Parents accuse online sellers of price gouging on baby formula

A review of more than 100 seemingly price-gouged formula listings across these websites and conversations with 13 parents in states across the country reveal that the problem has been growing online.“People don’t realize how bad this is right now,” Davis said, “or how little sites like eBay seem to care.”That’s partly because there is still no federal law prohibiting price gouging, and many state laws do not cover formula sales, noted Teresa Murray, the consumer watchdog director of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. A spokesperson for eBay, Scott Overland, said that the company has been working to address price gouging through the formula crisis.“We work with manufacturers and government officials to identify items at risk of price gouging and have a price-gouging reporting tool available to our entire community to report any potential violations of our policy,” he said. Like other Facebook groups, it has hundreds of comments dating back weeks complaining about apparent price gouging by fellow group members.NBC News has seen posts in the group featuring images of formula being sold at inflated prices, including one advertising “two cans” of Enfamil Neuro Pro for $110 each, when the largest cans of that product generally retail for less than half that cost, and another asking for $34 per 12.5-ounce can of Enfamil Infant Formula, which normally costs around $18.Ashley Settle, a spokesperson for Meta, which owns Facebook, said that in Facebook groups, it is not against Meta’s rules to advertise items at inflated prices.Some parents also report seeing overpriced baby formula on Facebook Marketplace, where Settle said formula is prohibited from being sold. In one listing he found, an OfferUp seller charged $75 before shipping for a single 12.4-ounce can of Enfamil Gentlease, which retails for about $18 at Target.While Craigslist did not respond to a request for comment, OfferUp spokesperson Brandon Vaughan said in part that while the platform “does not generally control pricing on our marketplace,” it created price-gouging protocols at the start of the pandemic for certain items and recently “engaged those protocols on baby formula.” OfferUp has a team of investigators who proactively search for and remove violative listings, he added, and users can report listings as well.Routzong tried eBay, where she was able to find the Nutramigen formula she needed.