> grifters are failing to offload their stock
The word you're looking for is arbitrageur. Or scalper. Grifter implies some thing dishonest. Arbitrageurs are very up-front with what they're doing, and you get exactly why you're paying for.
The word you're looking for is arbitrageur. Or scalper. Grifter implies some thing dishonest. Arbitrageurs are very up-front with what they're doing, and you get exactly why you're paying for.
By buying in bulk to arbitrage you're acting against the interests of Costco and their customers, and hoping you fly under the radar.
That's debatable. Plenty of small businesses buy Costco stuff to resell, or for business use. They even have business memberships! Unless they have explicit no resell notices (although even then it's unclear what legal force they have), I wouldn't say it's dishonest.
It was poorly worded, but if corporate had a button they could press to stop new entrants buying a bunch in hopes of selling online at high markup, I believe they would.
Trouble is, there's no way to filter them out, and any attempt may in itself signal a lack of faith in the system and result in more panic buying.
National emergency price-gouger
Except that the other market administratively blocked them from selling. Then the first market wouldn't reverse the purchase, leaving the would-be arbitrageurs holding the bag.
The others who carried inventory for a nontrivial period of time were market makers, and carried market maker risk. Market maker risk is the bid-ask moving against you when you are carrying inventory. These guys were basically carrying unhedged physical long positions in toilet paper thinking they had a free option to unwind at par, but Costco changed the game on them.
Not all of these guys were arbing.