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He Has 17,700 Bottles of Hand Sanitizer and Nowhere to Sell Them
- ausbah 7y agothe sense of self entitled heroism near the end is truly amazing
- hatenberg 7y agoAwww poor price gouging end stage capitalist. Not.
- massysett 7y agoThis guy did something that at a minimum will make him a pariah in his community and at worst could get him convicted of crimes in several states, yet he didn’t hesitate to have his name, picture, and complete confession plastered nationwide in one of the country’s premier and most widely read newspapers. Head-scratcher.
- bberenberg 7y agoWhat laws does this violate? Illegal resale without a permit or something?
- paulgb 7y agoSome states have laws against price gouging. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_gouging https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_gouging
- nabla9 7y agoPotentially price gouging laws. Even if he is not breaking laws, he is doing morally reprehensible thing.
- SamReidHughes 7y agoWhat about the people hoarding hand sanitizer?
- tjoff 7y agoAlso falls under morally reprehensible thing.
- SamReidHughes 7y agoSo he hasn't harmed net immorality. I'd say the good version of this would be buying up hand sanitizer in January, selling it for markup yesterday. And if somebody is mad that you're making money, tell people a certain percentage of the profits goes to charity.
- tjoff 7y agoOf course he has. Vast majority of hoarders don't hoard nearly that much. Vast majority of hoarders don't plan on exploiting people.
- SamReidHughes 7y agoWell, if he hasn't sold them yet, he has. He needs to find a buyer ASAP. I suppose this article would help.
- tjoff 7y agoStill immoral...
- SamReidHughes 7y agoYes.
- nabla9 7y agoIt's the difference between worry and irrationality and exploiting others in cold blood.
- jacknews 7y agodoes it have to be illegal to be bad?
- endorphone 7y agoAnti-gouging laws are seldom enforced and are of dubious constitutional basis. I'm entirely for them, but I doubt this guy is going to be convicted of anything. We had a similar case in Canada where a Vancouver couple talked to a newspaper about their enterprise and it just left me pondering what they thought the outcome would be. People respecting their "hustle" and business savvy?
- eesmith 7y agoWage theft is also seldom enforced. That doesn't make wage theft right. That is, I don't see what that has to do with anything. Anti-gouging laws are applied (it seems) after every major hurricane. I hear the news talk about how to report gouging incidents, for example. Prosecutions occur often enough that I'm surprised to hear you say they don't have a constitutional basis. Surely that would have been tested by now (and from what I can tell, it has, and not found to be unconstitutional). Yes, there are limits on what the state can do with regards to interstate trade. But most anti-gouging laws are state laws, and not really subject to direct US Federal Constitution limits. So, could you explain more about how they are dubious?
- endorphone 7y ago"Wage theft is also seldom enforced." I responded to someone who claimed that what he is doing "could get him convicted of crimes in several states". While he could potentially face sanction, he isn't going to be convicted of anything. "But most anti-gouging laws are state laws, and not really subject to direct US Federal Constitution limits." Are you seriously arguing that state laws aren't subject to the constitution? What a wild discussion. The number of actual convictions from these laws are absolutely minuscule, targeted only at major players, and a number of them fell on a constitutional challenge. "Prosecutions occur often enough" No, no they don't. You could count them on one hand. Don't confuse the big show about such laws with actual enforcement of them -- most such laws aren't even written to be enforceable (South Carolina, for instance, bans "unconscionable" pricing, which is legally meaningless). They are a showy discouragement and public placation. Let me go back to your first paragraph- "That doesn't make wage theft right." [arguing by association that I'm somehow saying that price gouging is right] Apologies for the (necessary) wording, but fuck that disingenuous, obnoxious strawman. Nowhere did I say it was right. It is heinous. It is socially reprehensible. It is obnoxious behavior, and hopefully as supplies equalize this asshole and everyone like him are caught with a garage full of these things. But if people depend upon the law to discourage people this they're going to be disappointed.
- zenonu 7y agoWe (the guy in the article and myself) live in a nation where insurance companies would rather see you die than pay out, insulin is $350/bottle when it's $7 to produce, and politicians that we elect are entirely for it all. We have ourselves to blame for setting the moral standard.
- Yuioup 7y ago"Yes Officer, we were breaking the speed limit because, let's not kid ourselves, everybody breaks the speed limit."
- jmull 7y agoOther people are bad so it's OK for you to be bad? The basic moral standard is don't be an asshole, especially not when people are desperate. You're failing that.
- listsfrin 7y agoIf it's $7 to produce why there are no new companies that sell it for $100? They'd make quite some profit.
- hawkice 7y agoIntense regulatory barriers. For a longer comment from a healthcare worker of note, see section 2 here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/04/30/buspirone-shortage-in-healthcaristan-ssr/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/04/30/buspirone-shortage-in-...
- gerardnll 7y agoSocial scourge. Capitalism at its highest.
- frenchman99 7y agoPaywall.
- strickjb9 7y agoNY Times is giving free access to articles re: Coronavirus. You just have to sign up -- even via Social sign-in, it's two clicks.
- tsukurimashou 7y ago"free access" you just have to "sign up" you pay with data, that is not free
- jsjddbbwj 7y agoThey keep your private data, so that's only free if you think your data has no value.
- tjoff 7y agoHah "Even via Social sign-in" ... Really?! How generous of them. Not even worth a bugmenot attempt.
- kwhitefoot 7y agoFirefox reader mode worked for me (in Norway).
- mantap 7y agoThis is stupid on two levels. The first is that obviously this guy is a crook, profiteering from a crisis. The second is that hand sanitizer isn't even necessary, soap and water is better, and people paying $7 for a bottle of hand sanitizer are ignorant when they could just buy a bar of soap.
- endorphone 7y agosoap and water is better Sanitizer is useful in situations where you can't wash your hands. Like when you get out of the subway system.
- mantap 7y agoThe virus can not pass through skin. Wear a mask, even a cheap fabric one if nothing else is available, to prevent yourself touching your face. Then wash your hands when you get to a bathroom.
- Yoric 7y agoI've tested this on myself. I keep touching my face to adjust the mask, so that wouldn't work for me. On the other hand, putting gloves helps me avoid touching my face, so I'd go for that.
- Xenoamorphous 7y agoFor home sure, but when you’re out hand sanitizer is very convenient.
- XorNot 7y agoHand sanitizer is really useful in office's and when you're out and about at the moment though. You basically can't get out of an office bathroom without realistically touching several surfaces of questionable cleanliness for a contagious pathogen, for example.
- huntertwo 7y ago
- coretx 7y agoThis guy should deploy a "Pay what you want when you want" model. >> Society helped. >> Eventual HUGE profits. Good people c.q people able and willing to pay outnumber "bad" people or people who can't afford it by a huge margin. Can't go wrong!
- onion2k 7y agoHe claims his actions would put him in a really good place financially, and later claims he isn't making much profit. That's some impressive cognitive dissonance.
- cdolan 7y agoAnd this gem at the end: “But I’m not looking to be in a situation where I make the front page of the news for being that guy who hoarded 20,000 bottles of sanitizer that I’m selling for 20 times what they cost me.”
- saystupidthings 7y agoThis guy is a complete piece of shit. What kind of monster do you have to be to deny everyone that lives anywhere close to you reasonable access to critical supplies? I hope a mob descends on his house.
- nabla9 7y agoPrice gouging (The practice of raising prices on certain types of goods and services to an unfair level, especially during a state of emergency) can be crime during civil emergencies. If you don't have laws and rules based society, you might be killed for doing that. 100 year ago this guy could easily get a beating or tarring and feathering type punishment. It's amazing that some person can do that and don't think that they might be doing something really wrong, at least ethically. He want's publicity for his stunt.
- guerrilla 7y agoI may be mistaken but I think the state of emergency declarations actually made price gouging universally illegal, which he probably should have expected even if eBay, Amazon and that AG hadn't acted on their own.
- GBiT 7y agoIn Lithuania, Gov allowed for some Alcoholic drink factories to make Sanitizer. One factory doing 30 tons a day of Sanitizer and starting shipping it asap. Others are smaller, but about 14 factories doing it full time. Within week, the market will be full.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 7y agoA very interesting out of the box solution to the problem.
- maxerickson 7y agoIsn't it just straightforward and sensible to use available production capacity?
- SOLAR_FIELDS 7y agoOf course, but this kind of behavior in terms of utilizing private enterprises for public good like how you describe is pretty much anathema in US and hasn’t been done since WWII. It’s a fantastic idea, but not something the US public seems able to readily accept. If you could sell it in a way that convinced the CEO’s of these companies that they would get even richer over it, however, it would happen tomorrow.
- xur17 7y agoI saw one of these in the US - I believe they are allowed to produce it, as long as they are just giving it away. It seems fairly trivial to make (Aloe Vera + alcohol).
- rasz 7y agoIn Poland Orlen, state petroleum company, started making it last week. Available at every gas station, $25 per 5 Liter container. https://www.money.pl/gospodarka/plyn-do-dezynfekcji-rak-orlenu-za-95-zl-ponizej-sredniej-rynkowej-tlumaczy-rzeczniczka-firmy-6488861426333313a.html https://www.money.pl/gospodarka/plyn-do-dezynfekcji-rak-orle...
- scarface74 7y agoEthical considerations aside, why not just set up a website and sell it himself? Have we become that dependent on the big platforms?
- jmull 7y agoAlmost no one would find his web site, and if they did, they probably would not give him their credit card details (probably a good idea, too).
- scarface74 7y agoPeople have loss all sense of hustle. As far as exposure, there are FaceBook and Google ads. You can do credit cards through PayPal or even use the Web Payments API that let you do secure payments on the web via a company like Stripe and that will work with Apple and Google Pay.
- robjan 7y agoIt's not really about sense of hustle. The problem is on the demand side, not the supply side. The vast majority of people would not trust a fly-by-night website selling hand sanitisers at elevated price.
- scarface74 7y agoAs opposed to trusting fly by night third party sellers on Amazon who have not been vetted. It’s not like Amazon has a sterling reputation for selling legitimate goods.
- robjan 7y agoAmazon has a bad reputation but in almost all cases issues are resolved quickly. Nobody is going to write about their good experience with Amazon.
- 7y ago
- nyc_pizzadev 7y agoThose 17,700 bottles of hand sanitizer were better off staying in their respective stores and being sold off in their surrounding communities. Unless the gov steps in, I don't see needed supplies like this, masks, medicines, etc, being distributed fairly to everyone in the market. Rather profiteers will get their access and sell off to hoarders. The comfort of having access to some of these supplies, even if they are not effective, goes a long way.
- _jal 7y ago> being distributed fairly to everyone in the market Of course. Courts and parents are supposed to be fair, the market isn't. Market dynamics are useless in the face of a pandemic - the virus is not a market participant and has no conception of property rights. On a sinking ship, bailing water out out of only your cabin is a pretty stupid plan.
- sanj 7y ago“ Current price-gouging laws “are not built for today’s day and age,” Mr. Colvin said. “They’re built for Billy Bob’s gas station doubling the amount he charges for gas during a hurricane.”” That is exactly what he is doing.
- Arnt 7y agoDo you happen to know why these laws apply to a few named categories (not including what he wants to sell) rather than everything, and why they apply only when the relevant states declare an emergency? I don't mean why you think they should do so, or might, but do you know the actual reasoning applied by the legislatures at the time of enactment?
- p4bl0 7y agoThe public health authority should just requisition all of the masks and hand sanitizers this irresponsible guy has to make good use of it.
- someguydave 7y agoI don’t mind people selling stuff at high prices if it is in demand. I do mind front-running the population by buying uhaul-sized piles of supplies. I blame the stores he bought from - they should have refused to sell obviously in-demand items to one person in that quantity.
- jmull 7y agoStores don't have any mechanism to stop people from buying things. Not to mention, a buyer can just do something like claim to be getting these for the ER 30 miles down the road. So what's a good store to do then?
- etrautmann 7y agoMany stores will put in place per customer limits for critical (or likely to sell out) items. It's not unreasonable to say 2 bottles of sanitizer max per customer...
- jmull 7y agoOk, I should have said they have only low-efficiency, purely reactive high-latency mechanisms to prevent people from buying things. A store needs to experience a run on merchandise and also (through some other information channel) come to understand that this is actually a bad enough thing to override their normal business imperatives to sell the stuff they have. Blaming stores for sales they make today makes some sense. Blaming stores for sales they made last week does not.
- someguydave 7y agoThe stores should be allowed to raise prices in the face of increased demand, but the average voter thinks that is some form of theft. So stores can only implement quantity limits.
- rmetzler 7y agoThe videos I see on Reddit about stores allowing a maximum quantity of toilet paper show that it’s possible to stop customers of buying all the things. And in case someone claims an emergency, it’s not hard to verify such a claim.
- pseudolus 7y agoFYI, the World Health Organization has published a guide to the local production of hand sanitizer. [0]. There also numerous other recipes available online. While there are retail shortages of hand sanitizer, bulk quantities of ethanol and isopropyl alcohol are readily available directly from manufacturers and third-party sites like ebay. [0] https://www.who.int/gpsc/5may/Guide_to_Local_Production.pdf https://www.who.int/gpsc/5may/Guide_to_Local_Production.pdf
- keiferski 7y agoThis guy needs to do the following: 1. Sell the hand-sanitizers for a penny each to build goodwill. 2. Set up a Kickstarter to make back his losses. Otherwise, he is going to get some serious grief from his community and end up like Martin Shkreli.
- harambae 7y ago>end up like Martin Shkreli fabulously wealthy and with a hot russian girlfriend?
- keiferski 7y ago> Shkreli was charged in federal court, then convicted on two counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiring to commit securities fraud. In 2018, Shkreli was sentenced to seven years in federal prison and up to $7.4 million in fines.
- asab 7y ago> Mr. Colvin is sitting on 17,700 bottles of the stuff > Mr. Colvin does not believe he was price gouging. While he charged $20 on Amazon for two bottles of Purell that retail for $1 each > “If I can make a slight profit, that’s fine,” he said. “But I’m not looking to be in a situation where I make the front page of the news for being that guy who hoarded 20,000 bottles of sanitizer that I’m selling for 20 times what they cost me.”
- ardy42 7y ago>> “If I can make a slight profit, that’s fine,” he said. “But I’m not looking to be in a situation where I make the front page of the news for being that guy who hoarded 20,000 bottles of sanitizer that I’m selling for 20 times what they cost me.” That quote is out of context. He was hoping to make a large profit selling anonymously on Amazon. Now that he's been blocked from doing that, he has to try to break even selling locally (and surprise, surprise, he's much more concerned about his reputation when doing that). I think this quote from him captures his situation much better: > “It’s been a huge amount of whiplash,” he said. “From being in a situation where what I’ve got coming and going could potentially put my family in a really good place financially to ‘What the heck am I going to do with all of this?’”
- rsynnott 7y agoEr, good? Will serve as a warning to the next one.
- _ph_ 7y agoThis kind of behavior was already quite aggravating before the pandemic. Whenever something new comes to the market in potentially limited quantities, "clever" people start buying up stock from the stores just to put it on ebay etc., causing the product to be unavailable for any reasonable customer. This is annoying enough, when it concerns an item you just would like to be able to buy, but when it concerns items, that people depend on, and be it as simple as toilet paper, I think this should be prosecuted as criminal behavior.
- yawatiworht 7y agoI'll bite. How do you propose we distribute scarce resources? There isn't enough for everyone. Do we distribute to those who waited in line the longest -- thereby contributing nothing to society in return? Or do we distribute to those whose level of desire and need motivate them to trade for the highest amount of their own services to society, via money? This man is a crucial mechanism for the latter. Capitalism is a bitch. But it's the least shitty of the shitty systems we've ever tried.
- jacknews 7y agohar har serves them right they didn't create anything (except shortages where these things are needed), they don't deserve anything (except profitering charges)
- jshaqaw 7y agoAre we supposed to have sympathy for a war profiteer
- crazygringo 7y agoOn the one hand, I'm a big believer in the market, and that rising costs in times of scarcity prevent individuals from buying more than they need. And if Uber charges 20x for a ride on New Year's Eve, fine -- that's just what happens with supply and demand. BUT -- it feels like a big problem when a few profiteers are creating that very scarcity in the first place. I don't mind this guy buying a bunch of kits in bulk liquidation... but driving around to empty every store of its shelves? That really rubs me the wrong way. Same as when ticket resellers buy huge chunks of concert tickets to arbitrage, creating the sold-out situation. But it still confuses me how there is zero hand sanitizer on Amazon right now. Why isn't this guy selling it at least for a non-gouging price? Purell will surely come back in stock in a couple of weeks, no? Now is literally the only time for him recoup his investment... while spending a couple weeks packing, labeling and shipping nonstop. Why is he sitting still?
- ikeboy 7y agoBecause Amazon banned all sellers from listing hand sanitizer, wipes, and masks, regardless of the price. It's mentioned in the article.
- lloda 7y agoThere is a much more effective way to prevent people from buying more than they need... limit sales to x items per buyer, or rationing. The only thing rising costs ensure is that people without money don't get anything.
- baryphonic 7y agoIt's not so simple. What do you say to the family with seven kids who also has grandma and grandpa living at home? Do they get only one bottle of sanitizer the same as the college student? For some people, time is more valuable than money; for others, the opposite is true; and in even other cases, other structural issues will make fairness very difficult to achieve. Someone will lose out in all of these scenarios, and therefore it's quite difficult to evaluate which regime is preferable to the others in all cases.
- baryphonic 7y agoAll I can say is, "OOOOOF!" First, thks guy desperately needs PR - his hero self-image makes him look even worse than Shkreli. In this case, all they'd need to say is that Mr Corvin is interested in moving products in areas with low demand, such as rural Tennessee and Kentucky, to people in desperate need in areas with high demand like the big coastal cities or for example those with certain immune disorders. That's all they should say. Second, let's try to separate feelings for the person (Corvin) from the activity (price gouging). When there's a shortage between quantity demanded and the quantity supplied, there has to be some form of quantity restriction, whether that involves price increases, queueing, quotas or even lotteries. The alternatives are not a person buying sanitizer for $10/bottle on Amazon versus $1/bottle at Safeway, but between $10/bottle on Amazon versus either not getting it, waiting in a long queue at a store (which is counterproductive to social distancing), having some sort of quantity restriction (which is really lousy for people buying for more than just themselves). It's not clear to me at first glance which is worse. Ultimately, the shortage problem can only be mitigated by additional production or a return to pre-crisis demand. There are probably quite a few producers who could temporarily retool in order to produce sanitizer or other supplies that are in high demand, but this would be costly and risky and disrupt their supply chains and distribution. They could only justify the move with significantly higher prices than the pre-crisis market price. Any such firms would be crazy to do this, given the legal proscription and moral outrage incumbent with price increases during a crisis. There might be a few firms that try to enter as a PR move, and maybe in some places, the government will subsidize production of demanded goods at a low price, but these are not sustainable options. By having a very absolutist stance against price gouging, we are preventing the potentially ameliorating effects of additional production albeit at a higher price. Third, I am a little disgusted with the NYT for publishing this story. While they can't be blamed for Corvin's diarrhea of the mouth, they did find the person to profile who is maximally unsympathetic person to the NYT's audience: ex-military, lives in the South (and judging by his yard, a hillbilly), not well-educated and has a job (Amazon reseller) that is low status. It may be newsworthy that someone in rural Tennessee has 17k bottles of sanitizer, but I can easily imagine the sort of entrapping questions that the reporter used with this guy, and it makes me, well, irritated. (Anyone who has had experience with a hostile reporter and went in unprepared knows what I'm talking about.) The NYT is taking advantage of this crisis to drive outrage clicks, just as much as this guy is taking advantage to profiteer. In the process, they're making this guy the public face of "price gouging" during COVID-19, despite him being very much a private person unprepared for the scorn about to be unleashed on him and his family. I think the best way out of this is for someone with charitable intent and the monetary means to buy up his supply close to at-cost (I'd guess $40-50k), and then distribute them to particularly vulnerable people at low prices or even gratis. Corvin himself could maybe do that. If he did have a change of heart, I somehow doubt the NYT would cover it so prominently, if at all. For the sake of all parties, I hope I'm wrong.
- ikeboy 7y agoSeveral thoughts: 1. The point about them not actually making that much buying for $2 and selling for $20 is 100% valid. Amazon fees are $3, plus another $10 or so for shipping, plus labor, box, label, gas, etc. 2. On top of that, the business is risky, as evidenced by the fact that he's stuck with the products now. If you have a 50% chance of getting stuck with inventory, you need to make double the mark-up (actually more to account for purchase price) to cover that risk. 3. Obviously he was somewhat naive about talking to the NYT. The reporter clearly has a lot more experience spinning and extracting unfavorable quotes than he has with resisting hostile questioning. Disclaimer - I talked to the same reporter (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22575940 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22575940 I wrote about my own experience here), and I've also talked to and met both Matt and Chris at various conferences over the years. 4. If you look at the pricing charts, everything was basically normal until 1-2 weeks ago. There was a small increase which is reasonable with the increase in demand. At that point, there was nothing wrong with buying from stores or liquidators and reselling. The article says Matt bought this stuff up in February, which is before any states of emergency were announced, before demand blew up, etc. I think there's a distinction to be made between people going to stores and buying now, and people who did that a month ago.
- nyc_pizzadev 7y agoI guess the other scenario here is that manufacturers of soaps, sanatizers, and masks/gloves are drasticly ramping up production to meet this demand. In hopefully short time, the market will be flooded, guys like this are washed out, and if corona is the new normal for the next 6, 12, or 24 months, then the public will be in much better shape to combat the threat and return to semi normal.
- mnm1 7y agoI guess he never thought of hiring a developer to put up a shopping site for his items? This could be done in a few days using something like Woocommerce or Magento. Can't say I feel sorry for the guy though.
- pianom4n 7y agoThese are clearly the good guys, and it's because you hate them. Stores refuse to raise prices because customers will dislike them and it will harm them in the long run. People like this take the reputation hit (and are financially rewarded) for keeping the market liquid, which is a good thing! Anti-gouging laws are the problem here, and there's no doubt about it. There's not a "real" shortage, non of the usual arguments even apply, it's mostly a short-term run which would be easily stopped if prices could just.
- charles_f 7y agoWow that's a borderline religious faith in the market. People are humans and some are not able to drop $80 in a bottle of freaking Purrel, which they need to protect themselves as much as to prevent spreading their germs. This is a public health issue, counting on market liquidity and total inflation to fix it probably isn't the right approach.