Cleanshelf Supermarket Ordered To Refund Customers On Hiked Sanitizer

The greed of most Kenyans became open once the Health CS Mutahi Kagwe announced that Kenya had a coronavirus case and Cleanshelf Supermarkets was not left behind.

Cleanshelf immediately the price of hand sanitizers to 1000 shillings from a previous 800 shillings to reap on the unfortunate case of coronavirus outbreak that requires Kenyans to regularly sanitize their hands.

Cleanshelf hiked the prices of Tropikal hand sanitizers on Sunday even after the President announced that stern action would be taken against anyone found to be unfairly hiking commodity or service prices to take advantage of the coronavirus outbreak.

In a statement issued today, Monday the 16^th March 2020, the Competition Authority of Kenya (CAK) said it had established that the price of Tropical brand hand sanitizers, which retails at 800 shillings had been increased to amounts as high as 1000 shillings.

“Cleanshelf Supermarkets normally retails the specific hand sanitizers at 800 shillings. However, the authority has determined that the retailer on March 15, 2020, sold the same batch product to consumers at varying amounts above 800 shillings, including 1,000 shillings, with the prices increasing within hours,” said the CAK in a statement.

CAK termed the move as an exploitation of customers and demanded that Cleanshelf contacts all customers who purchased the product and refund them within the next 10 days.

“The retailer, therefore, exploited its relative strength as a retailer to commercially detriment consumers whose bargaining position has been diminished following the pronouncement of existence COVID-19 in Kenya,” the CAK statement read.

The Authority has therefore ordered Cleanshelf to contact and refund all the customers who purchased the 960 pieces of the Tropical brand hand sanitizers above the usual selling price and submit evidence to support the same by March 26^th, 2020.

Cleanshelf, however, has chosen to sacrifice one of its employees to take the blame instead of taking responsibility and termed the incident as an “individual error” which would see the retailer take disciplinary action on the said employee.

“It has come to our attention that one of our staff members without consultation and irresponsibly severally adjusted the price of Tropical Hand Sanitizers in our Ruaraka Branch,” Cleanshelf said in a statement.

“This was an individual error, and the management of cleanshelf wholly and unreservedly apologizes to all our customers.”

Cleanshelf has since asked all customers who were overcharged for the product to go back to the branch for a full refund.

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