3 Big Corporations Accused of Shamelessly Gouging Their Customers This Hurricane Season
For Texas, Florida and large swaths of the Caribbean, Hurricanes Harvey and Irma have proven historic human catastrophes. At least 70 people were killed in the former, while the latter is on a collision course with Miami after leveling Anguilla, Cuba and the Bahamas, among other island nations. Barbuda, which bore the brunt of the Category 5 storm, has been reduced to rubble.
For a handful of corporations, the death and destruction wrought by these tempests have presented an opportunity to turn a tidy profit. Call it disaster capitalism in miniature. If nothing else, they help illustrate just how ill-equipped private industry is to meet the demands of a public safety crisis like a natural disaster.
Here are three apparent offenders, each of which has been accused of shamelessly gouging its customers in their time of need.
1. Amazon
The online retailer has come under fire since it listed a 24-pack of bottled water for $99.99 via BestSource OfficeSupplies, a third party vendor. One shopper complained of a single gallon of distilled water being sold for $21.95. A spokeswoman for Amazon told CBS that the website's prices "do not fluctuate by region or delivery location." But the site has acknowledged that it relies on "dynamic pricing," an algorithmic model that incorporates what other merchants are charging and tweaks its pages accordingly. During a natural disaster, when essentials like food, water and batteries are in short supply, this can look and feel an awful lot like a lot like gouging.
2. Delta
With Hurricane Irma bearing down on virtually the entire state of Florida, and Governor Rick Scott urging residents in areas susceptible to storm surges to evacuate (after years of climate denialism, it bears mentioning), traffic has spiked on travel sites like Expedia and Kayak from prospective passengers hoping to make their escape. Enter Delta, which has reportedly been charging four, five and six times the normal cost of a flight out of Miami.
Leigh Dow, a public relations executive with just under 19,000 Twitter followers, went viral earlier this week when she tweeted that the price of her ticket to Phoenix had been bumped from $547.50 to $3,258.50. Snopes is careful to note that Delta ultimately helped her find more affordable airfare, and the airline announced Friday that it would be capping one-way reservations to and from South Florida at $399, but it remains unclear if it was simply bowing to public pressure.
3. Chevron
Reuters reports that as of Thursday, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi had received 45 separate complaints of inflated prices at Chevron gas stations, despite its repeated claim that it has no patience for gouging. According to the motorists advocacy group AAA, gas prices across the state have spiked to $2.725, as thousands of motorists flee coastal areas before Irma makes landfall. Shortages have been especially acute in southern Florida, one of the regions most vulnerable to the storm.
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