Someone is selling $268 sanitizer through Walmart Marketplace

Expensive bottles of hand sanitizer are seen on Walmart.ca on Feb. 5, 2020.

Vancouver — As coronavirus concerns continue growing across Canada, someone is apparently trying to sell bottles of hand sanitizer for hundreds of dollars through the Walmart Marketplace.

Public health officials have stressed that frequent hand-washing is one of the best ways to keep the novel coronavirus at bay, prompting many people to buy new bottles of sanitizer for their home or office.

But doing so through Walmart.ca could put a serious dent in your pocketbook, with one seller listing two-litre bottles of Purell for $268.58.

Other products that were listed on the site Thursday include one-ounce bottles of Purell selling for $44.98 and pump bottles of unspecified size selling for $87.44.

The products are all sold through Walmart Marketplace, which allows third-party companies to list products on Walmart.ca.

"These third parties are solely responsible for the price and how the product is described," Adam Grachnik, director of corporate affairs for Walmart, told CTV News in an email.

The items still show up in regular search results through the website, and Walmart takes what it calls a "reasonable referral fee" on Marketplace sales that can be anything from eight per cent for cellphones to 15 per cent for personal health products.

A 15 per cent fee on a $268.58 bottle of sanitizer would come to just over $40.

Customers would not find bottles of Purell for $268 in a physical store, however, and a number of sanitizers are available online directly from Walmart at normal prices.

Walmart Marketplace isn't the only place you can find hand sanitizer at inflated prices either. On Amazon.ca, some sellers have one-litre bottles of Purell listed for upwards of $100.