Ever since the beginning of the year, there has been quite a bit of drama surrounding the merger between Kroger and Albertsons.

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Here in Colorado, Kroger operates King Soopers and Albertsons has Safeway, which means there has been a whole lot of concern.

Back in February, Colorado’s Attorney General, Phil Weiser, filed a lawsuit against the companies, claiming the merger breaks antitrust laws.

Since then, the merger has been put on hold here in Colorado, and the fate of it will be decided at least September 30th.

Now, yet another wrinkle has been brought into the fold, and this time, it could seriously tick some people off.

Kroger Official Admits to Price Gouging

One half of the merger is Kroger, who has been on their heels vehemently defending the decision all the way.

According to Newsweek, during an antitrust trial recently, a top leader in the company admitted that price gouging has taken place.

The leader was named Andy Groff, who is the Senior Director for Pricing in the company.

During testimony, he admitted that the company had raised the prices of eggs and milk beyond the levels of inflation, which is textbook price gouging.

Not only that, but he communicated with the rest of the top executives at Kroger via email that the prices they were selling eggs and milk was above that of inflation.

That means that the high prices of eggs and milk in King Soopers in Colorado possibly were not just because of inflation.

Price gouging was a point of major concern when it came to Weiser’s lawsuit, and it seems that those fears may have been realized.

Is There a Price Gouging Ban?

While other spokespeople from Kroger said that the examples Groff gave were cherry-picked, it still is quite clear that price gouging has taken place.

With that being said, there have been many calls recently to try to completely ban price gouging, since it is so anti-consumer.

In an article by Forbes, it was revealed that large corporations, many of which have strangleholds over their markets, need to be held more accountable.

While profits for large corporations continue to go up, it actually has a direct effect on inflation. In fact, economists calculate that 50% of inflation can be tied to corporate profits.

With this Kroger revelation, it seems we may be getting closer to seeing just how prevalent price gouging is in our society.

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The most popular grocery stores in America, from corporate chains to family-owned enterprises. Stacker ranked them using consumer ratings sourced from YouGov polls.

Gallery Credit: Stacker

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