One of the most interesting national disgraces this past week is the fact that people have decided to make toilet paper scarce. As if people did not have enough to worry about, they now have to spend time and money to locate an essential item that most people need daily, and if they can't find it, it is very likely they will use whatever is at hand - and I am not talking about oak leaves. So to compound the problems of the Coronavirus in general, all the not-toilet paper which gets flushed could wreak havoc with municipal treatment systems, and for what? It's not like people started pooping five times more often.
I know that general hoarding is probably the biggest reason for the problem, but the of selling toilet paper on Ebay at 5 or 10x markups is the most egregious. I'm sure the sellers feel like true heroes of Capitalism, but in truth, they are doing it no favors. So it's good to see that some stores are cracking down, but it's probably not very effective right now. It does not take more than browsing the first page of listings for toilet paper on Ebay to find examples of gouging.
Although it 's a pretty limp response from a platform that should be able to automatically figure out when people are gouging on items like masks, hand sanitizer, and toilet paper, rather than leaning on users to do it for them... price gouging on ebay can be reported at the link below. I don't recall being able to report sellers earlier this week for price gouging (seeing a 4 pack going for $30 plus shipping made me curious), so I think this may be a new thing:
www.ebay.com/help/policies/prohibited-restricted-items/disaster-tragedy-policy?id=5051
In order to report an item, you need to first browse the item, and then when you go to the link, it will show an image from last several items browsed (with the most recent one on the left side). When you click the pic of the item to report, you will get directed to the next page with the the item listing name, and the item number (but no description or price). Then just select the item and report it by selecting "price gouging" for the first two pull down boxes, and then select the last box which describes what type of item it is (for TP it would be hygiene items).
And if you actually got ripped off or just feel like turning things up to 11, many states have price gouging laws which may apply.
consumer.findlaw.com/consumer-transactions/price-gouging-laws-by-state.html
The sheer stupidity of the great toilet paper gold rush of 2020 will hopefully stop soon. It's a side show, and just adds more grief to people's lives in a time when people are already losing jobs, risking their lives to make a buck or trying to care for vulnerable family members - or trying to care for all of us.
And now for some good news, I saw this yesterday - Harbor Freight is donating it's entire stock of n95 masks and PPE to hospitals that need them most:
https://www.nj.com/business/2020/03/harbor-freight-stores-donating-all-masks-and-gloves-to-help-fight-coronavirus.html
Although I have had a 3.5 star experience with items from Harbor Freight over the years, this just bumped them up to five stars in my mind.
I know that general hoarding is probably the biggest reason for the problem, but the of selling toilet paper on Ebay at 5 or 10x markups is the most egregious. I'm sure the sellers feel like true heroes of Capitalism, but in truth, they are doing it no favors. So it's good to see that some stores are cracking down, but it's probably not very effective right now. It does not take more than browsing the first page of listings for toilet paper on Ebay to find examples of gouging.
Although it 's a pretty limp response from a platform that should be able to automatically figure out when people are gouging on items like masks, hand sanitizer, and toilet paper, rather than leaning on users to do it for them... price gouging on ebay can be reported at the link below. I don't recall being able to report sellers earlier this week for price gouging (seeing a 4 pack going for $30 plus shipping made me curious), so I think this may be a new thing:
www.ebay.com/help/policies/prohibited-restricted-items/disaster-tragedy-policy?id=5051
In order to report an item, you need to first browse the item, and then when you go to the link, it will show an image from last several items browsed (with the most recent one on the left side). When you click the pic of the item to report, you will get directed to the next page with the the item listing name, and the item number (but no description or price). Then just select the item and report it by selecting "price gouging" for the first two pull down boxes, and then select the last box which describes what type of item it is (for TP it would be hygiene items).
And if you actually got ripped off or just feel like turning things up to 11, many states have price gouging laws which may apply.
consumer.findlaw.com/consumer-transactions/price-gouging-laws-by-state.html
The sheer stupidity of the great toilet paper gold rush of 2020 will hopefully stop soon. It's a side show, and just adds more grief to people's lives in a time when people are already losing jobs, risking their lives to make a buck or trying to care for vulnerable family members - or trying to care for all of us.
And now for some good news, I saw this yesterday - Harbor Freight is donating it's entire stock of n95 masks and PPE to hospitals that need them most:
https://www.nj.com/business/2020/03/harbor-freight-stores-donating-all-masks-and-gloves-to-help-fight-coronavirus.html
Although I have had a 3.5 star experience with items from Harbor Freight over the years, this just bumped them up to five stars in my mind.
RSS Feed
