Coronavirus Scam: Nigerian woman gets her money back after buying sanitiser at N19,950

A Nigerian woman has gotten a refund from a Lagos pharmacy which sold a 500 ml hand sanitiser to her at an outrageous price of N19,950.

She said she got her money back after the intervention of the Nigerian authorities.

The pharmacy owner said the price of the sanitiser was high because they also bought it at a high price from the distributor.

“In the morning of that day, we sold that particular sanitiser at N3,500 before the market caput,” Dayo Adebayo, the owner of Medmark pharmacy, Gbagada, Lagos, told reporters, Saturday night.

Prices of hand sanitisers and face masks have skyrocketed in Lagos and other parts of Nigeria since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. One infection has been reported in Nigeria so far.

“So because of Corona virus, Medmark Pharmacy on Adekunle Osomo street Soluyi Gbagada sold this 500 ml sanitizer for N19,950,” an apparently outraged Farida Ladipo-Ajayi said in a Facebook post.

Mrs Ladipo-Ajayi also posted a photo of the sanitiser with the N19,950 price tag on it.

“We didn’t notice, got back opened the product then debit alert of N19,950 came in. Took it back and they insist that is the price,” she said in the post which she tagged some bloggers with the hope they would take up the ‘fight’ for her to get her money back.

Mrs Ladipo-Ajayi mistook the price on the item to be N1,950.

Her post went viral on Facebook and Twitter after some bloggers lifted it.

She also made a quick complaint to the Federal Competition & Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) via telephone.

On Sunday, Mrs Ladipo-Ajayi posted another message on her Facebook indicating that the matter has been resolved in her favour.

“I have gotten a full refund for the sanitizer. Thank you everyone, thank you FCCPC for taking swift action,” she said on the social media site, after deleting her first post on it.

The resolution of the conflict between the pharmacy and the customer attracted some applause for the consumer protection agency.

“Wow, I am so delightfully surprised. I didn’t even know FCCPC existed. Thank you,” one commenter said on Facebook.

Medmark Pharmacy could not be reached again as calls to its owner, Mr Adebayo, were no longer going through on Monday afternoon.

Mr Adebayo in his previous interview with PREMIUM TIMES, however, said it was wrong for Mrs. Ladipo-Ajayi to make it look as if she was cheated by the pharmacy.

“If she claimed she did not see the price tag, at least we showed her the total bill (before she used her POS to settle the bill),” Mr Adebayo said. “She saw the sanitisers with lower prices but she didn’t pick, she went for this one.”

Mr Adebayo said he explained “everything” to FCCPC officials when they visited his pharmacy over the matter.

“On the day this thing happened, we kept on buying, as we put in down (inside our shop) people (customers) also kept buying it.

“There was one instance when we were still waiting to make our bulk purchase, something of N4,000 suddenly became N15,000.

“Everybody knows in the whole of Lagos you can’t get sanitiser anywhere now. People have started mixing something, but we cannot be involved in such practice. We rather buy what we are sure of,” he said.

Source: PREMIUM TIMES