Hurricane Harvey Updates: Best Buy Says Overpriced Bottled Water Was a Mistake
After the online backlash following the circulation of a photo showing that a case of bottled water is priced nearly $43 a case in the still flooded Houston, Texas, Best Buy has admitted that the pricing was a big mistake.
As seen on the photo that was shared on Twitter, one of two cases of bottled sold at Best Buy carried a $29.98 price tag while the other was priced at $42.96. Although the more expensively priced brand appears to contain 24 bottles in a pack, the one with the lower price appears to be a dozen only.
Following the online uproar due to the photo shared online that suggested prices of basic commodities have been pumped up in the midst of the calamity brought about by Hurricane Harvey, Best Buy admitted to its mistake, saying that it was a result of an error of a local employee who totaled the individual price of each bottle of water in the bundle pricing.
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"This was a big mistake on the part of a few employees at one store on Friday. We're sorry and it won't happen again," Best Buy spokesman Jeffrey Shelman said in a statement.
Whether Best Buy's explanation was true or not, it was not the only incident of a reported supposed price gouging in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. According to the office of the Texas State Attorney General, it had received 684 complaints about excessive pricing as of Aug. 30, including a complaint against a convenience store in Houston selling gasoline for $20 per gallon.
In Texan law, price gouging is a punishable offense that can demand a penalty of $20,000 or as much as $250,000, especially if the victims are 65-years-old and up.
Meanwhile, recent reports claim that Hurricane Harvey has made history in more ways than one. Apart from dumping 20 trillion gallons of rain in the Houston area since it made a landfall last weekend, the 51.88 inches amount of rain it delivered to Cedar Bayou has also set the record for the heaviest rainfall in continental U.S. due to a storm.
