforcement action."
She added: "The [UK] government should consider how it will work with the retail sector as a whole to keep the price of essential items reasonable as the fallout from the coronavirus outbreak continues."
Because, at the end of the day, humans are just going to human until forced otherwise. ®
[1] https://www.which.co.uk/news/2020/03/online-marketplaces-coronavirus-update-ebay-and-amazon/
[2] https://twitter.com/eBayUK_news/status/1242080463310782469
Meanwhile other auctions on Ebay are not getting bids. I've won such a beautiful guitar for about half its value. I'm feeling so guily that I've sent the guy an offer of a fairer price way highter than the winning bid.
Don't be selling anything right now.
These goods are not essentials.
Leave the idiots alone.
Exactly. If these sellers were abusing a monopoly position in essentials then the authorities should come down on them like a ton of bricks, but if someone is so daft as to be willing pay 150 quid for a bottle of hand sanitizer then who are we to stop them? They could just buy soap instead.
Did you overlook baby formula?
Something people in need can obtain.
People are stockpiling 36 months worth and causing issues in shops, but if a new parent is completely out they will have contact already with medical staff who can help arrange short term supplies based on local arrangements.
Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) dispensing a stern warning
did they write a threatening letter? Check. And check again, for themselves, for having taken their ruthless action. Ah, somebody will point out they have no powers, other than drawing large checks. So, what do they actually DO that makes any difference?
A better response ...
Would be to leave the page open block all offers on it and add on every offer by that user the following message: I'm a price gouging asshole who thinks making an excessive profit is much more important than your health'
there is a special place in hell reserved for the individual
wait for the bombs starting to fall. Or look up history books, what individuals of a homo sapiens are capable of, and I'm not talking about extreme examples...
£10 price + £150 postage and packaging
You need to use 3 disposable hazmat suits to safely handle inbound stock transfer, warehousing and then dispatching them to the royal mail collection... the handling costs of even a simple HT7333 can be quite high.
Legit business expense, especially for such a critical supply where only a newly established supplier who shares your warehouse can reliably guarantee priority service. Once the limited liabilities with government backed loans are all laundered at the end of the year they should make a profit, but on e-paper it currently costs that entity £300 per package and they are doing you a favour by subsidising it as a charitable donation to the econonic relief efforts.
What do you mean they aren't those kind of sellers? Hmm, guess they need to adapt to the new world like the rest of us...
How about supermarkets...
...two moderate chicken breasts - £8
Re: How about supermarkets...
OK, fine, but how much is it for two immoderate chicken breasts?
Two moderate breasts
Two moderate breasts = $ 58008
Re: Two moderate breasts
So does that make the price of thighs $ 55378008?
On a side note, does anyone remember an old Tomorrows World episode where Carol V. is holding up a calculator with a similar value? I'm sure I didn't imagine it. Then again that's possible.
Re: How about supermarkets...
As opposed to the more left- or right-wing breasts, which are much less desirable and therefore cheaper.
Re: How about supermarkets...
Round here chickens seem to come with a matched pair of left & right wings. A balanced meal?
Obvious gouging is obvious
As in any global, or even national, scare, gouging was inevitable and obvious. What else are all the twats with garages full of bog roll going to do with it?
Prices on everything should have been frozen as soon as global spread was noticed, was harsh penalties for anyone profiteering. But no, that's not democratic.
Supermarkets should have imposed strict item limits (say 2 of anything max) as soon as it was clear people were emptying the shelves. But no, that would get in the way of their profits.
Expecting people to behave in troubled times is never going to work. Always profits to be made, and arseholes to make them off the desperation of others.
Re: Obvious gouging is obvious
Apparently already done in Scandinavia - ultra simple for the supermarkets to deal with on Day 1 - just reverse your BOGOF algorithm - Buy 1 £2 - Buy 2 - £5 - Buy 3 £12 erc...
A suspicious cynic would probably just think someone (and I'm not pointing fingers at any particular pudgy puppy....) wanted to empty their pre-brexit no deal stockpile to make room for Easter eggs.....
"filters were in place"
Well, they're working very well, are they ?
At the same time, this is Ebay we're talking about. I think it's a bit unfair to single out the guy who posted an offer at 0.01 and the offer reached 210. It's not the sellers' fault if people are nuts, even if it is rather obvious that he fully intended to take advantage of the nuts.
Re: "filters were in place"
and while there are loads of scummy scammers out there - and the 'seller' of the £210 toilet roll may well be one - I applaud the person who bid £210. Most probably someone enjoying taking a scammer down, with no intention of paying. Of course the really neat thing to do would be to wait for delivery and then send back a used roll, while raising a complaint that the roll was 'not new as described' and getting their money refunded.
The special circle in hell should be reserved for the people selling fake medicines, ineffectual masks, and bogus testing kits.
RTFA
I don't think you read the article. The seller put the stuff on sale at 0.01 hardly a "scammer". That some twats bid it up to £210 doesn't mean it was sold to the highest bidder but to the highest bid that didn't renege.
Re: RTFA
I can't actually believe that anyone would have ever actually paid £210 for a toilet roll. Or at least not with their own money...You could subscribe to a red top newspaper for a year for that price....
Re: "filters were in place"
The special circle in hell should be reserved for the selfish bastards who started panic buying in the first place. They are worse than the Amazon and eBay sellers and, without the panic buyers, there would be no over-priced market for stuff.
Shirley
This is the epitome of democratic, free market capitalism?
The moron who bid £210 is also responsible for the absurdity of the situation.
If the past is anything to go by, at various times when there have bee shortages, for every gouger there is a least one twat with more money than sense who will pay an outrageously inflated price because they can and others can't.
I think both parties of such a deal deserve a place in hell because they just make life difficult for everyone else.
Unbridled socialism doesn't work but neither does unbridled capitalism, we need some balance between the extremes.
Hmmm
It's very shitty but the problem is, its capitalism. I don't hear the same bodies shouting at the insurance companies in America that won't give out treatment for Covid for free. When Trump, the idiot, said testing would be free and all treatment, they all rushed to the phones and papers to say "TREATMENT ISN'T FREE".
I don't hear the same bodies berating the likes of Apple for selling their devices at a massive market up. And the American pharma companies putting massive markeups on drugs way before all this kicked off.
Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth said the prime minister “wants to sign up to a US trade deal with Trump which would force the NHS to buy pricier drugs from US pharmaceutical companies putting NHS finances at risk”
The best way to fsck these scum
Go onto their rip off items and ask the seller a question.
Question gets posted immediately whilst the response will take longer, so shows as a pending response.
Possibly embarrassing them will help as the CMA is useless.
Price Gouging: the free market libertarian perspective
I saw an interesting argument to allow price gouging. To me, this argument sounds like a good way to encourage robbery and shopflight, but I'd love to hear more nuanced takes on this theory:
"Anytime you have a sudden huge increase in demand, like for toilet paper or hand sanitizer recently, the price must rise to reflect that. If it doesn’t, there will be shortages and empty shelves. We can whine on social media all we want, but this will ALWAYS happen if prices aren’t allowed to rise. Which they aren’t allowed to, because we have “price gouging” laws and social media scolds which will severely punish retailers who raise prices above some arbitrary metric.
"The reason for the inevitability of hoarding and empty shelves is because the market value of the toilet paper or hand gel is suddenly far higher than what it’s being sold for. Thus, there’s no penalty for hoarding and over supplying, because even if the hoarding isn’t ultimately needed, no one has overpaid for the product, and can just use the toilet paper in the future. So you have a prisoner’s dilemma-type situation. Everyone can scoff at each other for hoarding and say it’s unethical, but the first person who hoards benefits tremendously by buying goods at way under market value. ...
"What “price gouging” does is to raise the cost of the good to the market clearing price, which is critical because it lets everyone know what the actual value of the good is, and sends the proper price signal to consumers and producers. With higher prices, if you hoard you are paying a huge penalty for doing so and taking a huge risk, because if prices drop in the future you’ll be a giant loser. Few will stock up on gallons of hand sanitizer or pallets of TP if it costs them a fortune. Additionally, it sends a signal to conserve those valuable resources and shift behavior if possible.
"The other benefit to price gouging is to give producers a huge incentive to produce more. Ramping up hand sanitizer gel production is now much more lucrative than producing hair gel, for instance. Allowing prices to function allows the market to allocate resources to their most productive use, which is what we want, particularly in dire situations. We want producers to up the supply and drive the price back down. If no price signal is given, there’s little incentive to do so.
"Whining about and prohibiting price gouging does two things; it guarantees shortages and hoarding, and lessens the incentive for producers and retailers to bring more product to the market."
Online marketplaces descend into wretched hives of scum and villainy
Whereas, previously, all the sellers were law-abiding VAT-registered businesses selling genuine and safe products from reputable manufacturers?
I think the villainous scum have simply altered their appearance by donning ineffective paper masks.