Mr. Crist has dispatched teams to help consumers, and squads of sheriff's deputies and consumer advocates are also working to discourage price gouging.
Mortgage rates and other consumer rates, he argued, are not yet high enough to dampen demand sufficiently to discourage price increases.
The investigation stems from a 1999 lawsuit, filed in United States District Court in New Jersey, that accuses Mercedes as well as an accounting firm and dealers in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut of conspiring to discourage price competition from 1992 to 1999.
For example, reference pricing may initially lead to price reductions, but may also discourage price competition in the long run.
Rather, the meet- or beat-the-competition model, economists have shown, merely discourages price-dropping.
While they ensure a customer gets the best deal, they can discourage price-cutting because the consequence of lowering prices for one retailer will be lowering prices for other retailers protected by the clause.
Even the country's airlines, of which there are too many, have been told to start sharing revenue to discourage price-cutting and ensure that no company suffers too much from competition.
What is clear is that the current system discourages price competition that would really help customers.
In recent years, the largest M.D. organization in the U.S., the American Medical Association, adopted a fee non-discrimination policy discouraging differential pricing based on attendance of an M.D. or D.O. medical school.
In February, it overrode the veto of Mr. Bloomberg, who had sided with city health officials, landlords and advocates of low-income housing who feared that it would cost too much, duplicate programs and discourage moderately priced housing projects.
