Posted on 03/15/2020 1:12:40 PM PDT by dennisw
Social media shames 'greedy, selfish' price-gouging brothers for selling $1 hand sanitizer for up to $70 each before they were shut down by Amazon - leaving them with 17,700 bottles and nowhere to sell them
They drove around Tennessee and Kentucky buying the items at various stores like Dollar Tree, Walmart, Staples, and Home Depot
Then placed the items for sale on their Amazon online store, pricing hand sanitizer for as much as $70 apiece
They managed to sell about 200 bottles of hand sanitizer before Amazon shut them down The New York Times reported that the Colvins were left with more than 17,000 bottles of hand sanitizer and other items in their garage and nowhere to sell it to
The Colvins started to receive death threats The Tennessee attorney general sent the brothers a letter threatening legal action
Two Tennessee brothers who bought 17,700 bottles of hand sanitizer and sold some of them for as much as $70 each to profit off the coronavirus outbreak say they have received death threats after being shamed on social media.
Matt and Noah Colvin of Hixson, Tenneseee, drove 1,300 miles across the state and neighboring Kentucky earlier this month after the first coronavirus death was reported in the United States.
Seeing a lucrative business opportunity, they filled a U-Haul truck with thousands of bottles of hand sanitizer and thousands of packs of antibacterial wipes that they ‘cleaned out’ from various Dollar Tree, Walmart, Staples and Home Depot locations.
In total, they spent between $10,000 and $15,000 stocking up on the items which are now in demand thanks to the global pandemic that has killed thousands and will likely infect many more.
'The bulk of it was purchased just driving around to retail stores in the Chattanooga area,' Matt Colvin told WRCB-TV.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
That’s so they can relax by the BBQ.
> Matt Colvin (pictured) said he has received death threats and pizza delivery pranks... <
Matt should seize this opportunity and order thousands of pizzas for himself. That way he could corner the hand sanitizer market AND the pizza market.
Hot take, noob. Why are you here?
The ironic thing about everyone panicking about hand sanitizer is a lot of people have decided to stay at home much of the time. Uh, soap and water works very well at home. Use your sanitizer sparingly if you need to go out, like to a grocery store or pharmacy. Most of those places have some form of sanitizer available when you walk into the building.
Pissed me off. It’s one thing to have a mark up and sell it. It’s another to buy everything in sight before doing so.
I’m all for capitalism, but not like this. People I’d never want to know.
....and now, those who really, really want hand sanitizer know who to contact....
The reality is, this was not a good way to make money.
This guy is probably going to be taking flak for years over this.
This is also a lesson in how a prudent person should consider the potential effects of social media on everything they do outside their home. Regardless of what we think about this man, it is a fact that social media regularly destroys lives and we would be foolish to ignore that.
Back during the .22 ammo shortage I had a nice supply on hand because it was the cheapest way to practice on a frequent basis and much of that I did buy at the prevailing high prices. I wanted a new rifle and put some of it on Armslist to get the money. I charged almost nothing over what I paid and it was what everyone was selling .22 for at the time - retail or privately, about 11¢ a round. I kept getting reported and bumped off the forum by assh*les who claimed I was gouging. And they posted pretty nasty comments. That’s when I realized what a few vindictive assh*les on an electronic media could do if they went after a person.
Social media has empowered a lot of hateful, vindictive and very small minded people who in the old days would stew in their own resentments sitting in their living rooms.
He can sell the lot for a few bucks to companies that buy stock of bankrupt companies. He’ll lose money, and deserves to.
I posted in this thread because Matt and Noah Colvin are at the same time unethical and absolute idiots.
They attempted to control a market where their sales depended on the whims of Amazon and he volunteered to talk to the New York Times.
Martin Shkreli, aka Pharma-Bro, sends the Colvins a text message from his prison cell: “I feel your pain. First they love us for having what they want, then, they want to wring our necks for selling it to them. What are you gonna do?”
What bleeding heart economic imbeciles simply don’t get is that the VERY PRICE GOUGING DRAWS SUPPLY INTO AN AREA THAT HAS NO SUPPLY! People spot a profit, and will run to fix that, thus bringing the price down faster than all the moral posturing in the world could ever do.
Social justice crytpcommies don’t want real compassion. Real compassion wants to alleviate suffering. Allowing “price gouging” takes the terror panic out of the market, and allows prices to go back down. This is historically documentable and irrefutable.
Instead, we have a generation of economically illiterate bloviators who want to FEEL compassionate, and be able to hector others who don’t measure up to your arbitrary behavioral standards. It is quite stupid, frankly.
They coulda been Mike Bloomberg’s sons...
“BTW price-gouging is illegal and they can be sued by each state’s AG.”
yeah, cause everyone knows how superior it is to have ZERO supply at a fair price, than plenty of supply at an unfair price. Makes perfect sense to me.
I’m torn on this myself. Clearly, increased prices help with availability. But these guys are still assholes.
The reason New York Bankers are taking large sums of cash out of ATM machines is they feel cash black markets are in our future.... on a much bigger level than hand sanitizers...
No one is arguing these people are selfless Mother Theresa types. That is not the issue, either. The issue is SOLELY which method is best for addressing supply (and thus price) fluctuations.... the market and people seeking to make a buck, or regulatory strictures by the state.
There is really no question on which “works” better, and thus, which is really the most compassionate. If I want to reform character, I will take them to church. If I want to see principles of justice and compassion writ publicly, then I will let people operate freely with their own property.
“BTW price-gouging is illegal and they can be sued by each state’s AG.”
Not entirely true. 34 States have a price gouging law and usually only related to fuel and only after a declared state of emergency by the State.
The irony is that if these two idiots had been less greedy, they would have made far more money. If they had been selling these bottles for five dollars apiece instead of 70, they would’ve sold them all out and probably nobody would have cared. This is, by the way, a perfect example of how the free market works. If somebody is too greedy, they get called out for it and end up being way worse off because of their greed. The market is nothing more than a gigantic communications network, and when someone tries to game it to this much of an extent, the market reacts badly. I am glad that these jerks got called out for what they did, and that Amazon shut them down.
Okay then, riddle me this...
If you need something RIGHT NOW and the only people that have something you NEED have it but at an exorbitant price, and there is no one around with more to drive the price down, what do you do???
If you can’t afford what they have, what do you do?
I bet I could accomplish the same with really hot water.
I guaran-darn-tee you I would not complain if someone offered me such a product for $70.00. I would thank him for the amusement.
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