Retailers are struggling to prevent price gouging on products that make dubious claims about Coronavirus.
As products such as face masks and hand sanitizers sell out rapidly in stores, shoppers are increasingly looking to online retailers to purchase items to protect themselves from the Coronavirus.
Yet the high demand has created an opening for third-party sellers on ecommerce platforms like Amazon and eBay. In doing so, merchants have flooded sites with overpriced items, many of which make unverified medical claims relating to how to prevent or treat the virus.
As of March 3, there were more than 91,300 confirmed cases of the Coronavirus worldwide and at least 3,100 deaths. In the US, there have been 91 confirmed or presumptive positive cases and at least six deaths.
Online retailers are hurriedly trying to crack down on the scams. Amazon announced last week that it had removed no fewer than 1 million such products from its third party retailer site for violating its policies.
Last week, the US Food and Drug Administration said it was closely monitoring the market for any products that make fraudulent prevention or treatment claims. The agency said it would issue “warning letters, seizures, or injunctions against products on the market that are not in compliance with the law.”
Other online retail platforms, including Walmart and Etsy, said they’d likewise removed products with misleading medical claims. An Etsy spokesperson told CNBC that it has removed “thousands of items with medical claims that violate our policies” in recent days.
A Walmart spokesperson told the same outlet that the company is continuing to monitor the site for products that make unsubstantiated medical claims, but declined to share data on how many products it has removed so far.
