You can't teach common courtesy but you can teach common sense.
Stop supporting scalpers and the problem will go away.

The goods are limited and prices are further inflated because of scalpers. It should be banned and treated as a crime. Luckily, places like the UK are already stepping up against this dirty practice.

There are already middlemen, they're called the retailers. Scalpers are leeching off of society by artificially affecting supply and calling themselves the middlemen.

Sounds like they made so much money as to hire some decent PR company to represent them.

Every criminal seeks self-justification. Scalping needs to be made illegal.

There is demand for scalpers' services, which is why they exist. While it would be great if everyone would eliminate this demand as scavengerspc said, there are a lot of people for whom $1K or more is a perfectly fine price to pay for an Xbox or PS4, or $1.5K for a 3080 or 6800XT.

Good luck getting rid of people with lots of money. If the cost of living in your city is 3x somewhere else, and you accordingly get paid that 3x, suddenly that Xbox is now functionally 1/3 the price.

Yeah, they're so "valuable'' that they hide behind aliases. Hey scalpers, if you're reading this, get fu*ked. You're not valuable, you're scum.

I don't necessarily have an issue with scalping per se. After all I have scalped (resold for more than I paid) concert tickets that I did not need before. The thing is, I got in line and waited for those tickets. I didn't cut in front of everybody and buy every ticket the booth had. It's different for ticket sales kind of, but I think you get my point.

Do I have a problem with a guy going out and buying two hard-to-get items in order to sell one so he can essentially keep one for free? No. Do I have a problem with a guy who goes out, butts in front of me, and buys every last item in the store, and then offers me the privilege buying one from him at twice the price as if he is doing me a favor or providing me a "valuable" service? Yes.

Peter Farkas said

The goods are limited and prices are further inflated because of scalpers. It should be banned and treated as a crime. Luckily, places like the UK are already stepping up against this dirty practice.

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Your VAT in UK is criminal, why didn't you stop that some 20 years ago?
Your government that thought "every gender can use whatever bathroom they want" will solve LGBTQ issues with toilets, now you have one toilet less since there is no need for more than one.
You think the same people will stop scalping?!

Cal Jeffrey said

I don't necessarily have an issue with scalping per se. After all I have scalped (resold for more than I paid) concert tickets that I did not need before. The thing is, I got in line and waited for those tickets. I didn't cut in front of everybody and buy every ticket the booth had. It's different for ticket sales kind of, but I think you get my point.

Do I have a problems with a guy going out and buying two hard to get items in order to sell one so he can essentially keep one for free? No. Do I have a problem with a guy who goes out, butts in front of me, and buys every last item in the store, forcing me to buy one from him at twice the price? Yes.

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A lot of the emotional responses in this thread seem to ignore this. Where does the line get drawn in the law? Is it your example where you waited in line and resold your sole ticket? What about collectors who buy a product or products to keep it sealed and wait to resell it until it's appreciated in value due to age and scarcity? Are wine cellars therefore a form of scalping?

Unfortunately the virus lockdown has put people into dire straits and awful situations so they're responding to stressors like scalpers emotionally and not thinking things through, and ***** politicians are only too happy to strip away more of our freedoms to "protect" us in the mean time.

We now live in these strange times where everything is somebody else fault, but never yours.

Nobody forced you to buy from a scalper.

Well, except the *****s that needs to give jensen their moneis, those deserve each others.

Lots of misconceptions already so 2 points:

1) You can't really blame people who buy from scalpers: there's an entire industry like, oh I don't know, THIS VERY WEBSITE that's dedicated to create publicity, marketing and overall hype for tech products. Constant advertisement and dominating every platform, every space and even directly targeting people by spying on their search history and private conversations works. The failure is from companies that dedicate so much to this marketing machine and little to no investment at all at improving supply and taking hardware measures to stop crypto mining.

2) You cannot simply say "All scalpers are scum" because all they are doing is taking the core principle any "respectable business" does like real estate, investment funds, etc. And applying that in a smaller scale. Do you know why you almost always need to pay a mortgage or rent? Why don't you complain about "House" and "Terrain" scalpers then? It's because after years of this happening it's a socially acceptable form of exploiting virtually all citizens. If you accept real estate especulation is necessary and desirable part of a capitalist society then so it's paying 3000 USD for a 400 USD 3060 ti because the principles are exactly the same: free market.

So if scalping really, really bothers you it's time you start asking bigger questions than just being annoyed at this one hobby while you're a few months of unemployment away from being homeless and destitute.

I still say that Troy should be allowed to deal with ALL scalpers .... "chot 'em, chot 'em!"

terzaerian said

A lot of the emotional responses in this thread seem to ignore this. Where does the line get drawn in the law? Is it your example where you waited in line and resold your sole ticket? What about collectors who buy a product or products to keep it sealed and wait to resell it until it's appreciated in value due to age and scarcity? Are wine cellars therefore a form of scalping?

Click to expand...

What is enabling this is with a limited amount of supply and an outsized demand. Scalping is illegal if the price is manipulated by doing it, as opposed to just reselling something at a higher price to take advantage of what people are offering to buy for something and what retailers are willing to sell something for. If scalping affect the availability of supply in an entire market to force people to buy from them, then yes, it is illegal.

What you are describing are different examples of relling items with a limited supply, but these are not entire markets and there is no outsized demand (given that the console market is an oligopoly and they transition with huge shifts in product offerings). Another example of illegal reselling is when you buy and sell something for an outsized profit because of a crisis (ie. toilet paper at the beginning of the pandemic).

Here's a better translation of scalping done here that's illegal: buying up all the homes being sold in a town and reselling them for way more than they're worth because you have a monopoly on any new offerings. Let me know if this is a false equivalency, but I don't think it is.

Ludak021 said

Your VAT in UK is criminal, why didn't you stop that some 20 years ago?
Your government that thought "every gender can use whatever bathroom they want" will solve LGBTQ issues with toilets, now you have one toilet less since there is no need for more than one.
You think the same people will stop scalping?!

Click to expand...

VAT is a RIPOFF designed to steal wealth and redistribute it. European governments are EXPERTS at sucking away peoples and companies income. When you elect crap, you get crap. It blows me away that in the USA certain people are clamoring for more government, more taxes, more regulation and LESS freedom. Some absolutely twisted stuff propagated by the MSM, Hollywood and the rich and those affected don't even realize they've been lied to and manipulated.

Scalpers should be prosecuted. Hopefully they are accounting for tax or the government will seek them out as well. Then prosecuted for not having a licensed business.

They're right about being a middle man. But are absolutely wrong about being valuable. Especially when all they're doing is artificially marking up what they sell.

Lew Zealand said

There is demand for scalpers' services, which is why they exist. While it would be great if everyone would eliminate this demand as scavengerspc said, there are a lot of people for whom $1K or more is a perfectly fine price to pay for an Xbox or PS4, or $1.5K for a 3080 or 6800XT.

Good luck getting rid of people with lots of money. If the cost of living in your city is 3x somewhere else, and you accordingly get paid that 3x, suddenly that Xbox is now functionally 1/3 the price.

Click to expand...

Found the scalper.

NeoMorpheus said

We now live in these strange times where everything is somebody else fault, but never yours.

Nobody forced you to buy from a scalper.

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I've never bought from a scalper, but I'm still going to blame them for their at best quasi-legal virtual elbowing-me-out-of-the-way using bots and fake addresses to evade retailer policies and restrictions. They aren't being prosecuted but they probably are breaking at minimum the spirit if not also the letter of the wire fraud and computer fraud and abuse act statutes.

If there are a limited number of an in demand item, people prepared to spend more money will get them first, welcome to capitalism. We don’t all queue up as equals and wait our turn, that is not how our society allocates things! I’m waiting to buy a gpu and maybe a cpu, once there is one at the price I’m prepared to pay, I’ll buy it, I don’t care who they bought it from.

There is no evidence individual scalpers are capable of operating at a market manipulating scale, it would take an insane amount of capital to buy such a huge amount of stock. The fact many people are doing it individually is not a market manipulation.

Automating the purchasing process or using a computer to complete a check out process isn’t a crime! As long as they don’t hack into a system, dodge paying taxes on profits or steal the items, I see no issue whatsoever.

We can either pay more or wait until the people prepared to pay more get theirs, maybe its a good incentive to find a way to earn more money.

"they are a 'valuable industry'"

This is what the mafia says about their "protection" services. And they at least they offer gambling, prostitutions and drugs.

brucek said

"they are a 'valuable industry'"

This is what the mafia says about their "protection" services. And they at least they offer gambling, prostitutions and drugs.

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All three perfectly legit now of course.Depending on location.

It's true. They prevent entitled kids from killing themselves. Mommy and daddy depend on scalpers

mbrowne5061 said

Found the scalper.

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Lulz, I am far to lazy to scalp. I have thousands of dollars of various types of equipment (not computer stuff) which I should be selling before it loses its value but I just don't ever want to deal with eBay or Craigslist or any of that crap.

So it sits.

sac39507 said

It's true. They prevent entitled kids from killing themselves. Mommy and daddy depend on scalpers

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BS!
If scalpers did not exist, mommy and daddy would have bought at MSRP, instead the fools they are, with more money than sense they payed x2 or more, so that their failed parenting would not turn into a headache or tragedy with their child throwing a tantrum or worse...

Both scalpers and the fools with more money than sense are the issue, one after another.

Austinturner said

If there are a limited number of an in demand item, people prepared to spend more money will get them first, welcome to capitalism. We don’t all queue up as equals and wait our turn, that is not how our society allocates things! I’m waiting to buy a gpu and maybe a cpu, once there is one at the price I’m prepared to pay, I’ll buy it, I don’t care who they bought it from.

There is no evidence individual scalpers are capable of operating at a market manipulating scale, it would take an insane amount of capital to buy such a huge amount of stock. The fact many people are doing it individually is not a market manipulation.

Automating the purchasing process or using a computer to complete a check out process isn’t a crime! As long as they don’t hack into a system, dodge paying taxes on profits or steal the items, I see no issue whatsoever.

We can either pay more or wait until the people prepared to pay more get theirs, maybe its a good incentive to find a way to earn more money.

Click to expand...

Exactly, I'm using a ryzen 2600 and recently went to cutting edge gamer when my Rx 580 died and am paying for an RTX 2060 super. I'm not overly thrilled with having to make a monthly payment but I chose to do it because I didn't feel like going without a video card or using something much worse that I do have, like the gtx 570 on a shelf.

I don't blame the scalper and I don't see any problem with it honestly, they are making money their way I can choose not to purchase from them and I have. it's choice nobody is making anybody by anything from the scalpers. This would be newsworthy and relevant if there was proof of scalpers going up to parents at Walmart and putting a gun to their head and saying by my PS5.

candle_86 said

Exactly, I'm using a ryzen 2600 and recently went to cutting edge gamer when my Rx 580 died and am paying for an RTX 2060 super. I'm not overly thrilled with having to make a monthly payment but I chose to do it because I didn't feel like going without a video card or using something much worse that I do have, like the gtx 570 on a shelf.

I don't blame the scalper and I don't see any problem with it honestly, they are making money their way I can choose not to purchase from them and I have. it's choice nobody is making anybody by anything from the scalpers. This would be newsworthy and relevant if there was proof of scalpers going up to parents at Walmart and putting a gun to their head and saying by my PS5.

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Even more so when they are using ebay auctions, you are literally bidding against other people who want one, the product ends up going to the person who values it most. If I didn’t have a working PC, I’d value a card much higher than in my current situation where I would just like to play with better grpahics at 4k.

Plutoisaplanet said

What is enabling this is with a limited amount of supply and an outsized demand. Scalping is illegal if the price is manipulated by doing it, as opposed to just reselling something at a higher price to take advantage of what people are offering to buy for something and what retailers are willing to sell something for. If scalping affect the availability of supply in an entire market to force people to buy from them, then yes, it is illegal.

What you are describing are different examples of relling items with a limited supply, but these are not entire markets and there is no outsized demand (given that the console market is an oligopoly and they transition with huge shifts in product offerings). Another example of illegal reselling is when you buy and sell something for an outsized profit because of a crisis (ie. toilet paper at the beginning of the pandemic).

Here's a better translation of scalping done here that's illegal: buying up all the homes being sold in a town and reselling them for way more than they're worth because you have a monopoly on any new offerings. Let me know if this is a false equivalency, but I don't think it is.

Click to expand...

None of your examples is illegal in my country (NZ) and I don't think likely in any western democracy. In fact, I would say property speculation in NZ is a national pastime. I'm looking forward to selling my place eventually at the most ridiculous price I can get for it. If I had the money I would buy lots of houses, keep them for a year and offload them at a big profit.

I personally don't care about scalpers (of any product) because I am happy to wait them out. When the demand drops back a bit and the supply comes up a bit, and other factors like the packaging shortages, trump tariffs etc get resolved and bitcoin shits itself again, then the prices will drop back to lower than MSRP like it always does eventually. Scalpers might be annoying but they are an easy target for why items are in such short demand and are so expensive. They are a minor problem in the great scheme of things.

dihartnell said

...and bitcoin shits itself again, then the prices will drop back to lower than MSRP

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I sure hope so. I'll never get to owning a whole BTC if the price climbs like this forever. I was only able to buy one Ether because Dogecoin pumped!

Lew Zealand said

Lulz, I am far to lazy to scalp. I have thousands of dollars of various types of equipment (not computer stuff) which I should be selling before it loses its value but I just don't ever want to deal with eBay or Craigslist or any of that crap.

So it sits.

Click to expand...

HAHA! I can relate. I'm too lazy to even just buy two so I can offset the cost of the one I keep. And I used to sell stuff in eBay all the time. Don't have time for that crap anymore.

The milk analogy is crap, because farmers aren't short of milk. To make that analogy work you basically have to buy all the milk from a super market and then sell it for twice the price. F scalpers, they're scum and they will be the downfall of consumerism as we know it.

terzaerian said

I sure hope so. I'll never get to owning a whole BTC if the price climbs like this forever. I was only able to buy one Ether because Dogecoin pumped!

Click to expand...

Dec 2017 it was $20K, 3 months later on Feb 2018 it was $3K. Will happen again.

dihartnell said

Dec 2017 it was $20K, 3 months later on Feb 2018 it was $3K. Will happen again.

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It dropped to $3K last March during the COVID crash. I bought some but I'm still kicking myself for not YOLOing more in; if I'd borrowed at the time I could have paid that and the interest off by now and had most of it left over. At least I'd been in crypto long enough by that point to recognize the opportunity.

terzaerian said

It dropped to $3K last March during the COVID crash. I bought some but I'm still kicking myself for not YOLOing more in; if I'd borrowed at the time I could have paid that and the interest off by now and had most of it left over. At least I'd been in crypto long enough by that point to recognize the opportunity.

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Yeah, but leverage can be dangerous too!

Austinturner said

Yeah, but leverage can be dangerous too!

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Which is why I only put in what I could afford to at the time, but you still "what if" yourself, you know?

Lounds said

The milk analogy is crap, because farmers aren't short of milk. To make that analogy work you basically have to buy all the milk from a supermarket and then sell it for twice the price. F scalpers, they're scum and they will be the downfall of consumerism as we know it.

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They aren't ruining it, I think scalpers are the ultimate expression of consumerism. If anything they show Nvidia, AMD, Intel etc that they have been selling their product for too little as clearly there is a market for ridiculously overpriced poor value for money CPUs and GPUs.

dihartnell said

They aren't ruining it, I think scalpers are the ultimate expression of consumerism. If anything they show Nvidia, AMD, Intel etc that they have been selling their product for too little as clearly there is a market for ridiculously overpriced poor value for money CPUs and GPUs.

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This is more consoles than PCs, but they need to undercut their competition. They know there are rich people willing to pay, but the problem is they need platform adoption more then they need to make profit on per sale basis. They can't increase prices cause the moment they lose market share, then those rich people only want to have the popular platform. Clearly this is not a pricing problem.

Scshadow said

This is more consoles than PCs, but they need to undercut their competition. They know there are rich people willing to pay, but the problem is they need platform adoption more then they need to make profit on per sale basis. They can't increase prices cause the moment they lose market share, then those rich people only want to have the popular platform. Clearly this is not a pricing problem.

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console pricing is fine, I agree, make the money on subscriptions and game sales. In hindsight, top end GPUs like the 3080 were about $500 under priced and amd 5900x/5950x at least $100 under priced. Shareholders should be pissed about missed opportunity, but they’ll probably just see headline growth and be happy.

At this point I think we deserve what we get. I see a lot of people saying oh just go earn more. And then oh just wait until prices go down. How long is it going to be until those people who are the actual life blood of this civilization, you know the ones making your fancy lattes, and feeding you, and growing your crops, are going to take it? Just the other day all of the people on here were complaining about quantumphysics flaunting his wealth. This stuff has real consequences on the hearts and minds of struggling people like parents who's kids are going to school and are treated as inferior because they don't have the latest. People are paying these ridiculous prices just to be cool too and suffering the consequences unfortunately, but it's a huge social problem that could lead to very bad results and that is what concerns me.

Lew Zealand said

There is demand for scalpers' services, which is why they exist. While it would be great if everyone would eliminate this demand as scavengerspc said, there are a lot of people for whom $1K or more is a perfectly fine price to pay for an Xbox or PS4, or $1.5K for a 3080 or 6800XT.

Good luck getting rid of people with lots of money. If the cost of living in your city is 3x somewhere else, and you accordingly get paid that 3x, suddenly that Xbox is now functionally 1/3 the price.

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There is ZERO demand for their services. If scalpers ceased to exist not a single person in the entire world would morn their passing. You sound like you're part of the problem, along with anyone who would pay the price a scalper sets.

Roxxas049 said

There is ZERO demand for their services. If scalpers ceased to exist not a single person in the entire world would morn their passing. You sound like you're part of the problem, along with anyone who would pay the price a scalper sets.

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If demand didn't exist, then why are they selling millions of $ worth of products? That sounds like a supplier who is responding to a demand for a product. But you're right, the problem here is that they're creating the supply constraint with superior tech that regular people don't use, which is why they're a bunch of AHoles gaming the system.

And why do you assume I would pay a scalper for anything? You missed my post about being lazy, that includes putting 3x the effort into getting 3x more money for an overpriced product. Sounds like too much work.

Jpe1701 said

At this point I think we deserve what we get. I see a lot of people saying oh just go earn more. And then oh just wait until prices go down. How long is it going to be until those people who are the actual life blood of this civilization, you know the ones making your fancy lattes, and feeding you, and growing your crops, are going to take it? Just the other day all of the people on here were complaining about quantumphysics flaunting his wealth. This stuff has real consequences on the hearts and minds of struggling people like parents who's kids are going to school and are treated as inferior because they don't have the latest. People are paying these ridiculous prices just to be cool too and suffering the consequences unfortunately, but it's a huge social problem that could lead to very bad results and that is what concerns me.

Click to expand...

I vote for the party in my country most supportive of a living minimum wage, our free medical care system, regulation of natural monopolies like water and electricity, more welfare and paid for with higher taxes for my own income bracket. I believe that every person deserves to have health care, a roof over their head, food in the fridge and a heater in winter, and if they cannot afford it, we should provide it as a society, but not an RTX 3080 or a PS5.

We are talking about high end computer hardware for a hobby. No, a barista might not be able to afford to play the latest flight simulator game at 4k. They could probably afford a second hand pc and play it at HD though.

Who can afford the top of the line computer? The cafe owner, who used to be a barrista, but learnt skills and worked their butt off for 5 years building their business, also the barrista who started a business roasting their own coffee and selling it to cafes, also the barrista who went to a coding bootcamp and now works as a software developer...but also the barrista who bought 3080s and 5900x stock on launch day and auctioned them on eBay!

Who doesn’t play the flight simulator because they can afford to buy their own plane? The the cafe owner who built a brand and started a franchise, the coffee roaster who built a brand and became a national supplier and the software developer who started a highly scalable tech business.

If you want to consume more, you have to provide more first.

Austinturner said

console pricing is fine, I agree, make the money on subscriptions and game sales. In hindsight, top end GPUs like the 3080 were about $500 under priced and amd 5900x/5950x at least $100 under priced. Shareholders should be pissed about missed opportunity, but they’ll probably just see headline growth and be happy.

Click to expand...

While that sounds like a direct expression of economics, there's a point where pricing excludes enough people except at the highest end, and companies risk being labeled as elitist and only for the rich. Some companies choose this because they have enough rich buyers (during the good times at least) that they don't care that regular people can't buy their stuff, but I don't think Sony/MS/Nvidia/AMD can afford to do that as they're the primary and almost *only* players in the CPU/GPU/Console product field.

People really get in a huff when the only thing they can buy is hideously overpriced, like GPUs right now. Lambo/Ferrari/Bugatti can get away with it because we still have Mazda, Toyota, etc.

Lew Zealand said

While that sounds like a direct expression of economics, there's a point where pricing excludes enough people except at the highest end, and companies risk being labeled as elitist and only for the rich. Some companies choose this because they have enough rich buyers (during the good times at least) that they don't care that regular people can't buy their stuff, but I don't think Sony/MS/Nvidia/AMD can afford to do that as they're the primary and almost *only* players in the CPU/GPU/Console product field.

People really get in a huff when the only thing they can buy is hideously overpriced, like GPUs right now. Lambo/Ferrari/Bugatti can get away with it because we still have Mazda, Toyota, etc.

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I mean the toyota/ lexus setup is one way to get around that. If I was structuring the nvidia lineup, I would evaluate having both geforce brand up to 3070 and the titan line for the 3080 (with more ram) and 3090 and just crank the margins way up? I reckon AMD would follow suit once they got a bit of market share, they are good at segmentation with their threadripper series. Also the titan brand lets your premium customers flex a but more because they don’t use the mainstream geforce product.

There is a reason scalping is not allowed with certain products. That very reason holds true for all products. So why are we even debating the merits of scalping? It should be illegal across the board, preventing markup above MSRP. In my opinion; if the price stays below MSRP, it's not really scalping.

Is scalping illegal? In most places, no. Is scalping ethical or moral? Ask the scalpers this... If they had to use their real names and addresses to do their 'business' would they still do it? That will tell the tale.

cliffordcooley said

There is a reason scalping is not allowed with certain products. That very reason holds true for all products. So why are we even debating the merits of scalping? It should be illegal across the board, preventing markup above MSRP. In my opinion; if the price stays below MSRP, it's not really scalping.

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It isn’t illegal in most places or only for basic essentials of life.

Reselling at the highest market clearing price (particularly using auctions) is an efficient way to maximise profit in the supply chain and allocate stock to those who value it the most (will pay the most). This is similar to a real estate auction, where a house sells to the person with the capacity and willingness pay the highest price.

Most people complaining about this practice believe everyone should queue and get things in that order despite someone else being willing to pay a higher price. That is how school kids are taught to behave, not how the real world works.

brucek said

I've never bought from a scalper, but I'm still going to blame them for their at best quasi-legal virtual elbowing-me-out-of-the-way using bots and fake addresses to evade retailer policies and restrictions. They aren't being prosecuted but they probably are breaking at minimum the spirit if not also the letter of the wire fraud and computer fraud and abuse act statutes.

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So in the end, the same excuses, the same circular “reasons”, etc.

again, is a very simple concept, nobody buys from them, those things will magically show up on shelves.

you really truly believe that those retailers care about you not being able to satisfy your happines provided by empty material stuff?

they only care that they got paid and moved the products. So those are actually worse than your scapegoats scalpers.

poor delusional materialistic person or even worse, the other 10 or so that bought your wall of tears...