Three major ethical issues in pricing involve situations in which markets fail to ensure a fair price in this way. Price gouging, monopolistic pricing, and price-fixing are all cases in which consumers lack the freedom to negoti¬ate what is required to ensure fair market pricing. Price gouging occurs when the buyer, at least temporarily, has few purchase options for a needed product and the seller uses this situation to raise prices significantly. Energy compa¬nies, for example, have been accused of price gouging during the period of roll¬ing blackouts in California during the summer of 2001. A local hardware store that doubles the price of a portable generator after a hurricane has taken unfair advantage of consumer needs. The night of the tragic attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, there were numerous reported cases in which gaso¬line stations doubled and tripled their prices when some consumers rushed to buy gas in near panic. In such cases, the seller exploits a lack of freedom on the buyer's part to extract extraordinarily high prices. Such practices are unethi¬cal because the transaction is fundamentally unfree and the seller exploits the buyer's limitations.