6 ms·

> “When we did this trip, I had no idea that these stores wouldn’t be able to get replenished.” > “It was never my intention to keep necessary medical supplie

by ipqk 7y ago

> “When we did this trip, I had no idea that these stores wouldn’t be able to get replenished.” > “It was never my intention to keep necessary medical supplies out of the hands of people who needed them,” he continued. “That’s not who I am as a person" This doesn't follow a modicum of scrutiny. If he's buying to sell them at a markup, it MUST be because it's not getting replenished. Otherwise, people would just go to the store and buy it at retail price. It's a BS apology and shouldn't be accepted by anyone.

TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
> it MUST be because it's not getting replenished. I don't think that follows. All that needs to happen in order for the him to sell at a markup is that demand continues to outpace supply, it's not necessary that supply stops. So, from that perspective, his argument holds.
datashow 7y ago
He thought the stores could easily restock, and he would profit from online sale. Possible?
- garmaine 7y ago
  Because people wouldn't want to go out, yeah. Possible.
  - inferiorhuman 7y ago
    Because there was clearly no sort of distribution infrastructure to get hand sanitizer to people without having to go into the stores. Right. NPR's talked about retail arbitrage before and sure there are all sorts of crazy reasons people buy stuff at inflated prices through Amazon and eBay. What's missing though is that typically the sellers are capitalizing on things that are difficult-to-impossible to find elsewhere (e.g. Trader Joe's products, none of which are otherwise available from other vendors or online from TJs) or to capitalize on sale pricing. Neither of those things are true here with the guy hoarding hand sanitizer. Whether or not he donated his stockpile to charity under duress or not he still deserves to be punished.
    - garmaine 7y ago
      That’s for a judge or jury to decide, not an internet mob.
      - inferiorhuman 7y ago
        Sure, and ostensibly the United States has some sort of don't legislate morality doctrine. Just because I think he deserves to be punished doesn't mean our legal system will punish him. I'm certainly not above public shaming especially when the guy has very publicly and unequivocally explained what he's doing.
      - wpietri 7y ago
        Judges and juries decide criminal penalties. Fellow citizens decide social penalties. Nobody should be banging on his door, but I'm fine with both his neighbors and the world at large telling him what they think.
- techslave 7y ago
  yes, possible. it’s still called price gouging.
  - jariel 7y ago
    He's speculating on a commodity, it's just not corn or potash. Nobody expects that there's going to be an acute, worldwide shortage of wheat and that it will be unavailable anywhere. Demand goes up, prices go up, same as anything. Now - this kind of arbitrage has very, very limited value for society (there's an economic argument for price clearing), so we can think of it as 'gouging', but sometimes this is not the case. I think at this scale, price arbitraging for normal household goods provides zero net value (in fact negative value because it involves work and effort without net value creation). Amazon, Wallmart etc. should probably clamp down on this because it's their customers who pay by having middlemen in between.
    - ThrowawayR2 7y ago
      > "He's speculating on a commodity, it's just not corn or potash." Lives are not at stake because of corn or potash speculation.
      - jariel 7y ago
        If there are acute shortages, yes lives can be at stake because of major disruptions in the food supply. Several weeks ago, nobody assumed that 'Purell' or 'toilet paper' was going to fully sell out everywhere, rather, simply that there would be increased demand for it. All retailers who sell Purell have their buyers clamoring to buy as much as possible because they know their customers want it, and there's no reason to think that the price won't be increased somewhat. In fact, given the excessive demand and challenges in production, Purell will probably be increasing its wholesale price ... and then some. So are retailers - buying up as much Purell as possible and probably selling for a little bit of a markup considered 'hoarders'? So long as they have the intention of selling it for not-some-crazy-price, then it's just normal business. There's no reason individuals can't do the same. As long as this guy was not price gauging, and he was in fact selling, then what are they going to charge him with exactly? It's reasonable that the government put restrictions on certain goods during a crisis, such as margin limits, the requirement to not hold inventory etc. but the same would have to apply to this guy. If he bought his inventory before any emergency crisis or calamity ... then again, what's the legal crime? Buying Purell 2 months ago was normal, but 'having Purell inventory' now is illegal? I have no lost love for this guy, but that he gave his inventory away is punishment enough.
myself248 7y ago
I beg to disagree, and here's why: (Not saying the guy isn't scum, but I think his statement is plausible...) He didn't just start doing this last week. This so-called "retail arbitrage" is a normal thing throughout online marketplaces, and has been for years. Sometimes, someone (like me, as a consumer) won't feel like going to the store, and will happily pay ten bucks for what's usually a three-dollar item, because it's shipped to my door. FedEx is the real winner, but guys like this are making a living enabling my laziness. In other situations, a product will be weirdly short in one part of the country, but available elsewhere. For instance, in a hurricane, a bunch of unprepared people suddenly decide they want some product, but the local stores are sold out. There's lots of that product _already sitting on shelves_ elsewhere in the country. Those retailers aren't going to pull it themselves and shove it backwards up the distribution chain to be redistributed to storm country -- that's just not how distribution works. So, folks like this will go buy it, off the shelf, and offer it online. Where again, someone decides it's a better option than going to the store. And the guy doing the shipping is doing real work, I don't see anything wrong with him putting food on his table with it. In all these cases, the retail-arbitrage folks aren't depriving anyone of anything. They're not clearing out the last of anything, and the stores they shop usually do restock the next day, because their local distributor has plenty of product. This time was different, and that's obvious to everyone now. But I do find it at least half-plausible that this guy might not have been thinking of it as different. It looked, from his view, just like every other opportunity where he's been making money the last several years, and which hurt nobody.
- smnrchrds 7y ago
  This is the answer. NPR Planet Money did an episode on this a while ago, long before there were any real or perceived shortages of any goods. Even in good times, this strategy tends to work: > Sam Cohen's business works like this: He walks into a big retail store and buys a bunch of stuff. Then he sells it on Amazon for more. It's straightforward and surprisingly lucrative. > This is a multimillion-dollar business for Sam — and for lots of other people who do the same thing. It's called retail arbitrage... https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/07/26/539552579/episode-629-buy-low-sell-prime https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/07/26/539552579/epis...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mehrdadn 7y ago
> If he's buying to sell them at a markup, it MUST be because it's not getting replenished. This is just false. People routinely pay more for the exact same item for so many reasons, from saving precious time looking for a better price, to laziness, to not even realizing there's a better price, to added convenience in some form, to so many other things. It's entirely believable he thought it would get restocked.
- wpietri 7y ago
  There's thinking and then there's thinking. Did these words come out of his mouth when he needed an excuse? Sure. Do any of those hypothesized reasons justify enormous markups and rushing to hoover up giant quantities of product? No. At very best, he let himself be blinded by greed, and so just didn't think too hard. So at best, he was negligent with safety-critical supplies during a crisis.
malkia 7y ago
He might've done wrong, but he made a public apology, and gave it for free. It's tempting to make this mistake. Give him another chance. Certain leaders should take example from this guy.
- fiblye 7y ago
  They really shouldn’t. The example he’s setting is to buy up essentials before those in need can, maximize profits, then give puppy dog eyes once people rightfully call you out on taking advantage of people and getting praise for showing false remorse. I doubt he really wanted to give it away. Knowing the internet, he probably got some death threats or he just realized he was facing actual penalties and decided it was time to finally throw in the towel. If he didn’t make the news, he’d still be finding ways to hustle.
- tartoran 7y ago
  He only made a public apology because he was in the spotlight. Also he donnated his stock before the investigation begun.
- ikiris 7y ago
  No, he still fleeced a great many people already, and we catch a fraction of them. The penalty must be sufficient enough to discourage this or its a lost battle from the beginning.
- quadrifoliate 7y ago
  Here is an interview with WRCB Chattanooga where he is literally asked whether he is sorry, and he waits for about 15 seconds before replying "No". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18wybjhCqg8#t=1m35s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18wybjhCqg8#t=1m35s So his faux apology now is a total sham.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  His "public apology" was really a full-page ad on the front page of NYT. I believe he was hoping that this would let him move all his stockpile. Fortunately, AG intervened first.
ourmandave 7y ago
From the first article about this he was selling it on Amazon for $8 to $70 per bottle. So yeah, apology not accepted. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/14/technology/coronavirus-purell-wipes-amazon-sellers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/14/technology/coronavirus-pu... Matt Colvin stayed home near Chattanooga, preparing for pallets of even more wipes and sanitizer he had ordered, and starting to list them on Amazon. Mr. Colvin said he had posted 300 bottles of hand sanitizer and immediately sold them all for between $8 and $70 each, multiples higher than what he had bought them for. To him, “it was crazy money.” To many others, it was profiteering from a pandemic.
celticninja 7y ago
not necessarily, more like arbitrage. people in the city cannot get it because the population bought it up, but they can Amazon it. in the rural areas a case of it may be a normal month's supply. so if you didn't buy everything on the shelf in the rural store then the store could potentially be fine. of course there is still profiteering issue but again a decent markup, not an exorbitant one would be fine.
eru 7y ago
You might be right, but there's no need to apologize. Rationing by price is still better than rationing by luck or queuing or, even worse, connections; and that guy is just converting from a luck/queue based rationing to a price based one and earning some money for that service. (Of course, some jurisdictions have misguided laws against this practice, and normal people don't like it.)
- maxerickson 7y ago
  You are really butchering the definition of rationing there. The word you want is distributing.
  - eru 7y ago
    It's a butchering of the term with a long and proud tradition. Distributing might be a decent choice of word, too, but it has extra connotations of shipping stuff around that I don't want here.
- Pfhreak 7y ago
  Wait, what? Rationing by price means that wealthy people get more. How is that better than a random distribution or a queue?
  - BurningFrog 7y ago
    It prevents hoarding, for one thing. Also, in this system, things never sell out.
    - Pfhreak 7y ago
      I mean, clearly it does not, as this guy was sitting on 17,000 bottles of the stuff. Also, random lotteries also prevent hoarding. Same with queues with a reasonable limit on the number you can take per trip through the queue. > Also, in this system, things never sell out. Sure they do. If you can't afford $70 for a bottle of hand sanitizer, the product is sold out. Sold out is always a function of 'the cost of getting it to me is too high'.
jdminhbg 7y ago
> This doesn't follow a modicum of scrutiny. If he's buying to sell them at a markup, it MUST be because it's not getting replenished. Otherwise, people would just go to the store and buy it at retail price. It's a BS apology and shouldn't be accepted by anyone. So much of economic innumeracy is explained by this comment.
amrx101 7y ago
It is ironic that Americans are not okay with common folks hoarding and price gauging medical supplies but are okay when drug companies do the same.

by ipqk 7y ago

TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago

> it MUST be because it's not getting replenished. I don't think that follows. All that needs to happen in order for the him to sell at a markup is that demand continues to outpace supply, it's not necessary that supply stops. So, from that perspective, his argument holds.

datashow 7y ago

He thought the stores could easily restock, and he would profit from online sale. Possible?

garmaine 7y ago
Because people wouldn't want to go out, yeah. Possible.
- inferiorhuman 7y ago
  Because there was clearly no sort of distribution infrastructure to get hand sanitizer to people without having to go into the stores. Right. NPR's talked about retail arbitrage before and sure there are all sorts of crazy reasons people buy stuff at inflated prices through Amazon and eBay. What's missing though is that typically the sellers are capitalizing on things that are difficult-to-impossible to find elsewhere (e.g. Trader Joe's products, none of which are otherwise available from other vendors or online from TJs) or to capitalize on sale pricing. Neither of those things are true here with the guy hoarding hand sanitizer. Whether or not he donated his stockpile to charity under duress or not he still deserves to be punished.
  - garmaine 7y ago
    That’s for a judge or jury to decide, not an internet mob.
    - inferiorhuman 7y ago
      Sure, and ostensibly the United States has some sort of don't legislate morality doctrine. Just because I think he deserves to be punished doesn't mean our legal system will punish him. I'm certainly not above public shaming especially when the guy has very publicly and unequivocally explained what he's doing.
    - wpietri 7y ago
      Judges and juries decide criminal penalties. Fellow citizens decide social penalties. Nobody should be banging on his door, but I'm fine with both his neighbors and the world at large telling him what they think.
techslave 7y ago
yes, possible. it’s still called price gouging.
- jariel 7y ago
  He's speculating on a commodity, it's just not corn or potash. Nobody expects that there's going to be an acute, worldwide shortage of wheat and that it will be unavailable anywhere. Demand goes up, prices go up, same as anything. Now - this kind of arbitrage has very, very limited value for society (there's an economic argument for price clearing), so we can think of it as 'gouging', but sometimes this is not the case. I think at this scale, price arbitraging for normal household goods provides zero net value (in fact negative value because it involves work and effort without net value creation). Amazon, Wallmart etc. should probably clamp down on this because it's their customers who pay by having middlemen in between.
  - ThrowawayR2 7y ago
    > "He's speculating on a commodity, it's just not corn or potash." Lives are not at stake because of corn or potash speculation.
    - jariel 7y ago
      If there are acute shortages, yes lives can be at stake because of major disruptions in the food supply. Several weeks ago, nobody assumed that 'Purell' or 'toilet paper' was going to fully sell out everywhere, rather, simply that there would be increased demand for it. All retailers who sell Purell have their buyers clamoring to buy as much as possible because they know their customers want it, and there's no reason to think that the price won't be increased somewhat. In fact, given the excessive demand and challenges in production, Purell will probably be increasing its wholesale price ... and then some. So are retailers - buying up as much Purell as possible and probably selling for a little bit of a markup considered 'hoarders'? So long as they have the intention of selling it for not-some-crazy-price, then it's just normal business. There's no reason individuals can't do the same. As long as this guy was not price gauging, and he was in fact selling, then what are they going to charge him with exactly? It's reasonable that the government put restrictions on certain goods during a crisis, such as margin limits, the requirement to not hold inventory etc. but the same would have to apply to this guy. If he bought his inventory before any emergency crisis or calamity ... then again, what's the legal crime? Buying Purell 2 months ago was normal, but 'having Purell inventory' now is illegal? I have no lost love for this guy, but that he gave his inventory away is punishment enough.

myself248 7y ago

I beg to disagree, and here's why: (Not saying the guy isn't scum, but I think his statement is plausible...) He didn't just start doing this last week. This so-called "retail arbitrage" is a normal thing throughout online marketplaces, and has been for years. Sometimes, someone (like me, as a consumer) won't feel like going to the store, and will happily pay ten bucks for what's usually a three-dollar item, because it's shipped to my door. FedEx is the real winner, but guys like this are making a living enabling my laziness. In other situations, a product will be weirdly short in one part of the country, but available elsewhere. For instance, in a hurricane, a bunch of unprepared people suddenly decide they want some product, but the local stores are sold out. There's lots of that product _already sitting on shelves_ elsewhere in the country. Those retailers aren't going to pull it themselves and shove it backwards up the distribution chain to be redistributed to storm country -- that's just not how distribution works. So, folks like this will go buy it, off the shelf, and offer it online. Where again, someone decides it's a better option than going to the store. And the guy doing the shipping is doing real work, I don't see anything wrong with him putting food on his table with it. In all these cases, the retail-arbitrage folks aren't depriving anyone of anything. They're not clearing out the last of anything, and the stores they shop usually do restock the next day, because their local distributor has plenty of product. This time was different, and that's obvious to everyone now. But I do find it at least half-plausible that this guy might not have been thinking of it as different. It looked, from his view, just like every other opportunity where he's been making money the last several years, and which hurt nobody.

smnrchrds 7y ago
This is the answer. NPR Planet Money did an episode on this a while ago, long before there were any real or perceived shortages of any goods. Even in good times, this strategy tends to work: > Sam Cohen's business works like this: He walks into a big retail store and buys a bunch of stuff. Then he sells it on Amazon for more. It's straightforward and surprisingly lucrative. > This is a multimillion-dollar business for Sam — and for lots of other people who do the same thing. It's called retail arbitrage... https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/07/26/539552579/episode-629-buy-low-sell-prime https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/07/26/539552579/epis...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

mehrdadn 7y ago

> If he's buying to sell them at a markup, it MUST be because it's not getting replenished. This is just false. People routinely pay more for the exact same item for so many reasons, from saving precious time looking for a better price, to laziness, to not even realizing there's a better price, to added convenience in some form, to so many other things. It's entirely believable he thought it would get restocked.

wpietri 7y ago
There's thinking and then there's thinking. Did these words come out of his mouth when he needed an excuse? Sure. Do any of those hypothesized reasons justify enormous markups and rushing to hoover up giant quantities of product? No. At very best, he let himself be blinded by greed, and so just didn't think too hard. So at best, he was negligent with safety-critical supplies during a crisis.

malkia 7y ago

He might've done wrong, but he made a public apology, and gave it for free. It's tempting to make this mistake. Give him another chance. Certain leaders should take example from this guy.

fiblye 7y ago
They really shouldn’t. The example he’s setting is to buy up essentials before those in need can, maximize profits, then give puppy dog eyes once people rightfully call you out on taking advantage of people and getting praise for showing false remorse. I doubt he really wanted to give it away. Knowing the internet, he probably got some death threats or he just realized he was facing actual penalties and decided it was time to finally throw in the towel. If he didn’t make the news, he’d still be finding ways to hustle.
tartoran 7y ago
He only made a public apology because he was in the spotlight. Also he donnated his stock before the investigation begun.
ikiris 7y ago
No, he still fleeced a great many people already, and we catch a fraction of them. The penalty must be sufficient enough to discourage this or its a lost battle from the beginning.
quadrifoliate 7y ago
Here is an interview with WRCB Chattanooga where he is literally asked whether he is sorry, and he waits for about 15 seconds before replying "No". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18wybjhCqg8#t=1m35s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18wybjhCqg8#t=1m35s So his faux apology now is a total sham.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
His "public apology" was really a full-page ad on the front page of NYT. I believe he was hoping that this would let him move all his stockpile. Fortunately, AG intervened first.

ourmandave 7y ago

From the first article about this he was selling it on Amazon for $8 to $70 per bottle. So yeah, apology not accepted. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/14/technology/coronavirus-purell-wipes-amazon-sellers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/14/technology/coronavirus-pu... Matt Colvin stayed home near Chattanooga, preparing for pallets of even more wipes and sanitizer he had ordered, and starting to list them on Amazon. Mr. Colvin said he had posted 300 bottles of hand sanitizer and immediately sold them all for between $8 and $70 each, multiples higher than what he had bought them for. To him, “it was crazy money.” To many others, it was profiteering from a pandemic.

celticninja 7y ago

not necessarily, more like arbitrage. people in the city cannot get it because the population bought it up, but they can Amazon it. in the rural areas a case of it may be a normal month's supply. so if you didn't buy everything on the shelf in the rural store then the store could potentially be fine. of course there is still profiteering issue but again a decent markup, not an exorbitant one would be fine.

eru 7y ago

You might be right, but there's no need to apologize. Rationing by price is still better than rationing by luck or queuing or, even worse, connections; and that guy is just converting from a luck/queue based rationing to a price based one and earning some money for that service. (Of course, some jurisdictions have misguided laws against this practice, and normal people don't like it.)

maxerickson 7y ago
You are really butchering the definition of rationing there. The word you want is distributing.
- eru 7y ago
  It's a butchering of the term with a long and proud tradition. Distributing might be a decent choice of word, too, but it has extra connotations of shipping stuff around that I don't want here.
Pfhreak 7y ago
Wait, what? Rationing by price means that wealthy people get more. How is that better than a random distribution or a queue?
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  It prevents hoarding, for one thing. Also, in this system, things never sell out.
  - Pfhreak 7y ago
    I mean, clearly it does not, as this guy was sitting on 17,000 bottles of the stuff. Also, random lotteries also prevent hoarding. Same with queues with a reasonable limit on the number you can take per trip through the queue. > Also, in this system, things never sell out. Sure they do. If you can't afford $70 for a bottle of hand sanitizer, the product is sold out. Sold out is always a function of 'the cost of getting it to me is too high'.

jdminhbg 7y ago

> This doesn't follow a modicum of scrutiny. If he's buying to sell them at a markup, it MUST be because it's not getting replenished. Otherwise, people would just go to the store and buy it at retail price. It's a BS apology and shouldn't be accepted by anyone. So much of economic innumeracy is explained by this comment.

amrx101 7y ago

It is ironic that Americans are not okay with common folks hoarding and price gauging medical supplies but are okay when drug companies do the same.