Best Buy Sorry For Texas Store Selling $43 Bottled Water During Harvey

A photo showing a case of bottled water priced at $42.96 quickly went viral.
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Best Buy apologized on Tuesday for its Houston-area store that raised the price of a case of bottled water to $43 as Hurricane Harvey wreaked havoc on the region.

Journalist Ken Klippenstein tweeted a photo of a Best Buy in Cypress, Texas, about 30 miles from Houston, selling 24-packs of Dasani water for $42.96, and 12-packs of Smartwater for $29.98. The Texas attorney general’s office received hundreds of Harvey-related price-gouging complaints, Klippenstein reported.

The photo quickly went viral, and Best Buy apologized.

“This was a big mistake on the part of a few employees at one store on Friday,” a Best Buy spokesperson said in a statement. “As a company we are focused on helping, not hurting affected people. We’re sorry and it won’t happen again.”

The spokesperson added that employees priced the water cases incorrectly because they used single-bottle prices to calculate the cost of the case.

“Not as an excuse but as an explanation, we don’t typically sell cases of water,” the spokesperson said in a statement to The Hill.

At least 11 people have died in the storm, which has displaced thousands and caused billions in damage to the region.

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