The text right at the top of the page, "Resellers aren’t the problem — their buying bots are", is some of the densest bullshit I have ever read. How can someone be so colossally stupid as to write and publish that line? Acting like the blame is with the people who write the scalping tools but not those who purchase and use them? Are you serious with this crap? Every single person in this chain of value-free market manipulation is culpable.
"bad_country's threatening behaviour is becoming a real problem..."
"woah, careful not to blame the people, it's their /leaders/ we don't like" (level of popular support for leaders never questioned)
"stop telling consumers to save energy when these companies pollute as much as ### people" (omitted: in the course of producing half the world's fertiliser or whatever)
if you are able to do a resale at a much higher price, the price from Sony or whatever should be higher. The bots are just discovering the real market price. Not sure why they don't raise the price to whatever the bots are selling at.
>Not sure why they don't raise the price to whatever the bots are selling at.
Because if they do this, the response will be "Sony is greedy charging people all this money for something that only costs them $x to make."
I am not accusing you of this, just linking this to statements and thoughts that often arise in this context. A very typical response to questions about why something costs what it does is, "It's just supply and demand. Econ 101." But it's not just Econ 101. Supply and Demand is covered in Econ 101, but economic activity is far more advanced than supply and demand. Brand perception, customer good will, supplier agreements, retailing agreements.. all of these are major factors in determine "what" the price of an item is when it appears on the shelf. This is the work of entire teams at companies as big as Sony.
Yep. Even better, if they flood the market with additional units and sell them at the same price, it's the resellers (scalpers) take the hit, and not them. Sony is probably selling them at a loss and intending to make it up on the software (game) sales. This means doing anything to decrease the demand, even a little, reduces their ability to make money on the part of the business that is intended to make the money.
As someone above pointed out, Sony is concerned about the entire 5 year cycle of the PS5, not just the current quarter or even first 18 months. There is also the need to maintain customer goodwill for the future PS6. There is already a fair degree of substituteability between a PS5 and Xbox. By the time the PS6 is out there will probably be a Steam Deck 2.0 and maybe something new with Nintendo.
It's far better to let the scalpers take the reputational hit.
I think that you're right, and in addition: there's a perception that the price is going up because there's a shortage that's outside of Sony's control, so if Sony jacks up the price I think Sony would be accused of profiteering / taking advantage of the situation.
"This company is price-gouging me due to temporary circumstances" definitely impacts brand perception, customer goodwill, etc
Typically the console makers make jack off of the console - often they lose money on the console. Profit is made off of licensing to game makers. Them jacking up console prices doesn't benefit them - they want as many consoles in as many hands as possible so that games can be sold to those users as possible.
If they make 50$ extra on the console, but the buyer buys no games, or buys a bad one and decides not to buy more on the console, that's a net loss right out, and an opportunity lost because the console didn't go to someone who would buy two, one of which they loved and caused them to buy three more.
It's the opposite of the iPhone situation - apple makes the majority of its money (on average) from the phone sale itself - people wait in line to give apple 30% off the top, even if they never buy an app or a song. So apple having a shortage slows down their profit this quarter, sony having a shortage slows down their loss this quarter and their profit 2023Q2.
It's short-term vs long term value of a customer, and the console makers are arguably making a better decision given the lifespan of a console.
PS5 has been completely sold out for 2 years now. There seems to be considerable slack for a price raise from Sony, and they have every right to claim the profit that currently the bots are taking.
>they have every right to claim the profit that currently the bots are taking
Consumers don't see it this way. They often latch on to completely "irrational" cues in forming opinions of a brand. See: "Apple Tax." Note: I put "irrational" in quotes to indicate that consumers exhibit un-intuitive behavior. It's not actually a value judgement about the behavior itself, only indicating that in a purely supply-and-demand driven market environment, these behaviors would not be exhibited.
The Apple tax is a really bad example for your argument though because Apple is one of the most profitable companies in the world and has not apparently paid very much for this 'bad rep'.
That the term 'Apple Tax' exists shows that there is a reputation hit and shows that consumers are price conscious in ways that do not take into account supply and demand as a sole or primary factor when determining their brand sentiment. That Apple is the most profitable in comparison to other companies says nothing about how profitable it could be if the negative brand perception didn't exist.
I can go to the store or the store's website right now and just get a new xbox series for MSRP (or €50 less than msrp, in the series X case). In fact, last month I did just that.
If the PS5 equilibrium price is say... €800 (the buy it now price on ebay right now), and Sony raises prices to that level, some number of customers are going to throw in the towel and buy an xbox, with the loss of €120/yr PS plus revenue, 30% of their game purchases, etc. to MS.
Is this number of people and their spend higher than Sony will gain from pocketing what scalpers currently are? Clearly at Sony HQ they either suspect it will be or are too scared to find out.
Compare the GPU shortage where both major manufacturers were affected and hence retail prices did go up and per AIB card makers, at least part of that was nvidia and amd. Because their market didn't have an instock competitor to worry about, and a big chunk of their market (miners) were more economically focused on expected returns vs cost, while consumers for entertainment products may not look at it from such a calculating perspective.
Seems like HFT in the real world. What did hft defenders always say? That they are just liquidity providers, right? But no one says there is a need for this extra liquidity. I wonder whether regulators will ever target this.
Consumers are seeing a need for the scalpers; their service is valued at $200-$300. Whether or not 20 people botted a single one for their own personal use, or one person botted 20 to scalp, you don't have one in the end. Pay $200ish over MSRP and all the headache of locating and securing one goes away. It would be nice if supply kept up, but it's clear at this point that it's not going to.
> Pay $200ish over MSRP and all the headache of locating and securing one goes away.
They create the headache in the first place.
Do you also think a protection racket provides a service? If you pay them for protection, all the headache of your business being firebombed goes away!
The service is making them available. You have to pay a premium for this service. If it wasn't for scalpers, then you (probably) just wouldn't get one, unless you're waiting in line for the store to open.
Supposedly, all rational agents in a capitalist system try to maximize their own profits. If consoles were priced correctly, they wouldn't be able to make any profit by doing this. They'd just have a warehouse full of new consoles and not enough buyers. The fact that it's even profitable means they'll continue to do it. I think there are really only two possible solutions to this from the supplier side. 1. Increase production. 2. Increase MSRP.
Trying to regulate away this problem will just lead to more "innovative" scalpers.
Apple also makes sure to have various models at various price points. Nobody will spend $1200 for a $900 iPhone if there’s a $1200 version that has more space is in stock.
I don't think this is true. The fact that scalpers are still buying consoles means they're still selling them. That means if the scalpers didn't exist consoles would still be sold out, it would just be individuals following twitter accounts to spam refresh for a single console instead of 10.
Keeping you from having to constantly try and ram through the checkout on a moments notice and still not get the product in the vast majority of attempts.
>They create the headache in the first place.
They would be completely sold out even without the scalpers. The scalpers are selling them to somebody -- that somebody would have just bought at MSRP and you would still have to do what I mentioned above.
>Do you also think a protection racket provides a service? If you pay them for protection, all the headache of your business being firebombed goes away!
This is a pretty ridiculous characterization, even if you don't like what scalpers do. You are not being forced to buy a PS5. You're not even being forced to buy a PS5 from them. You can pull up a restock stream and watch it like a hawk if you have the time. They're not engaging in violence against you because you didn't buy a PS5 from them.
Scalpers abuse the social contract — and abuse access to retailer storefronts — to force themselves in-between the vendor and their customers.
They’re rent-seeking leeches that exacerbate supply issues.
They’re not providing a service; they’re interfering with our ability to engage in free exchange with retailers and manufacturers, and doing so through deceptive, dishonest, and immoral practices.
"They're interfering with our... free exchange with retailers", you say, while literally complaining about someone else's free exchange with retailers.
They're not forcing you to do anything at all. It's not even close, and I can float a guess that you haven't actually tried to buy a PS5 or any item like it at MSRP because you wouldn't seriously believe what you're saying if you did. I guarantee you that if you have time to burn and subscribe to one of the myriad sources of restock updates, you can get a PS5 at MSRP. I know multiple people who have done it. Just because it's possible doesn't mean that it isn't a pain in the ass. It's so annoying, people pay $200 to not have to do it. If the scalpers didn't exist, it would still be just as much of a pain in the ass, because the scalpers definitionally need somebody to buy everything that they do. The demand isn't erased just because they don't exist.
You're going on about how scalpers are abusive, deceptive, dishonest, immoral, rent-seeking leeches and are refusing to engage with the reality that their existence doesn't change anything other than giving you the option to pay $200 and skip the bullshit. I'm not asking you to like them, I'm just telling you that not much would be different if they were gone.
If I force my way to the front of the queue at every store in town, evade purchasing limits, buy all the baby formula before anyone else can, and then offer to sell it at a premium, I’m absolutely forcing my way in-between the retailer and the customer.
That’s not a service.
Now, nobody needs to buy a PS5, but the fact that a PS5 isn’t a required to sustain life doesn’t magically transmute scalping into a service.
> their existence doesn't change anything other than giving you the option to pay $200 and skip the bullshit
They are responsible for the bullshit. Of course it changes things.
How is it so hard to understand that someone creating an additional, artificial market barrier to extract rent is also making it harder for anyone else to buy the product in the first place?
I signed up with Sony to sit in the queue to buy one PS5. My signup is attached to my PSN account to help prevent scalping.
It cost Sony money to implement that queueing system and to fight scalpers.
Sony is losing licensing revenue on consoles because scalpers are eating into what would normally be spent purchasing games.
Sony is losing customer goodwill because scalpers are forcing themselves in-between Sony and their customers.
More of Sony’s customer base is frustrated and more likely to abandon purchasing the product altogether —- even when supply issues are resolved — because they have to compete with scalpers.
It’s not a fucking service, and we’d all be better off by extending existing ticket scalping laws and the CFAA to vigorously prosecute these absolute useless low-lifes that should be unceremoniously kicked back into whatever minimum wage gutter they crawled out of.
If you're going to just completely refuse to engage with the three times you've been reminded in this thread that an economically viable scalper's resales definitionally represent the minimum demand for a product, you're either arguing in bad faith or are too pissed about this to think straight, and I'm just wasting my time. Scalping is obviously an emotional topic for you and it has you so wound up that you're saying stupid shit like this:
>these absolute useless low-lifes that should be unceremoniously kicked back into whatever minimum wage gutter they crawled out of.
If your perception of this situation is that minimum wage "useless low-lifes" should kicked back into the gutter because you have this logically unsound idea that it would be easier to buy a PS5 if scalpers didn't exist, you've lost the plot. Your understanding of the demographic that is doing this is wrong, and even if it wasn't, you have completely uncalled for contempt for a class of people who are trying to do better for themselves (or maybe even just trying to make rent and groceries).
If you're going to leave another comment hollering about rent seeking or how scalpers singlehandedly create this problem, but refuse to even acknowledge that you've already been told:
>The scalpers are selling them to somebody -- that somebody would have just bought at MSRP and you would still have to do what I mentioned above.
>because the scalpers definitionally need somebody to buy everything that they do. The demand isn't erased just because they don't exist.
>The fact that scalpers are still buying consoles means they're still selling them. That means if the scalpers didn't exist consoles would still be sold out, it would just be individuals following twitter accounts to spam refresh for a single console instead of 10.
I'm just going to ignore it, so you can save yourself the typing. I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt but it looks a hell of a lot like you don't have interest in a good faith discussion.
> … economically viable scalper's resales definitionally represent the minimum demand for a product
You’re purposefully ignoring that they actively create and exacerbate market inefficiencies by making it difficult for manufacturers and retailers to manage demand effectively, and by inserting themselves as a middleman to extract their rent.
> … completely uncalled for contempt for a class of people who are trying to do better for themselves (or maybe even just trying to make rent and groceries).
How is it uncalled for? They’re useless trash making money by virtue of being willing to take advantage of others, not because they’re contributing anything of any value in any form.
They produce nothing and provide nothing of value.
So yes, kick them — and their enablers — back to the sewer they crawled out of.
And for good measure, prosecute them under the CFAA while they’re there.
>by making it difficult for manufacturers and retailers to manage demand effectively
This doesn't add up.
Every person who buys a PS5 from a scalper for $700-$800 would also buy it for MSRP at $500, unless they are insane. Demand would outstrip supply even in the absence of scalpers, because one PS5 would be bought at MSRP from a retailer for every one that would have otherwise been bought and then sold by a scalper.
The only kink is that because PS5s immediately sell out at a price of $500, people who don't have the time to camp checkouts and/or want the item immediately are shit out of luck. However, they could pay a scalper an extra $200 to do that for them, because that's the value of the time they would lose acquiring the PS5, or the value they would miss out not having the PS5 immediately. In economics parlance, this is a service. You can call it something else if it makes your feel better. Either way, scalper activity cannot oversell the demand for a PS5 beyond not accurately modelling the sales you would lose from customers not wanting to deal with the effects of illiquidity on the market. The only thing scalper activity misrepresents if your MSRP is below what they're charging is the customers who won't buy your product at all if you're constantly sold out. Scalpers do not change forecasts.
> But no one says there is a need for this extra liquidity.
The fact that scalpers can sell the consoles for a much higher price shows that there is no market equilibrium with respect to the prices that the console vendors set. To achieve this, console producers could choose two strategies:
a) increase production
b) increase prices
a is impossible because of chip shortages, so b would be the way to choose to achieve "supply = demand" (i.e. everybody who is willing to pay the market price will get a console). Since console producers are not willing to do this move (perhaps for "marketing reasons" à la "our console is this cheap"), scalpers will make use of this market inefficiency, and ensure that the prices are those where there is a market equilibrium.
So, scalpers change the situation from "there is more demand than supply" to "supply = demand", making the market balanced.
Thus, the existence of scalpers is rather are sign that the console producers chose a price that is too low. The existence of scalpers is thus a mere symptom of this bad pricing decision of the console producers.
There is a third option, a queuing system similar to what Apple does for their product launches. It would not eliminate scalping entirely. But being able to put your money down today and see that your new iShiny will be delivered in 6-8 weeks helps mitigate FOMO and gives you a number that can actually be used to measure the "value" provided by premium scalper prices.
> There is a third option, a queuing system similar to what Apple does for their product launches. It would not eliminate scalping entirely.
I don't see how this solves the problem: what prevents the people who want their iGadget faster paying a larger price to a scalper?
> But being able to put your money down today and see that your new iShiny will be delivered in 6-8 weeks helps mitigate FOMO
As far as I am aware, there do exist (even quite some) vendors who offer the option of paying immediately and sending you the new XBox or PlayStation as soon as they get their delivery. This is a queuing system.
> I don't see how this solves the problem: what prevents the people who want their iGadget faster paying a larger price to a scalper?
>> > But being able to put your money down today and see that your new iShiny will be delivered in 6-8 weeks helps mitigate FOMO
That is my answer.
> As far as I am aware, there do exist (even quite some) vendors who offer the option of paying immediately and sending you the new XBox or PlayStation as soon as they get their delivery. This is a queuing system.
The difference between those and what Apple is doing is that Apple gives you fairly accurate estimate on when your iShiny will ship, and Apple prioritizes their direct to consumer inventory to make sure those ship times remained reasonable even for their most in demand products at the height of the silicon shortage in 2021. Most of the online stores I've seen offering queues are smaller retailers without enough pull to get consistent inventory from manufacturers, and being the only sellers offering a queue at all meant they got flooded with more orders than their meager allotments from those manufacturers could ever hope to fulfill.
> The existence of scalpers is thus a mere symptom of the bad pricing decision of the console producers.
Alternate character interpretation: these companies understand that this is a reasonably sustainable price for their customer base, that moving away from those "bad pricing decisions" will alienate their customers, and that scalpers should be put in trash skips and rolled down steep hills.
Not every profit need be maximized immediately and without hesitation and scalpers need not exist. More than one thing is allowed to be true.
>Alternate character interpretation: these companies understand that this is a reasonably sustainable price for their customer base,
It's not sustainable. It's being sold for too low relative to demand, so they would all just be sold out at that price. The scalpers don't change the supply.
>that moving away from those "bad pricing decisions" will alienate their customers, and that
The customers can choose to be irrationally angry about whatever they want.
>scalpers should be put in trash skips and rolled down steep hills.
What is all this anger for? We're not talking about scalping food and water here. These are skinner's boxes. Time wasting machines. It's all just a locked-down waste of silicon that will not be reused and in another ten years everyone will be throwing their PS5s out for a newer console that does the exact same thing.
You want a PS5? You want an Xbox? Buy a PC with integrated graphics. it's the same damn thing, except it will actually be useful for something after you're done playing games on it.
>Not every profit need be maximized immediately and without hesitation and scalpers need not exist. More than one thing is allowed to be true.
It doesn't matter what your opinion of scalpers is. So long as people misvalue things on the open market, there will be traders ready to make a quick buck off of their ignorance.
>They control it, they constrict it -- how would you describe it?
They buy an undervalued commodity and resell it at its "true" market value. They hardly restrict the supply: if they fail to get rid of their inventory, then that becomes a loss for them.
>It's not an open market
It is an open market, anyone is free to trade the commodity. When you have a centralized entity limiting who can trade and enforcing price controls, that's when the market is no longer free.
>it's been/being manipulated (trivially, apparently) by the scalpers to suit their ends.
How is it manipulation? They're just buying and reselling a commodity. Are you implying that the people buying from scalpers are being manipulated into making an uninformed business decision? I think the people buying from scalpers understand what they are doing, regardless of how it might anger you that you've been priced out of the market.
It's truly a free market. If the consumers decided that the value of the commodity is less than or equal to MSRP, then no one will buy from scalpers. The traders bear the costs of redistribution and the risk associated with keeping their inventory, so they would certainly lose money in that case.
It's ultimately the consumers that decide to enable scalping, the consumers decide for themselves how valuable the commodity is.
>What is the true value that the people are ignorant of? Why do you think there is such a discrepancy?
As the other commenters here have discussed, the price at which the manufacturer is selling at is misaligned with the supply/demand equilibrium for their commodity. Why? because the assumption is that a higher MSRP will anger their long-standing customers. So the manufacturer is forced to act ignorant to the forces at play (by people like you I suspect, who try to ascribe "morality" to the actions of individuals at the expense of the bigger picture).
This current environment creates a system of adverse incentives which profits the trader at the expense of the manufacturer. If the manufacturer increased prices, they could put some of that capital towards increasing production capacity, they could spend that capital on R&D, they could use that money to subsidize the entry cost for future consoles. Those are all things that and ultimately help the consumer as opposed to some weird third party who has to step in and stabilize the market.
>How is "making a quick buck" by conning the ignorant morally justifiable? How does it add value to society?
Traders propagate price signals and cushion volatility. They usually do so at a significant risk in return for razor-thin profits, because the value they add is usually low. It's only in cases of extraordinary mass ignorance that traders can profit so much by doing so little.
One might also ask how a fox "making a quick meal" out of a rabbit benefits the system of nature. The forces of nature care not of the woes of an individual, nor do the forces of the free market. Just as predators regulate the population of prey within nature, traders regulate the price signals of producers within society.
>What is all this anger for?
This is the type of reasoning that ultimately enables the dysfunctional forms of communism. It all goes back one's willingness to moralize over the actions of individuals without respect for the larger incentives at play.
It's nothing specific to recent supply chain disruptions. The problem is that manufacturers have relatively inflexible capacity. Scaling foundry capacity isn't as easy as scaling cloud resources; they can't just decide to produce 10x as much product in a given month. Simultaneously, these are status goods for which consumers place a high premium on having the latest and greatest. Even with perfectly functioning supply chains, the market price for such goods is always going to be high on release and taper off as supply increases.
This is just arbitrage, and has very little to do with HFT. In a normal market, scalpers don’t exist because when products are flying off the shelves you either raise your prices or increase your production. Game console companies are for some reason unwilling to sell their consoles at auction (which would eliminate scalpers) or increase production so an arbitrage opportunity is born
iPhones are a hot commodity, I wonder why I never have to play "beat the scalper" when I want to buy one? I don't wonder at all, of course, because when I order a iPhone that is in short supply I simply get placed in a queue. It might be three months before I get a phone, but at least I know I don't have to spend my days refreshing a web page. I order, I'm done with that task until it shows up.
But, yeah, blame the players and not those that could shut down the game any time they like.
So the solution is to have Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo sell directly to the consumer? Apple can do this because they don't have to keep third party retailers happy, they own the distribution chain from top to bottom.
Adding middlemen spreads money across geographies as opposed to the money flowing directly to the HQ. To use a car analogy a local dealership creates jobs and ensures some of the money spent by people in an area is recirculated in the area.
This doesn’t make sense. First, the middlemen we’re talking about are other online companies 99% of the time. Second, cutting out the middlemen reduces price pressure for both the manufacturer and the consumer.
From what I recall that was one of the justifications behind Automobile Dealer Franchise Act of 1956. I remember reading about it a while back, but I cannot find the exact reference now; just articles about the law in general.
Because the third parties don't really care enough. They just want to make the sale and get paid. Where is the incentive to setup and manage a queue for someone like Target?
If they had a queue, I'd add myself and they'd get a guaranteed sale from me. Since there's no queue, I just have to wait until they're in stock somewhere. Might be Target, but it'll more likely be somewhere else.
it works as a market differentiator - if target is the only one that implements a purchase-before-restock queue, they get guaranteed purchases from people who are price sensitive and not time sensitive
that no one is doing this... maybe it has something to do with the fact that it would show up as a liability in accounting until they deliver the product
It wasn't just a queue, though. It was a time limited shuffle of the pool of people who saw a notification with enough time to join the lottery. It still took me months of attempts.
The steam deck has a queue system as well of course. While there's a risk that the buyer doesn't see the notification email that it's ready, the fact that you generally know that you'll get one within a year is very nice.
iPhones are profitable the minute they walk out the door - you buying music or apps or whatever is just gravy. Add to that the day-one markups (earbuds, charging cables, apple care), they have every incentive to put you in the hands of a caring, dedicated salesperson who can upsell you up to your capacity.
Your playstation, on the other hand, requires you to buy two or three games, and if the games aren't there yet for mass market appeal or sufficient genres, well, the console will still be there in four years when the games catch up, and your iphone will be out of date in six months.
In both the manufacturers and scalpers minds, nobody would bother scalping an iPhone - the margin was already sucked out of it and it has a shorter shelf life; In the case of a console, the margin won't be had for a few years, but none of it flows to the casual scalper, so it's a lot of work for 100$ - they'll do it, but it's a grind.
But either way, people are happy to wait in line for the latest fondleslab, and they get it when it's their turn
PS5 is $400. It's got a ryzen 3700 and 2070 equivalent GPU. There's no chance they're getting those two parts for less than $300 given the chip shortage, and the remaining parts cost at least $100, plus manufacturing.
I think those are assertions without evidence, given that they built that BOM before the chip shortage and generally one has to buy slots significantly in advance.
To me a more persuasive argument, with the lack of evidence, might be that part of the supply crunch is being unwilling/unable to raise the price and so being less able to ship units than if they could be more price flexible.
My understanding is the PS5 breaks even at retail. There is essentially no profit margin, but they do not lose money.
This of course could be part of the problem—Sony may be unwilling to spend a premium to reserve more processors in advance as they already are operating on razor thin margins. Apple, on the other hand, pays TSMC far in advance and helps fund their research to get priority.
Before iPhone's were as widely available as today, there were similar problems with scalpers buying them all. Apple even banned buying them with cash [1] so they could limit purchases per customer.
So, you're reinforcing their point that the producers can take actions to attempt to address the problem. Actions which Sony has not undertaken in this instance.
In Sony’s defense, they have much less of a direct-to-customer channel than Apple does. They’re at the mercy of their retail partners (which they don’t directly control) to fix this problem.
They have their own store where they could implement a queue.
I would have been happy to place an order and then wait a year. Instead I did the follow a guy on twitter to find out when consoles are available and then use Firefox containers to make a bunch of simultaneous orders. It worked, but I’d rather just pay some money and sit in a queue.
Great. They have enough power to say, “hey, if you want to sell our product moving forward, we are going to ask you implement a preorder system by XX date. If you don’t we will, unfortunately, have to prioritize our limited supply to other retailers do to the ongoing high volume of scalping.”
OP says "they have a store", they're saying with that store they could implement a queue where i can buy now knowing it may be some months before i see it in the mail. as it is they have a mailing list you sign up to be notified when consoles are in stock
Before implementing a system where you can place your order before the device goes on sale, the issue Apple had was that they didn't have enough manufacturing throughput to launch products in all nations simultaneously.
>People wait in line at an Apple store to buy the newest iPhone for $600, paying a premium to skip the AT&T contract. They then sell the phones to middlemen, usually at electronics stores in Chinatown, for about $750.
The phones are shipped off to China, where the iPhone 4 is not yet on sale, and are distributed to local shops and e-commerce sites, where they sell for as much as $1,000.
There's probably a reason that Apple has moved to designing it's own chips. With that Apple doesn't buy chips so much as buy time at the fab. Not sure that's the same reason but I'd guess it plays in there.
Apple is world class at a few different things and supply chain logistics is probably the thing they are best at. There is a reason the COO of Apple became CEO. What Apple has acomplished in operations is pretty astonishing.
With that said, that does not excuse Sony. They have had time to figure some basic solutions out. When I bought my 5900X I had to wait almost 6 months but I eventually got it because I was able to order it at launch even though it was already sold out.
A simple "pre-ordering"-queue seems it would decrease scalper interest as well (?) as it would be much more risky to order a bunch, hope you get early in the queue and sell to people who might get their machine just little time later.
Let people put up a small deposit as well for getting a place in the queue, and it'll be deducted whenever you buy the machine. Keep the deposit if you cancel your place in line. Would incentivize less manipulation as well.
I've been trying to get a PS5 for 2 years now, and I refuse to pay some scalper 200USD more than market price, out of principle. (But I guess that is also why I still don't have one :) )
I wrote a quick bash/jq script that would query target's redsky API to find out when an xbox series was available at my local target. I dropped this script into Rundeck and set it to notify me on success (success being an available xbox). One random Tuesday I got an alert but it was also dinner time. I saw ~230 available and thought enough time for me to eat dinner and place an order. Well 15 minutes later it was sold out. Fast forward two weeks later, i'm hanging out on a Saturday and get another alert. ~300 available this time. I spent 5 minutes trying to download the target app and then realized i had to make an account and by that time the available count dropped to ~180. I grabbed my wife's phone (she lives at target) and immediately placed a pickup order for the Xbox. I picked it up one hour later.
Don't pay scalpers, just use technology as your friend :) An old coworker did something similar but he wrote a chrome extension to do the same.
I'm sorry if someone uses this knowledge to scalp nextgen systems.
> Assuming the scalpers are able to sell their supply, what they’re charging is the market price.
Are you trying to suggest the situation is somehow optimal? Market prices in short supply situations cause market inefficiencies, and this is one of them. The old platitude is that this inefficiency is only less bad than what would happen otherwise. Of course that thinking is rarely put forth with careful thinking about the alternatives, nor admissions of the many times in history that preventing inefficiencies actually worked.
Wouldn’t it be better if Sony received the market value themselves, and invested the money in the PS6? Wouldn’t it be better if we were not encouraging people who add negative value to the system to create artificial scarcity merely for the purposes of extracting extra dollars? The problem with your argument is that for markets to be free, customers need both choice and access to information, and supply needs to be able to meet demand. Scalpers hoarding are effectively an anti-free-market force on top of inducing inefficiency for profit. It’s a schadenfreudey bonus when scalpers get stuck with supply because they overestimated demand, but that doesn’t actually amount to a market correction, it just adds even more inefficiency, money wasted on top of money wasted.
Wouldn’t it be better if Sony received the market value themselves, and invested the money in the PS6?
Of course. The best outcome would have been for them to start with something like a cosmetically different "founders edition" that's more expensive and then to release the normal version when supply becomes available. But they decided not do to that, probably because the same people screaming about scalpers would vilify them for "price gouging" (which for nonessential products is a silly concept).
Wouldn’t it be better if we were not encouraging people who add negative value to the system to create artificial scarcity
The scarcity isn't artificial. There are more people who want to buy a PS5 at MSRP than there are PS5s. Scalpers are only adding to scarcity if they're sitting on inventory they're not selling, which there's no incentive for them to do.
The problem with your argument is that for markets to be free, customers need both choice and access to information
What choice or information do customers lack? If you want a PS5 your choices are to pay market price to a scalper, or spend a lot of time watching stores or running bots and trying to get lucky. This is all widely known.
Are you trying to suggest the situation is somehow optimal?
Obviously the optimal situation is for the shortage to be eliminated. The next best is for Sony to charge the market-clearing price. With both of those off the table, then probably the current situation is the best available. Do you have a better solution?
>> Let people put up a small deposit as well for getting a place in the queue
Pre-ordering with a deposit is definitely a very creative/smart accounting hack that Tesla (and Amazon) has used pretty effectively. It creates a negative cash conversion cycle (get the money upfront from your customer before you have to pay your suppliers) - which is highly profitable - especially when there is known demand.
Apple is able to have a queue for iPhones because they control the iPhone supply - both in the sense that they are the OEM for the device and in the sense that they have very strong control over their own suppliers. Vendors are not going to treat everyone equally when Apple is a big fish that can wreck your business if you don't play ball.
Retailers do not have this kind of power. If Best Buy pre-sells more iPhones than they have inventory for, there's nothing obligating Apple to actually sell those iPhones to those customers through Best Buy. Apple could decide tomorrow to cut Best Buy's allocation because AT&T needs them for a big customer promo. Compounding this is the fact that almost all retail businesses are cash-flow limited. Their job isn't to buy things and sell them at 1% markup, it's to predict the future three months ahead of time so that products arrive on shelves exactly when they will be purchased. In other words, they're futures traders that take physical delivery. So every dollar they get needs to be spent on more inventory, or they run out of things to sell.
This means that, in the event of an iPhone shortage, Best Buy has two terrible options and one good one:
* Treat those iPhone orders as ordinary revenue and use it to order more stock of other products. If Apple cuts your allocation, then you have to refund your customers money that you don't have, meaning that you have to take out a loan on future revenue to pay back existing orders.
* Tie up your cashflow by holding that iPhone money in escrow until those orders are fulfilled. You don't take on the risk of not being able to refund orders, but now you are paying the opportunity cost of not being able to buy as much inventory three months down the line.
* Don't sell unallocated iPhones. Your customers will buy something else instead.
Now, could Apple extend their queue system beyond their own online store? Perhaps - but that requires a lot of coordination from other retailers who would rather just be able to move product quickly. The flip side of the cash flow problem I mentioned above is that, if a product doesn't move quickly, retailers want to get rid of it quickly to cut their losses and take a chance on something else. A good example of this would be the iPhone SE 3rd gen, which sold like garbage. Under the current arrangement of retailers getting allocation and buying inventory, Best Buy can at worst fire-sale iPhones nobody wanted. But with a queue system, they're either...
* Just drop-shipping iPhones from Apple to customers, which means they can't have in-store inventory
* Holding inventory they can't sell unless Apple lets them, which means they're letting iPhones live rent-free in their warehouse tying up cash flow.
The "just let me queue up" model is something that works out great for customers, but makes the rest of the business a lot harder, because modern supply chains are not designed for shortages.
So without scalpers you have to wait until supply catches up, while with scalpers you can either wait until supply catches up or you can pay extra if you really want it now. How is the first scenario better?
because i can make my choice now and just wait for it to come in the mail
as is, Sony has been doing a "sign up to be notified" thing where by the time I see the notification they're sold out again. Just let me put in my order and get it to me when you can.
if enough people take that deal, scalpers have a smaller and smaller market
I am baffled why this is not being implemented across the board. It is a solved problem.
It leads me to believe these companies do not really care enough to implement the systems to fix this or that they actually like the artificial scarcity as it fuels additional demand. The fact that they can figure out how to implement live lottery systems, sadly, makes me conclude it is the latter.
I personally flatly refuse to pay over retail price or lineup outside of a store for the “opportunity” to buy something. Nothing is going to change if people keep paying a premium for products be it an SUV or a PS5.
I just buy whatever is available. I've never noticed the difference between Samsung AXX and Samsung SYY. It takes calls, pictures, emails and texts, can auth, slack and alert me for meetings.
The total inability for anyone to get a PS5 is one of the strangest things I've seen in modern gaming. Sony have even basically stopped marketing it and resigned to defeat. It almost feels like we're going to skip this console generation.
You would think they would be incentivized to fix this problem, even though it has been going on for years now. People will lose interest eventually and spend their money elsewhere. A few years back I was going to build a gaming PC, with an RTX 1080. I could never find the card in stock. As the years passed that 1080 became a 2080, then a 3080, and finally a bass guitar.
You couldn't have been interested for that long. Crypto mining took a big hit in 2018. The market was flooded with used GTX 10-series GPUs. When Nvidia's RTX cards launched in August, they were somewhat difficult to find for a couple of months but by the start of 2019 they were actually struggling to move inventory because used mining GPUs were still flooding the market for so little money. GPUs were not hard to buy again until the pandemic started and demand skyrocketed during lockdowns.
Half a decade is a long wait for entertainment, people will find other interests to replace them, like bass guitar - at which point there is less mind-space available for interactive entertainment. It's taken time for people to grow space for video games in their lives over ~40 years, the opposite can happen too , people had fun before video games.
The wait wasn't half a decade. There was like a 6-month period where GTX 10-series cards were hard to get, and there were nearly two years where GPUs were plentiful before the chip shortages.
Basically I'm questioning the commenter's claim that they kept trying to get their hands on a 10-series, then 20-series, then 30-series card before giving up. They must not have tried at all in 2019.
I don't care about nVidia (might more if the OSS driver matures); and that's now an old year model. I'd like to be able to buy a new generation AMD stack (new CPU, new board, new GPU) within 3-6 months of the parts hitting shelves.
* There's always new product releasing in the future, and the hardware you buy will inevitably depreciate. If you can get value from buying now and using now, then it's not worth waiting. If you can't, then you didn't have to buy in the first place.
* Futhermore, new product releases are staggered. Taking the RX 6000 series as an example, the high-end 6800 XT and 6900 XT released several months before the 6700 XT, and the 6600 XT came a few months after that.
> If you can get value from buying now and using now, then it's not worth waiting. If you can't, then you didn't have to buy in the first place.
It sound like you're in the second category, then. If you really belong there, that's fine.
But honestly, I got a DDR3 machine towards the end of DDR3's lifecycle, and I have no regrets. I used the CPU/Mobo/RAM for more than 5 years, and by the time I upgraded, DDR4 got fast and cheap enough where I felt I got my money's worth from both my initial purchase and my upgrade.
In 2017 i said "hmm nvidia cards are going for 15% above retail. i'll just wait to upgrade my circa-2012 video card until they are back in stock". Famous last words.
Microsoft is already sort of just, doing both while keeping retailers within that loop with Xbox All Access which includes cloud gaming - https://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-all-access
If you want to buy a console off the shelf you have to compete with other buyers, but sometimes there's a separate pool of consoles reserved for Xbox All Access subscribers.
Subscribing to it isn't something you should really do if you're intending to flip the console and it's harder for scalpers to scale up. It requires a credit check and on-going payments, plus it includes Game Pass Ultimate which cannot be resold as it's part of the cost of the subscription which could eat into scalper profits. Attempting to scalp through Xbox All Access is probably a losing proposition unless you were to go down darker more illegal paths.
Oh wow...I meant that half-joking. I played a lot as a kid but not so much in recent decades. I'm constantly surprised by the prevalence of DLC and add-ons any time I open up a modern game. In my memory a game system is something you throw into a plastic grocery bag and bike over to your friend's house where you try to reach around to screw the coaxial cable onto the back of their TV without knocking over the speaker on their parent's sound system. I can't imagine any kid getting access to a credit card for in-game purchases.
I never understood why the retailers of these consoles don't adjust their prices to reflect the demand, so that there's at least some supply. When the PS5 first came out, for example, the price with retailers was like 1/4th of the price on ebay, and it was impossible to buy from the retailers.
Wouldn't it be better for everyone if the retailers adjusted the prices? At least then, the incentive to be a reseller/scalper would diminish to nothing, which means you don't pay for their premium.
And the bad PR would be something along the lines of "company gouges prices to screw customers." Yeah, I think you're right. So it has to play out this way, with people paying a scalper's premium, and sometimes getting totally scammed. Really unfortunate.
Scalpers can't really be driven out of business because it's fundamentally just arbitrage. If an arbitrage opportunity goes away, they'll go away, but they'll come back as soon as the opportunity returns.
Even if the price moves suddenly and they're forced to take a haircut, the low barrier to entry means other resellers can enter the market.
Scalpers aren't a "business" in that sense. They have no fixed costs, so they can just ramp up and down as needed. Most of these scalpers are just dudes with a spare bedroom and some code they bought.
They already de-facto did this. There were times where Best Buy and Walmart had supply, but you had to sign up for a subscription service like Walmart+ to be able to purchase. GameStop had a few "bundles" with a bunch of items that you wouldn't otherwise purchase, effectively raising the price. It just didn't make a dent when the actual eBay margin was $X00 over the retailer pricing
I think it's for the same reason why car manufacturers don't like it when dealers sell over MSRP; it hurts the long term customer relationship. Higher MSRP means fewer buyers which means fewer services, repairs, etc.
More expensive consoles means fewer owners, fewer people buying console games and subscriptions.
Right, the console isn't the source of most of the revenue (or any, some have been losses). The point is to get them being used with newly purchased games/accessories. The scalpers are actually taking money away from the console manufacturer for the period of time the console is held by the scalper. They're also scalping revenue off the top of the console and having a negative income effect upon the end user/customer of the console - which definitely negatively affects how much the end user/customer winds up sending to the manufacturer.
The usual price cycle is MSRP at the start of sales, then a few sales at some retailers, then slowly "old model" sales, when a new model comes out, and finally "final sales", when they're trying to get rid of the stock, and we all know and expect that.
If you buy a car for 50k, and it's 30k 6 months later, while still being a new model, you feel screwed by the company, and next time, you'll delay your purchase until the price drop (even if the price is a good price and won't drop). As before, if the price drops after a new model comes out, people understand that, but if the price drops regularly after a few months the product is out, that's a whole different story.
These retailers are selling much more than just the PS5. The customer relationship matters a lot to them. I doubt sony would let them upcharge even if they wanted to anyway.
- Consoles in stockrooms are not making money for the retailer or the platform/brand/manufacturer.
- Sales figures (units shipped) are a marketing point. A product being so in demand that it makes the news is a free marketing campaign.
- Retailer got so many units to sell at a margin/price they already decided on. The fact that the stock moved out the door is a win already. Customers coming inside to find out that there are no PS5s are customers inside the shop.
- It seems likely that Sony/whoever may have some control over the pricing. Whether this is a formal agreement or a gentle suggestion, ignoring or breaking that deal would presumably (at least) sour the relationship.
- Surely the retailer that moves first would lose business to their competitors. I guess at that point, the competitor/s run out of stock and now the first mover is the scalper?
- If we're assuming that the retailers have some altruistic motive, they could implement strategies to combat the bots / buying en masse. This does not appear to be something they are interested in.
> Wouldn't it be better for everyone if the retailers adjusted the prices?
The people who are already priced out will be in the same situation, except now it's the "good guys" doing price gouging. The scalpers will have lost their business to the retailer I guess.
I would think it would be in the retailers best interest to require an online account in order to sell a console as well. Scalpers don't stock up on physical games unless they're limited edition. It's in the retailers' best interest to get physical people in their doors.
Target was showing “zero Xboxes in stock, check store” in the app whilst I was staring at one on the shelf (which I bought, it’s a DVD player after all). I think they’ve figured part of it out.
I’ve also noticed that the app prices are often higher than the store shelf prices … even if you order for pickup. So I have my eye on them.
depends on your target. my local targets are pretty accurate with inventory management. as a comparison; my local bestbuy is not (website said they had usb drives in stock, when i got there they didn't have any)
I wonder if people who are willing to pay extra for consoles from a scalper are more likely to spend more on games / digital downloads / etc. If that is true it would be an incentive for sony / microsoft to NOT fix the problem...
I suppose you're saying that only the "whales" get the new systems.
I would think it means less disposable income for whoever gets the newer systems. Also, nobody will actively be playing them and spending money on microtransactions when they're in the scalpers' possession.
I thought Microsoft's scalping mitigation was clever: for a long while now there has been no shortage of availability of the Xbox All Access bundle: you buy the Xbox Series X/S on time, bundled with a Game Pass Ultimate subscription, at a small discount over buying the Xbox up front and paying for 2 years of Game Pass Ultimate, so effectively negative interest.
What's more important is that it sets a ceiling for scalpers profit.
This is lower than the XBox+bundle price, even if you wouldn't buy the subscription, because you do get the subscription, no one will pay the same price for just the XBox, my guess would be a small market for half the subscription price, which is barely worth scalping over.
I'd imagine most purchasers do want it. I didn't and eventually was able to get a series X through Costco but another few weeks of missing out and I might have bit the bullet and paid for the subscription.
And yeah, I'm pretty sure the sub was tied to the Xbox itself, so you'd have to resell everything.
Fundamentally, it's a mispricing issue. The consoles are too cheap. The manufacturers aren't producing enough to satisfy the quantity demanded at the prices they are charging. This allows scalpers to make money off consumers. They should probably raise their prices while the shortage lasts.
They’re priced against each other also, and they have a delicate balance to work with to make sure they don’t become “too expensive” in the minds of consumers.
You’d be surprised how much effort goes into reverse engineering APIs and keeping these bots working across many sites as they get updated.
I actually tried writing a simple checkout bot for Bestbuy. After a couple of hours of fiddling around, I concluded that buying a bot would be much easier than figuring out how the BB API works and keeping up with any changes.
Disclaimer: I never ended up buying a bot - it was just a learning activity.
A PS5 is easily worth $1000 to me. I don't see how buying one for $650 is irrational. I spent a few days refreshing twitter and figured it wasn't worth $150 after a year.
PS5 market is definitely bonkers.
After sitting through some of the crazy queues on the playstation site and giving up on direct to consumer I did manage to score one, but it was tedious for a few days getting hammered by every twitter notification from a few of those accounts that watch and post when stock becomes available.
When I did land a unit, it wasn't without a price shock of its own as GameStop was selling as bundles. So, yeah I ended up with maybe a couple of games that I would rather not have bought up front and they were pretty close to full retail price.
This was all very, very frustrating. Sony knows I have years of history with them going back to PS3 era. They could throw me a freakin' bone and let me reserve a spot in a queue, even if it was in agreement with a 3rd party retailer - I'd be cool with that. They could manage this situation so much better.
//
Not to mention that once I got my unit, the storage evaporated almost immediately. PS5s hold about 5 or 6 "large games" at a time!
Reading the article, this seems to be the core issue:
> “When your browser checks out an item on a retail site, it sends ‘requests’ to the site’s server. These requests are basically commands that tell the server what to do. Add this item to the cart, submit my order, and so on,” they wrote. “We send those commands associated with checking out to the servers of sites we automate without requiring a browser. Basically, we can mimic what a human does, stripping out the unnecessary lags and delays of a browser.”
> "The service is optimized for Target, Best Buy, Amazon, and Walmart."
This is hardly just game consoles, the whole baby formula problem is similarly gamed:
Basically, if you see a shortage anywhere in the consumer/retail goods market, you can use a pool of capital to buy up all the remaining product as quickly as possible - assuming you have access to a pool of capital. This is the same kind of thing that happens in wartime scarcity, the only difference between this and say WWII is the bot technology being used. Now you're the sole supplier and can jack up prices and earn huge percentages. The resellers are just little black market manipulators, in other words, and the bot writers are their facilitators.
However, the main sources of product are the big corporate retailers, Amazon etc. They can't jack up the prices themselves (well, they can to some extent as current 'inflation' price hikes are resulting in record profits), but do they really care if automated bots are placing orders? Are they going to write bot-detecting software that might reduce the amount of orders being placed online? Why would they, that would reduce revenue.
It's not too surprising that this situation has come about, it's basically monopolistic manipulation of markets throughout the whole supply chain. A deregulated neoliberal paradise has many similarities to a war zone economy.
> current 'inflation' price hikes are resulting in record profits
This is misinformation. Walmart's net income is down 25% year-over-year. Target's is down 41% year-over-year. Excluding the $7.6B Rivian Automotive loss, Amazon's net income went from $8.1B to $0.04B, down 99.5% year-over-year. That loss would have been larger if AWS wasn't doing so extremely well on growth - AWS operating income was up 57% year-over-year. North America retail went from $3.45B operating income to a $1.568B operating loss. International retail went from $1.252B operating income to $1.281B operating loss.
I think a lot of people look at revenue (which will go up with inflation) rather than income (which is what is left over when you take out the costs). As costs rise faster than retail can raise their prices, margins are getting squeezed. Consumers have an idea of what a product should cost in their heads and it takes time for that to get un-stuck.
There's a reason that retail stocks tanked 9 days ago - investors saw Walmart's earnings on the 17th and Target's on the 18th. They weren't raking in profits. Inflation was squeezing them.
What makes you think resellers are "monopolistic"? The barriers to entry are incredibly low: "$300 fee and monthly $50 payments" (less if you have basic coding skills), plus capital for goods, which don't need to be purchased at traditional wholesale volumes. No single reseller is buying up "all the remaining product" -- they're buying e.g. "nine freshly purchased GeForce RTX 3080s".
They can't be "sole suppliers" because they would need to beat out everyone else running a bot. As a consequence, they're not able to price goods arbitrarily high. (But, as usual, efficient price discovery tends to be viewed as evil by consumers).
> as usual, efficient price discovery tends to be viewed as evil by consumers
This is the whole story. You can tell that game consoles, baby formula, and GPUs are under-priced, because it is worth spending hundreds of dollars and hours/weeks of dev time /on top of/ the too low price, just to get your hands on them for resale.
I think people get confused, because the effect of a spike in demand or a decrease in supply can look the same, from a pricing standpoint, as collusion amongst multiple retailers - but we're not talking about gas stations across the street from each other agreeing not to sell below X price, this is a massively distributed phenomenon, which again goes to show that it is a genuine reflection of the mis-pricing of goods in the current market.
The real tragedy when it comes to shortages of goods with inelastic demand, like baby formula, is that the various price gouging laws that prevent traditional retailers from correctly pricing items in the face of shortages, do nothing to actually control the price - in fact, they introduce a lot of inefficiency, and opportunity for counterfeits etc. I would much rather pay triple/quadruple at Target or Walmart than pay 0 because I'm looking at an empty shelf, or pay quintuple to some rando on eBay who may or may not actually be selling a genuine product.
Not only is this not the whole story, it's a fucking awful interpretation of the actual story.
Turn the clock back 23 years to 1999 and the GPU market was exploding, with tons of vendors, tons of chips, tons of competition, and excellent competing prices.
What's changed since then? The same shit that Michael Crichton spent a 10 minute video on YouTube talking about in 1999... the consolidation of companies in all markets by ever-growing behemoths who swallow up all competition.
There are what... three major chip foundries left, one of them is barely considered a "major" chip foundry (Global Foundries). The other two, Intel and TSMC, are so busy and booked up that they're running 24/7 nonstop to fill demand.
This could never happen... would never happen... if we had a dozen different foundries all of similar technological prowess and size, and 1999 GPU markets are a clear indicator of that. Literally dozens of brands, using half a dozen or so different chips from companies like PowerVR, NVIDIA, ATI, 3Dfx, etc.
GPUs aren't underpriced, our entire economic engine has become fouled by a lack of serious competition.
Don't believe that? Go read an entire list of Disney's holdings. It's damn near unbelievable that our cowardly politicians haven't trust-busted the megacorps that are around today. It's so egregious that America's founders would probably drag their peers out into the street and shoot them themselves if they could see how corrupt the system's become.
> It's not too surprising that this situation has come about, it's basically monopolistic manipulation of markets throughout the whole supply chain. A deregulated neoliberal paradise has many similarities to a war zone economy.
I actually tend to interpret it the opposite direction. This is clearly price gouging, which can hypothetically be regulated.
To me, the underlying issue is that near direct-to-consumer sales combined with public APIs and tooling like these bots has led to democratization of price gouging. Instead of being able to track the gouging back to a few businesses who are doing a lot of it, we now have to track a huge number of people who are individually doing a little of it.
It creates two problems. The first is that we don't have the resources to investigate and prosecute all the people doing it. The second is that each individual does a relatively small amount of damage, but it causes a large amount of damage in aggregate. We usually prosecute based on damage caused, but it's hard to show the damage of price gouging $1,000 or $10,000 worth of goods. If they were the only ones doing it, it wouldn't even be a problem. Yet, there's also no obvious collusion. They aren't causing scarcity individually, but they are in aggregate. I don't think the laws consider that at the moment.
It also looks bad for regulatory agencies to go after fairly normal folks. I don't get the impression these people are generally rich.
Why should price gouging luxury goods even be illegal?
I can at least understand the motivation of such laws when it comes to essentials like food or water (although many would argue that such laws do more harm than good by erasing market signals), but inability to run the latest video games in 4K isn't an emergency.
This problem is easily solved by just flooding the market.
These companies have the advantage of scale, and huge amounts of pre-existing capital.
Sony could make 100,000,000 PS5s and send them all out to retailers and just flood the market so drastically that scalpers can't make a dollar. All of those consoles will eventually sell, and the real money in consoles is, and always has been, the game sales anyway.
Is there a reason that retailers for certain hot commodities don't just require a unique credit card coupled with a unique shipping address to effectively limit a customer to one item? Have this restriction automatically lift after two weeks from the last purchase for that particular customer so that they can buy another one if sufficient time has elapsed.
I'm baffled because it feels like this would instantaneously fix the scalping problem and it's not particularly difficult to implement.
There are services which give you a one time CC number such as privacy.com. I'm unsure how shipping address might also get similarly obsfucated (po boxes?).
If you’ve ever dealt with e-commerce or checkout you know that there are a lot of ways to write the same address, and it isn’t easy to know when it is the same address.
As an example I lived in a building that had boxes for mail and unit numbers that differed (I think it was for privacy or something, but you could put both or just one and the mail would get there).
So a package going to Unit 1A or Box 28 were going to the same place. Add in the fact that there are multiple ways to write this out: #1A, Apt. 1A, Apartment 1A, 1A, Suite 1A
Then you can game the box: PMB 28, #28, bx28.
Then you can start gaming the names: F Middle Last, First Middle, Last First. Make up a name, or use someone else’s.
Anything you assume about addresses probably has an exception.
And then, yes, there are private mailbox services that will just receive packages on your behalf.
This is likely a losing strategy, while it would likely work for a little while people will find a way to circumvent the restriction.
The simpler way to get around scalping/arbitrage is to raise prices so that those who are producing the product are the beneficiaries of the higher price. They can then turn around and tell customers that they are taking that revenue and putting it back into producing more widgets.
However, there are certain industries where a lack of supply and rewarding middlemen is actually part of the business strategy. In fashion, entertainment, and luxury goods there is a certain cachet in obtaining items that other people cannot.
You can provide whatever info you want on the second mailing line (e.g. Apartment A, Suite 100, Floor 2) and you have a unique shipping address.
I have 4 credit cards. My dad has 23. I had a friend who had over 100 when he was loading up airline miles. Let's not forget anyone can go to walmart and pickup a visa/amex gift card for a unique identifier.
And I thought of this within 30 seconds of reading your post. Imagine a dedicated scalper..
If manufacturers were actually interested in quashing resellers they could bind the console to a specific user account during the order process, say for three or six months.
> Manufactured scarcity is crucial to a bot’s notoriety, says a person who knows the sneaker industry and asked to remain anonymous for employment concerns. It lets us imagine the sea of PS5s that could be ours, if only we could breach through that locked door. “Creating FOMO is part of the business plan,” the person says.
Are you a programmer that wants some internet fame and name notoriety?
Write an open source bot that is free for everyone to use which duplicates these kinds of features, but is geared more towards the average person who just wants to score a single ps/5.
While I would certainly welcome such a project, I wonder if a truly open source bot would be hampered by the fact that online retailers could view the source and proactively circumvent whatever strategy it implements.
Would they? If you just send requests to Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, whatever for "check if item is in stock, if yes buy" and loop once a minute why would the retailer implement something to stop you?
But if they wanted to stop scalpers they could do it trivially by limiting purchases per credit card or address or whatever. Seems more likely that they don't care.
I'm surprised that direct sales with one-per-address aren't a thing yet.
Cuts out the 15-30% cut your retailers are taking, boggles scalpers, guarantees your fans get what they want, without anyone getting ripped off.
I don't understand the problem. I've had everything from a spanner to a chair shipped directly from Chinese factories. What's stopping them doing the same with high end consumer electronics?
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