My local grocery store was out of hand sanitizer mid week. When I went this morning there were two shopping carts full of it by the front door, being sold at the regular price. Didn't look like anyone was buying any. The store likely was out mid week because of people like Mr. Colvin. They thought they could corner the market and know nothing about the ability of the US logistics system to resupply in face of a small increase in demand likely caused by speculators rather than a huge spike in demand.
He Has 17,700 Bottles of Hand Sanitizer and Nowhere to Sell Them
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Re: He Has 17,700 Bottles of Hand Sanitizer and Nowhere to Sell Them
#12The subjects of this story, Matt Colvin and Noah Colvin, spent days driving from store to store, buying up all of the antiseptic supplies the stores had. Then they ordered pallets more online wherever they could. Everywhere they bought, they tried to completely clean out the supplier's stock.
Then of course they started selling their hoard online for multiples of their purchase price.
I don't say this lightly: Fuck these assholes. If this article is accurate, then these guys are true pieces of human shit. Amazon and Ebay should be applauded for shutting them down.
Some rise in prices is natural and expected; the only alternative is enforced rationing. But what these guys do is different; they're trying to create privation and desperation in the market so they can profit from it.
It's difficult -- maybe impossible -- to make this activity illegal in a way that doesn't critically threaten the legitimate free market, and that's an important aspect of the evil that these people do.
Re: He Has 17,700 Bottles of Hand Sanitizer and Nowhere to Sell Them
#13The amount of rationalization on their part makes me want to vomit. That Dollar General in Kentucky was there and provisioned for the needs of it's local market.
Them jumping in and clearing things out completely blows the hell out of what is a carefully optimized logistics network tuned via competition to keep prices down, and doubling down on resource expenditure to get product from manufacturer to end user at the cheapest cost possible by inflating the number of miles it has to physically travel all in the name of maybe being able to get away with massive price markups.
This behavior is why we can't ever seem to have nice things. Fuck these people and their reckless chicanery. May their reputations follow them for the foreseeable future.
Re: He Has 17,700 Bottles of Hand Sanitizer and Nowhere to Sell Them
#14Slightly offtopic, but should you need sanitizer and your local stores are out of stock — perhaps due to people like the subjects of this article — you can make your own based on this guide from the WHO:
https://www.who.int/gpsc/5may/Guide_to_Local_Production.pdf
Re: He Has 17,700 Bottles of Hand Sanitizer and Nowhere to Sell Them
#15Mr. Colvin does not believe he was price gouging. While he charged $20 on Amazon for two bottles of Purell that retail for $1 each, he said people forget that his price includes his labor, Amazon’s fees and about $10 in shipping. (Alcohol-based sanitizer is pricey to ship because officials consider it a hazardous material.
This is bollocks. Anybody wrongly offended, should try to figure out which one is wrong, the word or the concept of feeding on misery. This person is price gouging.
Re: He Has 17,700 Bottles of Hand Sanitizer and Nowhere to Sell Them
#16The amount of rationalization on their part makes me want to vomit. That Dollar General in Kentucky was there and provisioned for the needs of it's local market. Them jumping in and clearing things out completely blows the hell out of what is a carefully optimized logistics network tuned via competition to keep prices down, and doubling down on resource expenditure to get product from manufacturer to end user at the…
If these griefers blew out your "carefully optimized logistics network tuned via competition to keep prices down", then maybe there's a problem with it, and its ability to react to crisis or manipulation.
What specific rules of the free market did they break? Are you suggesting we should have anti-hoarding regulations imposed against the free market to keep these individuals out of it?
Re: He Has 17,700 Bottles of Hand Sanitizer and Nowhere to Sell Them
#17This guy needs a visit from the IRS and his inventory seized.
>This guy needs a visit from the IRS
Why do you immediately jump to the assumption that he's going to engage in tax fraud? Or are you wishing for extrajudicial punishment when someone does a "bad" thing that's not illegal?
Re: He Has 17,700 Bottles of Hand Sanitizer and Nowhere to Sell Them
#18Re: He Has 17,700 Bottles of Hand Sanitizer and Nowhere to Sell Them
#19The amount of rationalization on their part makes me want to vomit. That Dollar General in Kentucky was there and provisioned for the needs of it's local market. Them jumping in and clearing things out completely blows the hell out of what is a carefully optimized logistics network tuned via competition to keep prices down, and doubling down on resource expenditure to get product from manufacturer to end user at the…
If these griefers blew out your "carefully optimized logistics network tuned via competition to keep prices down", then maybe there's a problem with it, and its ability to react to crisis or manipulation. What specific rules of the free market did they break? Are you suggesting we should have anti-hoarding regulations imposed against the free market to keep these individuals out of it?
Are you suggesting we should have anti-hoarding regulations imposed against the free market to keep these individuals out of it?
Re: He Has 17,700 Bottles of Hand Sanitizer and Nowhere to Sell Them
#20The amount of rationalization on their part makes me want to vomit. That Dollar General in Kentucky was there and provisioned for the needs of it's local market. Them jumping in and clearing things out completely blows the hell out of what is a carefully optimized logistics network tuned via competition to keep prices down, and doubling down on resource expenditure to get product from manufacturer to end user at the…
If these griefers blew out your "carefully optimized logistics network tuned via competition to keep prices down", then maybe there's a problem with it, and its ability to react to crisis or manipulation. What specific rules of the free market did they break? Are you suggesting we should have anti-hoarding regulations imposed against the free market to keep these individuals out of it?
"we should have anti-hoarding regulations imposed"
That is a brilliant idea for other consumers and the health of our planet. Point well taken and I will share this out.