Best Buy Apologizes for Selling $42 Packs of Water in Houston-Area Store

James Crugnale
Published: August 30,2017

Best Buy apologized after a Houston-area store was spotted selling $42 packs of Dasani water bottles.
(Ken Klippenstein/GritPost.com)

Best Buy apologized after one of their stores in the Houston-area was spotted selling Dasani 24-packs of bottled water for $42 while Harvey prepared to wreak havoc with catastrophic flooding.
"This was clearly a mistake on the part of a few employees at a single store on Friday, Aug. 25," a Best Buy spokesperson told weather.com in an email. "We feel terrible about this because, as a company, we are focused on helping, not hurting people affected by this terrible event."
The water bottle incident was reported to have taken place in the Houston suburb of Cypress.
News of the alleged price gouging was first reported by GritPost.com's Ken Klippenstein.
"It’s taking advantage of people in need to make easy money playing off fear. Best Buy doesn’t need to sell water at $43 a case. They don’t need the money," a local Houstonian told Kippenstein. "I understand the law of supply and demand and the cost and availability of goods being shipped to an area once a disaster hits. This was before there was a shortage. This is pure greed."
(MORE: Harvey Flooding Horror: Rescuers Find Shivering Toddler Clinging to Drowned Mother)
"We are all deeply sorry that we gave anyone even the momentary impression that we were trying to take advantage of the situation," the Best Buy spokesperson added. "By way of explanation, and not excuse: We don’t typically sell cases of water and don’t have pricing for it in our computer system. The mistake was made when employees at this one store priced a case of water by multiplying the cost of one bottle by the number of bottles in a case – arriving at a number that is far, far higher than a normal price for a case of water."
In addition to the Best Buy incident, hundreds of other consumer complaints have been submitted to the Texas attorney general in the wake of the storm.

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