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Thread: He Has 17,700 Bottles of Hand Sanitizer and Nowhere to Sell Them

  1. #1

    He Has 17,700 Bottles of Hand Sanitizer and Nowhere to Sell Them

    Amazon cracked down on coronavirus price gouging. Now, while the rest of the world searches, some sellers are holding stockpiles of sanitizer and masks.

    On March 1, the day after the first coronavirus death in the United States was announced, brothers Matt and Noah Colvin set out in a silver S.U.V. to pick up some hand sanitizer. Driving around Chattanooga, Tenn., they hit a Dollar Tree, then a Walmart, a Staples and a Home Depot. At each store, they cleaned out the shelves.

    Over the next three days, Noah Colvin took a 1,300-mile road trip across Tennessee and into Kentucky, filling a U-Haul truck with thousands of bottles of hand sanitizer and thousands of packs of antibacterial wipes, mostly from "little hole-in-the-wall dollar stores in the backwoods," his brother said. "The major metro areas were cleaned out."

    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.

    The next day, Amazon pulled his items and thousands of other listings for sanitizer, wipes and face masks. The company suspended some of the sellers behind the listings and warned many others that if they kept running up prices, they'd lose their accounts. EBay soon followed with even stricter measures, prohibiting any U.S. sales of masks or sanitizer.

    Now, while millions of people across the country search in vain for hand sanitizer to protect themselves from the spread of the coronavirus, Mr. Colvin is sitting on 17,700 bottles of the stuff with little idea where to sell them.

    "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?'"

    Mr. Colvin is one of probably thousands of sellers who have amassed stockpiles of hand sanitizer and crucial respirator masks that many hospitals are now rationing, according to interviews with eight Amazon sellers and posts in private Facebook and Telegram groups from dozens more. Amazon said it had recently removed hundreds of thousands of listings and suspended thousands of sellers' accounts for price gouging related to the coronavirus...

    He Has 17,700 Bottles of Hand Sanitizer and Nowhere to Sell Them - The New York Times

  2. The Following User Says Thank You to krystian For This Useful Post:

    Ezekiel 33 (03-16-2020)

  3. #2
    The brothers have been busy!

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    Ezekiel 33 (03-16-2020)

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    Senior Member Cardinal TT's Avatar
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    His T-shirt says 'Family Man' but in reality he was a greedy man

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    Ezekiel 33 (03-16-2020)

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    Administrator fuego's Avatar
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    I hate it when that happens.

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    Ezekiel 33 (03-16-2020)

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    Administrator fuego's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cardinal TT View Post
    His T-shirt says 'Family Man' but in reality he was a greedy man
    Isn't that one of the things that it says God hates in the OT. Usury which would be too much interest, but it's directly related. Unjust weights could be related too.

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    Senior Member Cardinal TT's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by fuego View Post
    Isn't that one of the things that it says God hates in the OT. Usury which would be too much interest, but it's directly related. Unjust weights could be related too.
    Exactly ...making wealth from others misfortune

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    Ezekiel 33 (03-16-2020), Romans828 (03-16-2020)

  13. #7
    He wonders what he could do with all his stock? I have an idea, how about selling locally at cost and donating the rest. The guy actually thinks he's providing a public service.

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    curly sue (03-15-2020), Ezekiel 33 (03-16-2020)

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