Retailer on overpriced masks: ‘We are very sorry’

LANSING, Mich. — Big box retailer Menards says it mistakenly placed too high a price on face masks it sold in its stores and is apologizing to customers after Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel sent a warning letter about price gouging during the coronavirus crisis.

“We are all working under a great deal of anxiety and stress and believe that in normal times this most likely would have never happened,” spokesman Jeff Abbott said.

“We are very sorry for this mistake,” and will offer a higher rebate to customers who bought the overpriced masks, Abbott said in an email to the Free Press.

Nessel sent Menards a “cease and desist” letter Tuesday — a precursor to possible legal action — after her office received 18 complaints from consumers about the retailer selling overpriced bleach, face masks and other items.

Abbott said the company’s marketing team noticed that customers in the Midwest were snapping up dust masks, which are often used to protect lungs during home improvement projects and commercial construction projects, “the minute we put them online for sale.”

Surgical masks have been in high demand as a possible protection against the coronavirus, and it is likely residents purchased dust masks as a substitute when there were no surgical masks to be found.

The concern was “our Midwestern customers who really needed dust masks were unable to buy them,” Abbott said.

“In an attempt to fix this, the team came up with the brilliant idea to raise the online price to $39.95 per twopack of dust masks and experiment with a large rebate offer, thinking this would restrict dust mask sales to our Midwestern customers as rebates can only be spent in our stores and not online,” Abbott said.

He did not say what the price of the masks was before the change, but Nessel said in her news release that items were in some cases being sold for double their normal prices.