$99 for a case of water: Texas officials report price gouging post-Harvey

[Stuart G]

Source: CNN

Jill Diss 3:15pm 8/31

Texas officials say they've gotten hundreds of complaints about price gouging and scams in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.

One convenience store in Houston reportedly charged $20 for a gallon of gas, $8.50 for a bottle of water and $99 for a case of water, according to the Texas Attorney General's office.

The state has received 684 complaints in all, according to Kayleigh Lovvorn, a spokeswoman for the office. The agency has started looking into nine cases so far but expects more.


Read more: http://money.cnn.com/2017/08/31/news/hurricane-harvey-price-gouging/index.html

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...Greed !!! ....................

[socialist_n_TN]

1. Capitalism doing what it does best.......

Gouging people.

[sandensea]

2. Trump's kind of businesscritter

If it wasn't Trump water, it should have been.

[Doitnow]

19. This is nothing. Just wait till the disaster capitalists come along and pick up land for peanuts

because many people might have to be abandoning their properties.

[socialist_n_TN]

20. Of course............

Although that's just capitalism. There's no modifiers needed. It's all a disaster.

[jpak]

3. The Magic of the Free Market!

The Invisible Hand!

[mountain grammy]

4. It's Texas. Stay out of my bidness!

[Tikki]

5. Corporations are PEOPLE..Is this anyway for PEOPLE to treat their neighbors!

Churches and other institutions should be hollering about this, nonstop.

Tikki

[logosoco]

6. Are these businesses that are doing this counting on people forgetting that they did this

when things return to "normal"?

[47of74]

7. I have a giant fuck you for price gougers

[Jack-o-Lantern]

8. Yeah, FUCK YOU! + 1000

[TexasTowelie]

9. If I had the pans and ingredients

I could make a small fortune baking bread. I bought the last loaf of bread at a convenience store last Thursday and haven't seen any bread since then. About half of Wharton is under water, nearly all entrances to town are closed and the shelves at the grocery store are nearly empty.

[moonscape]

15. The scale of this is beyond my imagination. I am so sorry :(

[syringis]

10. It is foul, hideous and barbaric !

Why officials don't prohibit that???

It is a bottomless ignominy.

No shame? No heart? No compassion???

Are they made in iron?

[oneshooter]

24. It is against the law in Texas.

https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/cpd/price-gouging

[Doreen]

11. Ahh, a Republican state.

Gotta love those sweet, caring, wonderful, patriotic, and loving Republican business people.

[gopiscrap]

12. all business is evil

it just comes out more during a crisis. The goal of any business is to fuck you out of as much money for the least cost to the business possible

[BigmanPigman]

13. They removed the tRump label from the water before they sold it...

I am assuming (my dad told this to me yesterday).

[kairos12]

14. Sellers are Drumpt college grads.

[Honeycombe8]

16. Crooks. Who do they think they are? Pharmaceutical companies? OTOH:

OTOH: WalMart has water here for $1.98 for a 36-count pack of bottled water. (Here in SW La. we are having flooding, too, with several shelters filled with people.) (But the regular price isn't much; it's regularly $2.50.)

Some of the Houston people are coming here, too, as a stop on their way further north, where the shelter has shower facilities.

Here's what retailers can learn: WalMart put its cases of bottled water on sale, and boom! Hordes of people descend on the local WalMarts and buy lots of supplies for the shelters. Sold out of the best cereals, bananas, potatoes, apples, canned meats.....

[Stuart G]

17. Good to hear positive news about WalMart for once..

thank you for sharing this.

[Igel]

18. Surprised?

In the rescues the two-three days after Harvey there were instances of people using boats pretending to be rescuers to either loot houses or rob those that would be rescued. There were videos of people actually looting. It probably continued, but the police pulled people away from rescuing people from the water to rescuing them from other Houstonians who *didn't* pull together as a community.

People were going around Kingswood saying they were from Homeland Security and telling people to evacuate. Then coming back after the houses were empty. Kingswood was evacuated the *following* night, meaning that when people came around to tell them to evacuate they were wary until they needed to be flown out by helicopter.

Next phase is gouging. It's going to happen. It will be found. It is illegal.

That bleeds into the scamming phase, which will have a number of subphases.

Greed, indeed. But perspective is needed. Neither the robberies, the looting, nor the gouging is that widespread, and I'm going to suggest that some of the scamming will be not all that local.

[Hortensis]

21. People who see this going on should post the names of these businesses.

Long ago a convenience store in our town went out of business after this kind of behavior (after an earthquake) became known. And this was before the internet. I'd only shopped there occasionally, but never after I learned of it.

[Hieronymus]

22. There are huge fines in Texas for gouging.

[Sunlei]

23. corner stores around here have always "ripped" people off. I've seen the man up the street who owns

3 close stores, in the dollar store buying cheap stuff and then its on his shelves way marked up. even stuff like milk its close dated, sometimes over dated.

A lot of people don't have transportation and walk to corner store for basic stuff. His stores never give a register receipt either.

[FreeStateDemocrat]

25. The price of gas is spiking over night by 20% or more!!!

That's gas already at the distributors so it's money in the thieves' pockets.

[old guy]

26. Texas values. Yup.