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Price Gouging
Price Gouging
✨ Don't pay more than you have to. Cash out on evil merchants by suing them for illegal price gouging.
What is price gouging?
Price gouging is when merchants take unfair advantage of consumers during an emergency or disaster by significantly increasing the prices for essential consumer goods and services. They try to profit from vulnerable consumers who have no choice but to pay these absurdly high prices.
Examples of essential goods and services include:
water
ice
food
generators
batteries
home repair services
tree removal services
motor fuels
And price gouging is completely illegal.
While there are no federal laws that regulate price gouging, the majority of states have anti-price gouging laws. Even if a state doesn't have an explicit anti-price gouging law, most state governments can issue an executive order to prohibit such practices during a state of emergency.
How to spot price gouging:
While there's no single way to identify price gouging, here are some things to look out for:
A significant increase in prices. If the prices of essential goods significantly increase (especially during an emergency or pandemic), this is a major sign of price gouging.
When a product is priced much higher than similar products. If one brand's oatmeal is priced twice as high as another brand's oatmeal, this can be considered price gouging.
How can you solve the problem on your own?
What to do if a company is price gouging:
If you notice that a company is illegally price gouging, you can take one of two actions:
Report the company to your local government. Once your report is filed to the appropriate government branch, they will start an investigation and prosecute the company.
Sue the company or start a class action. Depending on your state, you may be entitled to not only a refund for the purchase but also restitution and damages.
How Can DoNotPay Help?
But taking legal action isn't easy. Which is why DoNotPay is here to help.
Through DoNotPay's Price Gouging product, we'll help you collect evidence against the merchant by generating a fake credit card that you can use for the transaction. We'll then help you file a demand letter with the evidence, requesting compensation.
All you have to do is:
1. Open the Price Gouging Protection product on DoNotPay
Generate a fake credit card to use with the merchant
Complete the transaction with the fake credit card
Save a photo of the transaction as evidence and start the demand letter process
Answer a few questions through our chatbot about the merchant and transaction