why is this so expensive? it's $3.00 in the stores!

It's 2022 and the price gouging is still insane. I see them around the $20 mark from sellers and meanwhile the most expensive price in a local store is $4.99 when they're in stock (and they aren't usually completely out when I go in.) It would be nice to be able to just order some from Amazon from time to time without going to a local store, but the sellers are gouging so much I wouldn't buy them even if I was dying of thirst in a desert and couldn't get water or anything else but this somehow. My best guess is that it's a weird availability issue. I think these might be a product bottled and handled by local bottlers (probably always Pepsi?) and then shipped from those bottlers straight to stores within range. Sellers probably think these are in exceptionally low supply because they just can't easily directly order them so are gouging based on the assumption that there is a bad supply/demand ratio without actually properly checking. At this point they could just walk into stores and purchase them to resell at at least closer to normal price if it came to that. What little sales they get are probably accidental with people misreading the decimal point I'm guessing. I really don't understand why Amazon hasn't cracked down on this in all this time however. It has been at least two years that I know of that they have been gouging on these and I keep checking back from time to time hoping to be able to order some only to find the pricing is still utterly ridiculous.

Does anyone know why these are out of stock everywhere and when they'll come back? No stores have them either and sellers are price gouging at 3-5x.

Dollar General 5.50 for 12 just got 2 packs. Yum

How can i buy this, but not from fresh?

Lipton Diet Mixed Berry Green Tea bottles are sold on many online websites. The tea is not exclusive to Amazon Fresh. If you don't want to buy the tea from Amazon Fresh, buy it elsewhere.