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Hurricane Brings Price Gouging: Bottled Water At 500 Percent Markup Reported

By Roz Zurko
Published on: 01:11 PST, Aug 26, 2017

As Hurricane Harvey batters the Texas coastline and the people of that state pray for the best, there are some other folks who are showing a side of greed that is quite disturbing. When a crisis hits, it’s the American way to band together and while no one is asking businesses to give their products away, the state laws indicate that prices are not to be inflated due to the demand for supplies in a state of emergency.

Fox & Friends Weekend reports on Saturday morning that the price gouging stories are out there, but so are the laws. Reports of people charging $99 for a case of water were discussed on the show this morning. The aftermath of this hurricane can leave people without electricity for days and quite possibly a week, according to state officials today. With people expected to be on the hunt for supplies in the days that follow the hurricane, those who are price gouging will be dealt with using the full extent of the law.

According to the Daily Mail, before Hurricane Harvey, some folks purchased as much water as they could find and as soon as the shelves emptied in the markets, the price of the water started to rise. Reports have bottled water marked up 500 percent and even more. On Fox & Friends Weekend on Saturday morning, it sounds like the folks selling the products at these markup prices might want to smile for the camera.

People are taking pictures of these disaster money-making gigs, and the fines they will be hit with if found guilty are astronomical. The Daily Mail reports one Texas resident confronted a man selling bottle water at prices even royalty would need to dig deep into their pockets to afford.

Marcus Griffin live-streamed his encounter with a man selling water for unheard of prices. For his introduction to this live-streaming event, an angry Griffin said,”I’m going to show you why nobody has any water.” He scans over to a pickup truck that is loaded with cases of water, and he accuses these people who have set-up shop in a Houston area parking lot of taking advantage of people during a time of crisis.

This price gouging isn’t just for these pop-up merchants in parking lots along the coast of Texas. According to local news KHOU 11 in Houston, pictures are “pouring in” of people price gouging and stores are also jumping on the crisis inflation bandwagon. A store in North Harris County as well as a store near Cypress has inflated their bottled water prices.

Dan Parsons, who is the president of the Better Business Bureau of Greater Houston and South Texas, reminded people that this is against the law and the fines are hefty if you are caught and found guilty of doing this. Parsons said that “this applies to goods like drinking water, medicine, food, batteries, gas, generators, or services like towing,” according to KHOU 1.

With just about everyone having the ability to snap a picture at a moments notice thanks to their cell phones, it is going to be hard to get away with this ploy. Pictures of the stores selling water at markup prices and pictures of license plates as people set up shop in parking lots are evidence to help the authorities go after these people.

You can file your complaints about any price gouging you happen upon in Texas here at the website for the Texas Attorney General.

[Featured Image by Yulia Grigoryeva/Shutterstock]

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