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eBay Bans Sales of Face Masks, Hand Sanitizer Amid Coronavirus Price Gouging (cnet.com) 134

Posted by msmash from the greater-good dept.
As the COVID-19 outbreak continues to spread in the US and other countries, demand for products like face masks and hand sanitizer has led to a spike in prices. To combat price gouging, online retailer eBay is banning some listings related to the coronavirus. From a report: In a notice to eBay sellers posted Thursday and spotted earlier by CNBC, eBay said it would block new listings and remove existing listings in the US for disinfecting wipes, hand sanitizer and face masks, including N95/N100 masks and surgical masks. The listings are being removed due to concerns that inflated prices for these products may violate US laws or regulations. eBay also said it will remove any listings, except for books, that mention COVID-19, coronavirus or 2019nCoV in the title or description. It's unclear how long the ban will last.
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eBay Bans Sales of Face Masks, Hand Sanitizer Amid Coronavirus Price Gouging More

eBay Bans Sales of Face Masks, Hand Sanitizer Amid Coronavirus Price Gouging

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  • If I have a bunch of highly desirable stuff to move I'd like to get a good price for, eBay is the last place I would go.

    eBay is full of scammers vulturing around hot items. If you try to sell there, you will likely lose the product and get nothing in return.

    • Yeah, price gouging in a crisis is better done from a stand on the side of the road. CASH ONLY

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 )

        "Price gouging" is an imaginary problem based on the presumption that sellers are "evil" and buyers are "good". So when they agree on a price the seller must be an exploiter and the buyer a victim.

        High prices encourage production and more efficient distribution by incentivizing the movement of scarce items to where they are needed the most.
        High prices also discourage waste.

        Pricing to market is good.

        • Re:Feeling is mutual (Score:5, Informative)

          by phalse phace ( 454635 ) on Friday March 06, 2020 @05:18PM (#59804604)

          "Price gouging" is an imaginary problem based on the presumption that sellers are "evil" and buyers are "good". So when they agree on a price the seller must be an exploiter and the buyer a victim.

          High prices encourage production and more efficient distribution by incentivizing the movement of scarce items to where they are needed the most.
          High prices also discourage waste.

          Pricing to market is good.

          So in your eyes, when a drug company decides to jack up the price of a drug by over 97,500% [slashdot.org], they're not evil or an exploiter, and the mother who has no choice but to buy it to treat her kids' seizures isn't a victim?

          A 97,500% price increase is "pricing to market" and "good?"

          Wow. Just. Wow.

          • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

            by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday March 06, 2020 @05:48PM (#59804738)
            Comment removed based on user account deletion

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by nasor ( 690345 )
              Nope. The drug has been out of patent since the 1970s. It's just that there's only on manufacturer, and they decided to jack the price up from $40 to $39,000 because, hey, why not?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Ichijo ( 607641 )

            That's a good example of why unregulated monopolies are bad.

            Now, can you explain why pricing to market is bad where monopolies don't exist?

        • Re:Feeling is mutual (Score:4, Interesting)

          by sjames ( 1099 ) on Friday March 06, 2020 @05:21PM (#59804624) Homepage Journal

          Some rise in price may be expected to increase production, for example by paying workers overtime, shipping from longer distances, etc. But note that nobody in their right mind is going to embark on a yearlong effort to increase capacity to produce an item that is in temporary demand.

          Gouging OTOH is just economic parasitism creating artificial scarcity and keeping a needed resource out of the hands of those that need it most.

          Consider, how many people selling masks on ebay just happened to have a storeroom full of masks they were wondering how they would ever sell off vs. those who ran around to every Home Depot they could find speculatively buying up the stock hoping to then sell them for 3-10 times market value due to the shortage they just caused. Most of their sales will be to the people who went to Home Depot only to find out that someone already bought all the masks, guess who that was?

          • There are pros and cons to price gouging.

            Around here (Germany) face masks have been sold out anywhere for weeks where the seller kept the old price. The only way to get them is to buy them online for inflated prices. If it weren't for those online sellers, you wouldn't be able to get any at all. Well, maybe you could find a cheaper seller in China but ... yeah.

            You can't blame the shortage on scalpers/resellers. Sure they might contribute but if you look at other related products (disinfectant, toilet paper,

        • High prices in a period of shortage due to a medical emergency do not cause increased production. In the early years of the USSR they line speculators up against a wall and shot them.

          Not how we should do it today. What eBay is doing should suffice. Go get assaulted in a parking lot selling to Craigslist customers if you want to hustle.

          • High prices in a period of shortage due to a medical emergency do not cause increased production. In the early years of the USSR they line speculators up against a wall and shot them.

            Not how we should do it today. What eBay is doing should suffice. Go get assaulted in a parking lot selling to Craigslist customers if you want to hustle.

            Hown in god's name would free people increase production when all control has been seized by kleptocrats you have to get on bended knee for?

            How did subsequent decades go for those people, Bernie?

        • If you think it is good, why aren't you willing to say it is good?

          Why do you need to try to change the words people use before you say it is good?

          You don't seem confident that you're right, or you'd just say you approve of price gouging.

          I'm thinking about selling some home made hand sanitizer myself, but the only way I'd do it is... if I think I can get away with gouging deeply enough.

        • If you ever need to return a rental car; I invite you to fill it up at a gas station near the airport.

          In a functioning, fluid market; your right. supply and demand work themselves out. But circumstances interrupt that process; be it a crisis, or structural issues.

        • Re:Feeling is mutual (Score:4, Insightful)

          by DrMrLordX ( 559371 ) on Friday March 06, 2020 @09:27PM (#59805240)

          You're presuming that high prices are necessary to move scarce items to where they are needed the most, which is fundamentally not true except perhaps in circumstances where transportation has become risky (such as a natural disaster that knocks out roads/rail). In the case of coronavirus, transportation is still very possible; worst case you're sending down people in hazmat suits (or similar). It's not like the trucks can't move.

          In the case of eBay and the like, since you're buying/selling over the Internet, nobody's taking any precautions against spreading the disease via packaging anyway so it's not like the sellers are taking any greater risk to move product. It comes down to a bare supply/demand equation at that point.

          Admittedly, the buyers are just as "bad" as the sellers since they eventually cave in to the demands of the sellers, which moves the market price upward. If nobody pays the "gouge" prices, the problem is essentially solved. Eventually prices have to return to normal levels. You might complain, "but if prices go down, supply will run out/nobody will have incentive to move product!". But again, this is ridiculous. If I can sell you hand sanitizer for $.99 for a small bottle yesterday, why must I sell it to you for $20 now? As the seller, my cost basis hasn't necessarily gone up (unless it eventually becomes a raw-material problem). At that point all you get are shortages if demand can't keep up. Stuff like disinfectant wipes and hand sanitizer are relatively cheap, so supply will track upwards, and pretty quickly. Shortages aren't really a bad thing. Moving prices upwards drastically to maintain supply isn't really helpful since, beyond a certain price point, nobody will have access to that supply anyway. May as well have none if you can't/won't pay the gouge prices anyway.

          Price gouging in the case of disaster is never about free markets, supply/demand, incentivizing the movement of scarce items, and so forth. It's about sellers using a disaster as an opportunity to take as much money as they can from as many as they can, because they're too cowardly to simply rob people blind by other means.

      • Yeah, price gouging in a crisis is better done from a stand on the side of the road.

        The funny thing about that is, the roadside stand guy got his stock by buying up all the items from the store that kept the prices low.

        Maybe it's better for stores to raise prices, so that there's any stock people can buy instead of having to find the sketchy road-side vector if you want any at all.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by rworne ( 538610 )

          Maybe it's better for stores to raise prices, so that there's any stock people can buy instead of having to find the sketchy road-side vector if you want any at all.

          We have that already, it's called StubHub.

  • inflated price (Score:3, Funny)

    by hackingbear ( 988354 ) on Friday March 06, 2020 @03:57PM (#59804198)

    inflated prices for these products may violate US laws or regulations

    Isn't the US (supposedly at least) a free capitalistic economy?

    • No, as far as I am aware, the US isn't a pure free market system. What information have you seen to make you think otherwise, I am generally curious.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Pascoea ( 968200 )

      inflated prices for these products may violate US laws or regulations

      Isn't the US (supposedly at least) a free capitalistic economy?

      How long were you able to hold back laughing as you typed that?

    • Even capitalism has limits. Gouging, profiteering & hoarding during emergencies is illegal in many jurisdictions.

      • Re:Limits to capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Friday March 06, 2020 @04:33PM (#59804408)

        Gouging, profiteering & hoarding during emergencies is illegal in many jurisdictions.

        Making these activities illegal makes them worse.

        If Walmart is free to raise prices on facemasks when demand spikes, then no one can profit by buying up all their stock since they are already sold at what the market will bear.

        Also, if Walmart can sell them for more, they are also willing to pay higher wholesale prices, which incentivizes the manufacturer to run extra shifts and expand the supply.

        In communist countries, fixed prices cause bare shelves and shortages.

        In capitalist countries, fixed prices cause bare shelves and shortages.

        • Yeah, gouging laws are largely stupid especially in overblown panics like this. If any asshole can go buy out all the toilet paper and all the sanitizer and all the masks for a guaranteed "fair" price (before all this started) then there's nothing slowing down the panic and people will just buy everything up.

          I'd start charging 25% more for toilet paper right now if I were the grocery stores, and 50% for the stupid masks everyone thinks is going to save them which will now be in short supply for people who a

          • I wouldnâ(TM)t start charging more. Iâ(TM)d sell them at the normal price _if you do your normal shoping_. Say for every $10 of shopping, you can buy three rolls at normal price.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

            and 50% for the stupid masks everyone thinks is going to save them which will now be in short supply for people who actually need them like doctors, dentists, health care workers, etc...

            Ah, the Schrodinger's mask. It's in a quantum superposition of being effective and ineffective at the same time.

            • Yes, but that's stupid. Walking around with a poorly fitted mask is not the same as being a first responder who has it properly fitted and is actually exposed to it, or a dental worker literally having people breathe on his or her face.

        • First of all, WalMart, Target and your local chemist/drug store are not being told to stop selling, and nothing is preventing them from raising their prices.

          eBay is removing their listings because of some of the activities going on. Yesterday I saw a 48oz bottle of hand sanitizer listed for $499. No one in their right mind would pay $500 for a $15 item, but some people are counting on panic and confusion to make a quick buck.

          I don't think anyone is claiming that WalMart can't raise prices by 15%, 20% or e

        • Ebay is not making these activities illegal. They are just delisting, a free capitalistic thing they are allowed to do.

          • They have a right to do it, as it's their marketplace. What they should do is a different question.

            Do not confuse this with capitalism, which relies on using pricing mechanisms to determine how to allocate capital towards production of consumer goods.

            Companies operating inside a largely capitalist system can be anti-capitalistic, what a shocker!

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sjames ( 1099 )

          Gouging is not the same thing as demand based price increases. Well written gouging laws include a threshold level of increase that is permissible.

          Gouging keeps needed resources gathering dust in a stock room and puts big wads of cash into the hands of an unneeded middleman (read as economic parasite).

          The guy that pays a manufacturer double so they can bring in temps and pay overtime to increase production and then sells at a fair mark-up is not gouging. He is helping and being fairly rewarded for it.

          The gu

        • Walmart would call their facemask companies and say, send all you have, and they would probably already be gearing up.

          Now? Not so much. Good job, busibodies.

        • I love how this is modded insightful - I have loads of pictures of bare shelves at costco (I took them because I've never seen anything like this before) because of panic buying.

        • If only there was a middle ground between fixed prices and gouging.
          I guess we will never know...

      • If SCOTUS were to overturn Thor Power Tools v Commissioner stockpiles of non-perishable medical and emergency equipment would be much greater.

    • The United States never was 100% open capitalism, there has been limits.
      The reason of the black market is the sale of goods and services that the government cannot protection for.
      For Example there is a Black Market in New York State for "Raw" Milk. So if you were to buy Raw Milk from a dealer and you get stick from it, you will not have a legal recourse to sue the dealer for selling you a faulty product, and if you did bring it up, chances are both you and the dealer will face punishment for both breaking t

    • I guess if you're a drug company. It's perfectly alright to inflate the price of a 100 year old drug several thousand percent, even if it's life saving, but don't you dare sell a pack of N95 masks for $10/each.

    • inflated prices for these products may violate US laws or regulations

      Isn't the US (supposedly at least) a free capitalistic economy?

      Sort of, but not totally. There ARE a couple of necessary regulations here.

      If we all were honest and ethical, there would be no need for these rules, but we are not all honest and ethical. Thomas Paine said it this way: "Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one."

    • I would define it as corporatist/mercantilist, with bits of capitalism and socialism thrown in.

      If you want to be an independent contractor, or even self-employed, if you don't incorporate you are soaked in taxes (you get taxed twice on FICA, for one) Also, there is widespread use of tariffs, licensing and regulation to stifle competition with established industry actors.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      Sure, and part of that is being able to choose what goods to carry in your store.

  • eBay bans capitalism? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Nobody is forcing anyone to buy anything. I don't understand the big deal here. If you don't like the price, get it from somewhere else. As long as it's not some kind of bait-and-switch deal where you order Purell and get some kind of glop mixed up in Goober's garage, it's not a problem. This is for optics only.

    • The deal is that many states have declared an official state of emergency, so laws kick in regarding price gouging.

      It's not that they care, it's just that eBay does not want to get rolled up into a potential lawsuit. Plus, eBay has already made most of the money they can on this, as supplies have dried up. So they do this now to dodge any lawsuits and maybe get a bid of good press.

      • A state of emergency isn't going to make suppliers ramp up production to meet the increased demand. Doing so incurs added cost on their part. Production lines may need some reconfiguration (which comes at an added cost of not being able to use them for whatever they were previously doing) or you need additional labor (or existing labor at overtime costs) to run an existing production line for more hours in a day if it isn't already being run around the clock. Even if those aren't a problem, you need more ra

    • If I host a venue, I get to decide who gets to use the venue. That's capitalism. Ebay has standards, very low standards, but still non-zero.

      • So how is your sale of Tide Detergent going?

      • If I host a venue, I get to decide who gets to use the venue. That's capitalism. Ebay has standards, very low standards, but still non-zero.

        Of course eBay can ban "price gouging". It is their site and they can do what they want.

        The question is: SHOULD they ban high prices mutually agreed on by buyer and seller? Is a ban in the public interest?

        Answers: No and no.

        • The question is: SHOULD they ban high prices mutually agreed on by buyer and seller? Is a ban in the public interest?

          When there is a state of emergency, yes, because it would discourage people from hoarding inventory only to resell it at ridiculously inflated prices. Many people who can use the item but cannot afford to pay the high price will be S.O.L.

          • "In the United States, state laws against price gouging have been held as constitutional[4] at the state level as a valid exercise of the police power to preserve order during an emergency, and may be combined with anti-hoarding measures.

            As of January 2019, 34 states have laws against price-gouging.[5] Price-gouging is often defined in terms of the three criteria listed below:[6]

            Period of emergency: The majority of laws apply only to price shifts during a declared state of emerg

  • I actually bought a bottle of hand sanitizer from ebay. Sure it was listed at an inflated price, but it was a much better price than I could find anywhere else.

    Glad I got in before the ban.

  • eBay also said it will remove any listings, except for books, that mention COVID-19, coronavirus or 2019nCoV in the title or description.

    Now how am I going to sell all my "I caught COVID-19 and all got was this lousy T-shirt" T-shirts?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by tbq ( 874261 )

      eBay also said it will remove any listings, except for books, that mention COVID-19, coronavirus or 2019nCoV in the title or description.

      Now how am I going to sell all my "I caught COVID-19 and all got was this lousy T-shirt" T-shirts?

      You just have to write and sell an instructional book titled "How to Wear a Shirt That Says: "I caught COVID-19 and all got was this lousy T-shirt'" and include in the listing that a free shirt will be thrown in with the book.

  • Make your own (Score:4, Funny)

    by sacrilicious ( 316896 ) <qbgfynfu.opt@recursor.net> on Friday March 06, 2020 @04:07PM (#59804244) Homepage

    Make your own facemasks out of coffee filters and rubber bands.
    Make your own hand sanitizer out of aloe gel and isopropyl alcohol.
    Make your own eBay out of a podium, gavel, and third-party payment processing system.

  • Ebay should be banning stupid people.

  • In the name of their political views they are preventing anyone from finding protection from a dangerous illness.

    These people are fanatics and a threat to human beings!

  • Yes! Let's reduce availability (Score:5, Insightful)

    by registrations_suck ( 1075251 ) on Friday March 06, 2020 @04:13PM (#59804276)

    Good job EBAY!! Now you are reducing availability on the supplies. Sellers will continue to buy what IS available, and just resell the supplies via other channels, some of which may be harder for people to access.

    Great work!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Amazon is clamping down too. At least around here those are the two big ones, I guess there is gumtree too but they are owned by eBay anyway.

      So this may well discourage people from buying up masks just to sell them.

      • You want to want to make it easier to get these items into the hands of people who want them for potential use.
      • Simultaneously, you want to make it harder for people to flip them. Flippers are speculators who buy up existing stock at regular prices, thus depriving actual users of the opportunity to buy them, then re-list them at inflated prices.

      No mask or sanitizer manufacturer I know of sells via eBay. Consequently, we can conclude that 100% of eBay sellers of these products are speculators. Banning

    • Yes that is the point. Common people don't need these things, medical professionals need them.

      So yes, good work eBay on doing something which is actively current government advice in many countries (people shouldn't be rushing out and buying facemasks, they should be buying soap).

      • Yes that is the point. Common people don't need these things, medical professionals need them.

        So, do you suppose the people selling them on eBay are sourcing them from the same places that hospitals do?

  • Good prices can be found on ebay but no way to know what you are getting.

  • Is to screw over the scalpers. Can't say I disagree with that.

  • My state attorney general, who wins all the time, filed suit against them.

    Glad he shut it down.

    Now, for the rest of you: STOP BUYING MASKS THEY WILL NOT PROTECT YOU.

    And wash your hands with soap and water. We're not kidding about that.

  • Contrary opinion (Score:5, Insightful)

    by vakuona ( 788200 ) on Friday March 06, 2020 @06:43PM (#59804890)

    I do not agree that price gouging is obviously "bad".

    One of the problems with not price gouging during a crisis is that it can encourage people to hoard. At $1 (for example) many people are going to buy all the hand sanitiser they can get their hands on. At $10 a pop, people might be more judicious about how much hand sanitiser they buy, which means there is more to go around. It's very easy to see those who pay more than normal as victims in this, but the bigger victims can turn out to be those

    Secondly, all those facemasks could turn out to be completely worthless almost overnight, and someone who orders 100,000 of them from China could find himself sitting on a lot of worthless inventory. "Price gougers" are taking risks. Think of the price gougers - no one said ever, when they overcommit and buy too much inventory and find themselves out of pocket. In fact, some might already find that they are now out of pocket as they are not able to make anywhere near as much money as they had expected to be able to make and they might be sitting on losses.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by vakuona ( 788200 )

      The last sentence in the second paragraph should have ended:
        - but the bigger victims can turn out to be those who can't get any hand sanitiser or whatever product because they were just a bit late to get to the store to buy the in-demand product.

  • This is nobody's business as long as no fraud is involved and the owner doesn't have a monopoly on the product or production.

    Soon 3M, clorox and the like will be producing product like theirs no tomorrow. Problem solved.

  • Face masks protect us from you, not you from us.

    Today, a coworker showed up with a fancy face mask, but not the really expensive one that actually protects the wearer (duh).

    I ask him "are you sick?" He said, "no." I reminded him that's not what that face mask is for, silly. It's for when you're sick and it's used to prevent you from shedding virus/contagions all over the place. It is completely and totally not suited to keep the wearer from getting sick.

    Some people are just uninformed. It would be hilarious

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