By Jesselyn
Cook
Parents struggling to find baby formula (or infant milk) amid a national shortage say sellers of bottles and cans have jacked up their prices by up to 300% or more on websites like eBay, OfferUp, Amazon and Craigslist and Facebook.
But in many cases, they find that the platforms do little to punish these speculative sellers.
“If you go on eBay, there is page after page of people selling formula for double, triple or quadruple what it costs in stores,” explains Lisa Davis, 42, Lehi's mother of five. , Utah, who supplements her 14-month-old son's diet with formula because of his small size, as strictly advised by his pediatrician.
Davis estimates that he has flagged about twenty ads for predatory formula on eBay.
"But eBay doesn't do anything about it," he denounces.
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In one case, he found a 12.4-ounce can of Enfamil Gentlease priced at $60 before shipping, more than triple what Target, Walgreens and other out-of-stock stores currently charge.
He informed the seller that he had reported it to eBay for its inflated price, which only provoked an angry response.
"Get over it," the seller replied in an exchange reviewed by our sister network NBC News.
“It's not illegal, you may not like it, but you have NO right to interfere with my business.
People do it constantly,” he alleged.
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In recent days, state attorneys general and elected officials have raised concerns about online baby formula price fraud.
In a May 13 letter that Rep. Rosa DeLauro and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, both Democrats from Connecticut, sent to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan, they warned that they were at both from price gouging and scams targeting parents specifically on sites like eBay and Facebook Marketplace.
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However, the scope of these abusive prices is difficult to gauge.
Parents with newborns say they typically don't have time to file complaints with government agencies, and the tech companies they complain to say they have no data to share.
A review of more than 100 apparently inflated formula listings on 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, or how little sites like eBay seem to care," Davis said.
Enfamil infant formula for sale on eBay for $200.
That's partly because there's still no federal law banning price fraud, and many state laws don't cover the sale of formula, said Teresa Murray, director of consumer watchdog for the Interest Research Group. United States public.
And while many independent seller platforms have policies that explicitly prohibit this practice, companies are often unable to properly enforce them, he added.
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"The reality is that they don't have the ability to control in real time what is being sold on their websites," he said.
Parents, for their part, have to pay the price.
Although eBay's published policies prohibit "inflating the price of goods in response to an emergency or disaster" and require that "items deemed essential" be "offered at a reasonable price," Davis said several listings he flagged remain active while others have been depleted.
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An eBay spokesman, Scott Overland, explained that the company has been working to deal with rising prices for baby formula.
“We work with manufacturers and government officials to identify items that are at risk of price fraud and have a price fraud reporting tool available to our entire community to report any potential violations of our politics," he explained.
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"Due to the current shortage, we are intensifying our manual review of listings to protect against fraud on baby formula prices," it added.
Facebook problems
Within the fast-growing Facebook groups dedicated to the sale of formula milk, members say that unpaid volunteer administrators have taken it upon themselves to find and remove the abusively priced sales posts, which they say often appear throughout the day.
Samantha Collins, a 34-year-old mother from Channahon, Illinois, was looking for a special high-calorie formula for her twins, who were born premature in February.
She recently joined a 35,000-member Facebook group called "baby formula for sale," which has gained thousands of members in the last week.
Like other Facebook groups, it has hundreds of comments going back weeks complaining about apparent price gouging by other group members.
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NBC News has seen posts in the group featuring images of formulas being sold at inflated prices, including one advertising "two cans" of Enfamil Neuro Pro for $110 each, when larger cans of that product typically sell for less than half that cost, and another asking $34 for a 12.5-ounce can of Enfamil infant formula, which normally costs about $18.
A Facebook post advertising baby formula for sale.
Ashley Settle, a spokeswoman for Meta, which owns Facebook, explained that it is not against Meta's rules to advertise items at inflated prices in Facebook groups.
Some parents also report seeing overpriced baby formula on Facebook Marketplace, where, according to Settle, the sale of formula is prohibited.
One of these Marketplace ads, coded as "Baby food1," appeared to sell a 19.9-ounce can of Enfamil Gentlease for $100 plus shipping, which would normally sell for about $25-30.
Meta pulled the ad after NBC News inquired about it.
Settle said enforcement of the company's business policies, which apply to Facebook Marketplace, relies primarily on automated technology, but some listings are manually reviewed.
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"Like other product buying and selling platforms, there may be instances where some people are selling prohibited items on Marketplace, whether they realize it or not," Settle said.
"We work to find and remove these listings and encourage people across our platforms to report behavior that may break our rules," it added.
Fraud on Amazon
Collins has also uncovered price fraud at Amazon.
She said she's seen her daughters' Enfamil EnfaCare formula sell on Amazon for around $166 for a pack of six 13.6-ounce cans, which typically lasts her about a week, compared to the $113.99 she was paying for the same product at Target and Walmart before the shortage.
Buying from Amazon would increase her formula costs by more than 45%, but it may soon be her only option as girls drink the remaining cans she has managed to get hold of.
She says that she has reported several listings to Amazon, but they have not gone down.
It does not appear that third-party sellers, who advertise on Amazon but are not part of the company, have been suspended.
Lori Capps of Albuquerque, New Mexico, a 37-year-old mother-to-be due in three weeks, has turned to Amazon to secure a small supply of infant formula.
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She has found 20-30 third-party price listings while searching for herself and her friend, a single mother whose son is tube-fed and needs a can of Neocate Junior formula a day.
A case of four 14.1-ounce cans of that product typically sells for about $175.
However, a still active Amazon ad that he has found asks for $320.
Another charges $305, while a third seller charges $84.99 for a can.
“It bothers me because [Amazon] made a big deal about not allowing this for toilet paper and cleaning supplies in 2020,” Capps recalled, adding that he has reported five different formula sellers and even contacted the manufacturer. Amazon customer service directly without success.
“We got to today and it's obvious that [formula milk] prices are outrageous everywhere.
It is very frustrating that Amazon allows this to happen,” he lamented.
Amazon spokesman Patrick Graham explained that the company is actively working on monitoring prices on its platform.
“We continually compare the prices submitted by our seller partners with current and historical prices inside and outside our store to determine if the prices are fair.
If we identify a price that violates our policy, we remove the offer and take appropriate action with the seller."
Breaking point
Other parents, like Tara Routzong, 32, who lives outside Birmingham, Alabama, have found these prices so debilitating that they've gone to extreme measures to find formula offline.
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Routzong's 5-month-old daughter, who relies entirely on Enfamil Nutramigen hypoallergenic formula, suffers from severe allergies and nearly ran out of stock two weeks ago.
Routzong and her husband searched the internet.
She searched Craigslist and OfferUp, where she Routzong said she saw other brands of formula selling for well above market price.
Lisa Davis mixes a bottle of formula for her 14-month-old son, Jack, in a hotel room in Austin, Texas.Ilana Panich-Linsman/NBC News
In one of the ads she 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.
Although Craigslist did not respond to a request for comment, OfferUp spokesman Brandon Vaughan said in part that while the platform "does not generally control pricing in our marketplace," it did create pricing protocols early in the pandemic for certain articles and recently "compromised those protocols in infant formula."
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OfferUp has a team of investigators who proactively seek out and remove infringing listings, he added, and users can also report listings.
Routzong tried eBay, where he was able to find the Nutramigen formula he needed.
But his price was $200 for six 32-ounce jars, which normally set him back about $63 at Walmart.
He denounced the ad, getting no response, and began to sob.
Her husband made a six-hour round trip to a Walmart in Troy, Alabama, instead of buying it online.
But she only has a few days supply left, and she doesn't know what they'll do when they run out.
“If this is the case, we will have to start paying these ridiculous prices.
What other choice do we have?” she lamented.