The Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office is reminding all residents that price gouging is illegal while our community is under a State of Emergency from the emergence of the coronavirus.
Price gouging is when a retailer or seller is attempting to take unfair advantage of the public during an emergency by increasing prices in an unreasonable manner for essential consumer goods and services.
California’s anti-price gouging statute, Penal Code Section 396 prohibits raising the price of many consumer goods and services by more than 10 percent after an emergency has been declared.
Members of the public are encouraged to report any instances of gouging to the Consumer Protection Unit by email at DA-ReportFraud@contracostada.org.
Violators of the price gouging statute are subject to criminal prosecution that can result in a one-year imprisonment in county jail and/or a fine of up to $10,000.
Noticed the left overToilet paper at CVS in Rossmoor is way overpriced and you can only buy one papertoilet paper or paper towel, not both. . The buying one is fine, the high price is not nice for the elderly on a fixed income!
Could it be that it is just only the overpriced paper towels that are left? In more normal times one can choose from expensive paper towels or cheap paper towels. I’m not knocking the expensive ones. I personally don’t need any kind of high performance, quilted, printed, impress your guests kind of paper towel. Just a small disposable rag kind or a fast food napkin. If the hoarders have only left the expensive ones, then only the expensive ones are left.
I tries to buy things on amazon. Most of the products I normally buy have a markup—
just one example out if my list: Bubly Sparkling water (18pk) was 8.5 now it is almost 11.
Uff
Oh yeah! Then they should come after hospitals also to be fair. I was charged 10 dollars for 1 pill of aspirin when I was in the ER; I could get a whole bottle of aspirin for the same price. Talking about price gouging.
Today, I found 2 15 oz. bottles of McKesson hand sanitizer and 220 3M N95 masks in the closet leftover from H1N1/09. Does this mean I cannot sell them on eBay for a profit?
How badly do you need the money from those few items? Donate them to people working vulnerable populations such as Meals on Wheels. Or if you need the money that badly, sell them for 10% above what you bought them for. The kinder option will enrich you much more.
Selling anything more than 10% of it’s suggested retail price is considered gouging in the state of California, during emergency situations.
You shouldn’t be selling N95 masks that are years past their expiration date. The elastic bands aren’t as taut, and the filter itself is no longer as effective. As well, unless you’ve been storing them perfectly for that past 10 years, they might have been slightly crushed or distorted in some other way.
Don’t sell old sanitizer. If your hand sanitizer is too old, the alcohol in it may have evaporated out from the gel. Even in a closed container. That would make it ineffective at killing viruses.
NP. You can as long as you don’t charge more than 10% more than you paid for it.
I’ll just save them for yard work and restock with new masks when the pandemic is over. Given the standard 5-year shelf life, the masks expired in 2015. So, at this point they are probably only good for hay fever, construction and things like that.
red dragon bar on Clayton Rd. was open today selling over priced drinks more than normal the shelter in place order must not apply to food on one side and bar on the other with lots of people inside the bar .
It’s possible there’s an exception for alcohol, since it is not a necessity. However a bar should not have “lots of people” in it, because of the restrictions of the lockdown order. Bars and restaurants can have patrons, but must keep customers 6ft distance away from each other. Nobody is allowed to operate at normal customer capacity.
Well, there’s a violation right there. They should not have been open, PERIOD! Except for to go orders.
Be Kind.
You’ll be amazed at how good you’ll feel.
Question for Claycordians – at what point say 2 or 3 weeks from now do a large number of bar and restaurant owners say “screw the Fed or State gov” and open back up? The move to shut everything down is costing a ton of people their jobs and potentially their businesses. How long do you think business owners will stand for it, and if they do open back up will the state come rushing in threatening to board them up and/or pull their liquor license?
Raising prices protects supply. These price ‘gouging’ measures that prohibit stores from increasing prices allows certain people to stock and hoard cheap items like toilet paper. Raising prices would protect the supply and allow that supply to be more evenly distributed among the population. People would think twice about buying 800 rolls of toilet paper if they were $2 each.
Yet another example of the public’s and our government’s lack of understanding of basic economics.
Ip Ip do da do da.
That goes for looters, racketeers, and defenseless children.
MAYBE someone in the media can find out why I am seeing a 4 pack of Charmin on Craig’s List for $25. And this is not the only listing like that. I flagged the listings. But seems Craig’s list should be WAY more proactive. I knew those cart loads of TP I saw coming out of Costco were not being “used” not THAT is price gouging. pht
I’ve been flagging posts as well. Posts that I’ve reported have disappeared. However, the Craigslist tech should be able to set up a search algorithm that automatically finds and deletes toilet paper posts.
Some guy in Sacramento was selling TP for $200 dollars. I can’t remember what the quantity was, but it was egregious. I flagged that post.
I seen on OfferUp, $3 per paper roll of toilet paper.
Ace hardware $15 for a box of gloves. Less than $5 on Amazon
This is one Becton might prosecute…..take a capitalist to jail…..Pleasant Hill Home Invasion, no prosecution.
108RS
Given the record of prosecutions by Becton’s office, I doubt that anything will be done.
I’m sure Becton is following her Soros handbook.
Toilet paper is still a crapy investment …
The real gouging is the taxes this county forces all of us to pay for lousy service and give away programs where no one benefits.
The county does more for the benefit of criminals than for the taxpayer.
That’s not outright gouging, that’s theft.
Today i went into safeway on willow pass
Seen club price viva signature cloths paper
Towels for $15.99 Each !