State receives more than 10,000 price-gouging complaints,

Orlando woman says gas station had ice for $20

More than 10,000 pricegouging complaints connected to Hurricane Irma have poured into the state since Labor Day, according to the Florida Attorney General’s office.

Customers complained retailers have jacked up prices for gas, water, ice and batteries as supplies ran thin and residents raced to stock up their homes or recover.

Complaints came in before and after the hurricane as stores and gas stations ran out of essential supplies.

Lynda Carpenter of Orlando filed a complaint on Sept. 9 saying a Sunoco gas station near Edgewater Drive and North Orange Blossom Trail had raised prices for gas, water and ice.

“They wanted $20 for a bag of ice and water was $20 a case,” Carpenter told the Orlando Sentinel. “I turned around and went somewhere else because I couldn’t afford to pay that.”

Gas, she said, was selling for $2.99 a gallon, 30 cents above the local average.

The Sunoco station did not answer phone calls Friday morning.

Carpenter said she hasn’t noticed any price gouging since the storm, but she has been stuck at home without power.

The Attorney General’s office provided the Orlando Sentinel with some of the 10,000 complaints submitted in the last few days. More records could not be released yet because the office was still reviewing them and redacting personal identification information, said Kylie Mason, a spokeswoman for the office.

“Each complaint is carefully reviewed for violations of (price gouging laws) and when appropriate assigned to a member of our Consumer Protection Division for further review and investigation,” Mason said in an email.

Florida law makes it illegal for retailers and hotels to raise prices during a state of emergency to increase profit margins. Business owners are allowed to raise prices if wholesale costs increase, as is often the case with gasoline.

So a handful of gas stations in the tourist areas and near Orlando International Airport that consistently charge $5 or $6 a gallon would not be considered as price-gougers.

As of Friday morning 22 percent of stations in the state still didn’t have gasoline, according to Gasbuddy.com.

Many complaints came against convenience stores, which reportedly increased the prices for cases of water 300 percent to 500 percent.

Several complaints from a Mount Dora resident said Lil Sammy’s Food Mart sold a 24-pack of water for $15, but the normal price is $3.99 a case. The manager of the store was not available to comment, an employee there said.

A complaint against a Kwik Mart convenience store at 2835 S. Bumby Ave., in Orlando said an employee offered to sell a customer D batteries, commonly used for flashlights, for $5 each. Phone calls to the store were not answered.

For comparison, Hurricane Matthew last year only spurred about 2,700 complaints, but that storm only impacted a fraction of the state compared to Irma’s track up the entire Florida peninsula.

Bondi’s office filed suit against hotels in Tampa, Lakeland and Clearwater after Hurricane Matthew, claiming that those establishments dramatically increased prices as people were looking for shelter from the storm.

Several complaints reported that Wawa stations were advertising gasoline for $9.99 a gallon. But Wawa spokeswoman Lori Bruce said gas never sold for that price.

“The number was incorrectly posted when the store ran out of fuel,” Bruce said.

Some stores have also been accused of price gouging because they sold bottled water in cases for the same prices bottles would be sold individually.

The local Better Business Bureau chapter is also warning customers to watch out for return fraud after the hurricane, said president and CEO Holly Salmons.

“Last year with Hurricane Matthew we had complaints from some consumers that said stores changed their return policies for hurricane supplies,” Salmons said. “The state of Florida has a statute that basically says stores should uphold their own return policy and once the purchase is made, the terms and conditions can’t change.” karnold@ orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5664; Twitter, @kylelarnold or facebook.com/bykylearnold