Regarding pandemic price gouging, NYC Comptroller Lander says that he thinks the city's Dept. of Consumer and Worker Protection 'didn't have anything like the resources necessary to respond rapidly to all the cases,' of which there were 38,000 complaints.
Guilty retailers would face city-levied fines of up to $500 per hiked-up item, the de Blasio administration promised.
The city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection received more than 38,000 complaints of price gouging in the 12-month span of March 2020 to February 2021 — a 114% increase compared to the same time period the previous year. According to the comptroller’s audit, the agency investigated only 28% of complaints received, with the inspections taking place an average of 43 days after they were alerted. In 16% of the cases, the inspections didn’t occur until more than 90 days after receipt.
The DCWP has agreed to the comptroller's recommendations, though it noted in the audit that timeframes and expectations ought to remain fluid during true emergencies. Lander said the audit is not focused on finding fault with the city's handling of price gouging complaints during an unprecedented modern pandemic, but rather to take lessons from the experience.