How Ebay caused the medical supply shortage and price gouging

2020 will always be remembered for the covid-19 crisis. When the virus struck, there was a huge spike in demand for medical equipment and face masks. But a strange collusion of government and corporations caused a shortage that was unable to be met.

As suppliers tried to import medical face masks into America to meet demand, they were hit with a two pronged effort to keep these goods from reaching the public.

The government shutdown all “nonessential businesses.” This included material and craft stores with raw material that would be used to make masks, distribution companies and businesses, and airlines, which played a key role in the supply and importation of every day household items for the country. As the government blocked these items from coming in, companies like Ebay took advantage.

Ebay banned all but a “limited number of authorized sellers” from selling Personal protection equipment, including face masks.

Importers like the ebay user “Alexport89” had been able to import large amounts of masks early on in the pandemic, from as early as March. But even though the masks were being sold at rates as much as 24 times less than what was being offered on Ebay,

But whenever a listing was attempted on ebay to sell at a lower rate than what was being offered on the selling marketplace, Ebay blocked it and provided this message:

Due to the pandemic, Ebay suspended their phone lines conveniently, so reaching someone by phone was not possible. However they do have live chat from cheap outsourced call centers overseas that do have agents who respond.

Unfortunately there is nobody through Ebay’s live chat who can even give a clear answer on Ebay’s inconsistency throughout the pandemic.

While warehouses of masks and personal protective equipment sat full with importers unable to sell on any market, ebay’s price gouging policy got the site, and it’s few sellers, very very rich.

users were able to sell masks that cost $0.30 or $0.40 to make a high $12 or $15 a mask. And sell they did.

1 user sold a simple cotton black face mask at $12 a mask, and sold over 10,000. That’s $3000 worth of masks netting a profit of over $100,000. And that is just 1. There are other masks priced at over $18. Over $20. Over $25.

The amount of money made through price gouging by Ebay’s price gouging “ban” on users is probably in the billions when added up all the users allowed to sell.

This also highlights the problem with price gouging laws and policies. When the government and corporations intervened to prevent “price gouging,” they inadvertently caused price gouging.

Prntly sent the following email to Ebay seeking a statement from the site, but did not receive any response.

” Hi we’re doing a story on Ebay and how your site contributed to price gouging and the PPE crisis by banning users from selling medical supplies and masks during the pandemic, even if they were trying to list the items at rates lower than what you were allowing to be sold. We want to know if Ebay has any statement on this. You have surgical masks being sold for over $1 each and cotton masks being sold at $12-$18 each, but have banned thousands of users from listing the same products for as much as 20-24 times less. Look forward to response.”

At this time, Ebay has not rescinded their policy of banning users from selling medical supplies unless they are authorized sellers, and the current authorized sellers, many of whom do not even seem to be in the United States, continue to hold a monopoly on overpriced PPE and masks.

We also reached out to Ebay on twitter, a platform that companies tend to be very responsive on, but were also ignored about this.

We will update this story with a statement from Ebay if they respond.

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