PS5 Scalpers Having a Hard Time Selling Consoles

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kac77

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PS5 Scalpers Having a Hard Time Selling Consoles

PS5 scalpers are apparently having a hard time offloading their inventory after Sony officially put an end to stock shortage stemming from the pandemic. Like other in-demand products, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S suffered from restricted supply for nearly two years after launch – a situation made worse by scalpers who sought to take advantage of global supply chain disruptions.
 
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I really wish places like eBay and Amazon would clamp down on scalping. Wouldn't be hard either to do it algorithmically: For any product that is currently being produced and sold by the manufacturer and is agency priced (meaning the manufacturer sets the retail price, you can't sell below that) you may not sell it for more than that price. If you do, they remove the listing. That way, legit 3rd parties aren't affected, you can still use their platforms to sell things at the manufacturer's specified price. However if you try to over price it, listing gets taken down.

It wouldn't solve the problem, but it would help a lot.
 
Sycraft said:
I really wish places like eBay and Amazon would clamp down on scalping. Wouldn't be hard either to do it algorithmically: For any product that is currently being produced and sold by the manufacturer and is agency priced (meaning the manufacturer sets the retail price, you can't sell below that) you may not sell it for more than that price. If you do, they remove the listing. That way, legit 3rd parties aren't affected, you can still use their platforms to sell things at the manufacturer's specified price. However if you try to over price it, listing gets taken down.

It wouldn't solve the problem, but it would help a lot.
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EBay and Amazon make money off it so they don't have much incentive to stop it, ebay probably loves it.

And meh, I don't think it's always morally wrong to scalp. There was a limited supply, and scalping made it so that the people that wanted PS5s the most (aka were willing to pay the most) got them. That's sort of a good thing.
If someone waited in line at best buy for 2 hours to buy a single PS5 then scalp it to make $100, meh I don't care. The buyer basically just paid someone to wait in line for them. The scalper was happy to make money and the buyer was happy to actually get a PS5.

I do have a problem with the scalpers that somehow aquired 10s, 100s, or even 1000s of them through bots and other bullshit.
 
This is why businesses try to predict demand and stock accordingly versus change prices and stocks according to demand as that's really complicated to get right.

I don't like the profiteering on goods, but I do see the flip side where if you absolutely need something for some reason (got 3 months to live, etc), then it makes sense to pay more. The reason the scalping market exists is because people that don't have a good reason are stupid with their money.
 
TrevorR said:
Haven't they been easy to buy for the past 5 months?
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Anyone who bought off Sonys website had access for those purchase windows pretty easily and they made it simple.

Everyone who has a product with massive scalping should incorporate that type of system to at the very least give normal customers access. It would be great if online retailers would do the same thing but they make money off the higher prices so I doubt they would.
 
Sycraft said:
I really wish places like eBay and Amazon would clamp down on scalping. Wouldn't be hard either to do it algorithmically: For any product that is currently being produced and sold by the manufacturer and is agency priced (meaning the manufacturer sets the retail price, you can't sell below that) you may not sell it for more than that price. If you do, they remove the listing. That way, legit 3rd parties aren't affected, you can still use their platforms to sell things at the manufacturer's specified price. However if you try to over price it, listing gets taken down.

It wouldn't solve the problem, but it would help a lot.
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They should but they can’t legally unless certain conditions are met and the scalpers are generally smart enough to ride just below those cutoff points. There are exceptions during emergency’s and such where they will come down harder, scalping bottled water after an earthquake sort of thing. But they have to be reported, there is paperwork, long story the only way to stop it is not pay it.
 
Lakados said:
They should but they can’t legally unless certain conditions are met and the scalpers are generally smart enough to ride just below those cutoff points. There are exceptions during emergency’s and such where they will come down harder, scalping bottled water after an earthquake sort of thing. But they have to be reported, there is paperwork, long story the only way to stop it is not pay it.
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They absolutely legally can. Amazon can basically do whatever they want with their platform. They can make rules and ban you if you don't follow them. There doesn't need to be a law to allow Amazon to do it, there is no law preventing them from doing it. They can just refuse to do business with people who price above the MAP.

It's the same thing as the other side: agency pricing, pricing set by manufacturers. This is REALLY common these days where manufacturers set the final retail price. You might notice that things like the Xbox, or TVs, or games, or the like are the same price at EVERY store. Target, Walmart, Amazon, etc all the same price. What, really, is the likelihood of that if they could set their prices? They'd compete on price, do sales. Well, they can't. Microsoft says "You will sell the Xbox for $500, if you sell it for less we will stop selling them to you." This is how most electronics are priced and sold these days. You have to do as the manufacturer wishes, because they can just not sell to you if you try to undercut people.

Very easy to then apply that to selling over the price as well. Amazon can just say "You cannot sell over MAP. If MS says the Xbox sells for $500, that's what it sells for no more no less"
 
T4rd said:
I thought their time was up months ago now. They had 2+ years to capitalize and rip people off. That's a pretty good run if you ask me.
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This, stuff bought to be scalped after Christmas 2022 of a 2020 console is quite pushing it they probably started to buy expecting to be very likely they could loose some cent to the dollars, they still get ok price for them I would guess and getting 75% of their money back.

As for the legality of a platform like ebay to refuse to have scalping going on, I am sure how it would be illegal for them, there is a long list of perfectly legal item you cannot sell on ebay like Nazi, slavery bill of sales, confederate flags etc...:
https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/prohibited-restricted-items/offensive-material-policy?id=4324
Activity that doesn't follow eBay policy could result in a range of actions including, for example: administratively ending or cancelling listings, hiding or demoting all listings from search results, lowering seller rating, buying or selling restrictions, and account suspension.

But as said above, I am not sure what it would achieve outside removing sorting to give the console to those who want them the most, like we have now.
 
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Sycraft said:
They absolutely legally can. Amazon can basically do whatever they want with their platform. They can make rules and ban you if you don't follow them. There doesn't need to be a law to allow Amazon to do it, there is no law preventing them from doing it. They can just refuse to do business with people who price above the MAP.

It's the same thing as the other side: agency pricing, pricing set by manufacturers. This is REALLY common these days where manufacturers set the final retail price. You might notice that things like the Xbox, or TVs, or games, or the like are the same price at EVERY store. Target, Walmart, Amazon, etc all the same price. What, really, is the likelihood of that if they could set their prices? They'd compete on price, do sales. Well, they can't. Microsoft says "You will sell the Xbox for $500, if you sell it for less we will stop selling them to you." This is how most electronics are priced and sold these days. You have to do as the manufacturer wishes, because they can just not sell to you if you try to undercut people.

Very easy to then apply that to selling over the price as well. Amazon can just say "You cannot sell over MAP. If MS says the Xbox sells for $500, that's what it sells for no more no less"
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You realize MAP stands for Minimum Advertised Price... So most things will be above MAP
 
Sycraft said:
They absolutely legally can. Amazon can basically do whatever they want with their platform. They can make rules and ban you if you don't follow them. There doesn't need to be a law to allow Amazon to do it, there is no law preventing them from doing it. They can just refuse to do business with people who price above the MAP.

It's the same thing as the other side: agency pricing, pricing set by manufacturers. This is REALLY common these days where manufacturers set the final retail price. You might notice that things like the Xbox, or TVs, or games, or the like are the same price at EVERY store. Target, Walmart, Amazon, etc all the same price. What, really, is the likelihood of that if they could set their prices? They'd compete on price, do sales. Well, they can't. Microsoft says "You will sell the Xbox for $500, if you sell it for less we will stop selling them to you." This is how most electronics are priced and sold these days. You have to do as the manufacturer wishes, because they can just not sell to you if you try to undercut people.

Very easy to then apply that to selling over the price as well. Amazon can just say "You cannot sell over MAP. If MS says the Xbox sells for $500, that's what it sells for no more no less"
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I think an important distinction here, is that someone re-selling PS5's on Ebay, is not an official reseller. Even if the PS5 is brand new/unopened, its technically a 2nd hand sale by owner. They are not subject to Sony's rules. Sony's rules applied when the scalper/owner first bought it from Wal-Mart or wherever. No warranty/manufacturer support. And the support from Ebay isn't like buying at Amazon, Wal-Mart, etc.
 
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kac77 said:
PS5 Scalpers Having a Hard Time Selling Consoles

PS5 scalpers are apparently having a hard time offloading their inventory after Sony officially put an end to stock shortage stemming from the pandemic. Like other in-demand products, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S suffered from restricted supply for nearly two years after launch – a situation made worse by scalpers who sought to take advantage of global supply chain disruptions.
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I'd have to dig some more, but that article makes it sound like Sony was artificially limiting the supply, then opened up the supply later on. The linked article to explain the end of the shortage doesn't exactly dispute that idea either.
 
Oh well, that is what happens when you have too much stock. Will be impossible for them to recover costs but they new the risks. Wasn't a smart decision to buy dozens of these console to resell. We all knew supply would be met eventually.
 
They've been consistently in stock online and in stores for several months and even discounted several times. Who the hell is buying these from scalpers?

Even so, who are these dummy scalpers who can't simply return their merchandise? As much as we want to dunk on them, it seems like there's zero to no risk, just tied up scalper cash a little longer than they'd hope.
 
jardows said:
I'd have to dig some more, but that article makes it sound like Sony was artificially limiting the supply, then opened up the supply later on. The linked article to explain the end of the shortage doesn't exactly dispute that idea either.
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Not an artificial limitation, AMD shorted them some 5 million units over the 2 years. There was a big investor call when Sony's investors were pissed that the PS5 was well behind their sales projection figures while being constantly out of stock and Sony straight threw AMD under the bus for under-delivering on their contract.
 
SPARTAN VI said:
They've been consistently in stock online and in stores for several months and even discounted several times. Who the hell is buying these from scalpers?

Even so, who are these dummy scalpers who can't simply return their merchandise? As much as we want to dunk on them, it seems like there's zero to no risk, just tied up scalper cash a little longer than they'd hope.
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Depending on when they bought them they could be outside the return window, if the stores let them return them at all, I know many online sites instituted a no-return policy for some items during the panic buying spree, they could have bought them a year ago and only now are realizing how fucked they are.
 
Flogger23m said:
Oh well, that is what happens when you have too much stock. Will be impossible for them to recover costs but they new the risks. Wasn't a smart decision to buy dozens of these console to resell. We all knew supply would be met eventually.
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See post #15. Nothing happened. There are no dozens of consoles, and there is no "they". Garbage clickbait site that slapped an old, out of context flex photo of PS5s from google images onto a fake story about something not even happening.

People are yelling at clouds here.
 
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SPARTAN VI said:
They've been consistently in stock online and in stores for several months and even discounted several times. Who the hell is buying these from scalpers?

Even so, who are these dummy scalpers who can't simply return their merchandise? As much as we want to dunk on them, it seems like there's zero to no risk, just tied up scalper cash a little longer than they'd hope.
Click to expand...
Depending on where they bought it from there is probably a limited return window (15-30 days) and then there could also be restocking fees.
 
Lakados said:
You realize MAP stands for Minimum Advertised Price... So most things will be above MAP
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I think you don't understand how MAP works these days: Go look at an Xbox or a PS5, or a LG C2, or Samsung S95B, or Onkyo RZ50. Look at the price, notice how it is the same on Amazon, Target, Walmart, Crutchfield, B&H, Bestbuy, etc, etc. Not less, not more. That should tell you something, it tells you how this works. Price is set by the manufacturer. When they do a sale, everyone does the same sale.

Amazon could then easily use this as a peg point and ban 3rd parties from selling above this price. I'm not saying they HAVE to, clearly they don't, I'm saying they COULD and it would be easy to implement.
 
Sycraft said:
I think you don't understand how MAP works these days: Go look at an Xbox or a PS5, or a LG C2, or Samsung S95B, or Onkyo RZ50. Look at the price, notice how it is the same on Amazon, Target, Walmart, Crutchfield, B&H, Bestbuy, etc, etc. Not less, not more. That should tell you something, it tells you how this works. Price is set by the manufacturer. When they do a sale, everyone does the same sale.

Amazon could then easily use this as a peg point and ban 3rd parties from selling above this price. I'm not saying they HAVE to, clearly they don't, I'm saying they COULD and it would be easy to implement.
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That works in a world where there is supply to meet demand and a healthy market to go with it, should Amazon or anybody else enforce MAP as a Maximum and not a minimum it no longer becomes something that the average storefront could compete against, it would kill 90% of what is on there leaving only manufacturer direct using Amazon as the middle man or the large box stores who own and operate their own distribution or have contracted Amazon to handle their distribution. It would be anti-competitive by its very nature, what needs to be done is enact some sort of Anti-Scalping regulations that define what scalping is in a legal sense and enforce that. There is a social construct of what scalping is but legally things are a mess, that is certainly something that needs addressing but trying to enforce it with MAP as you would there would not work out in anybody's favor.
 
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Lakados said:
That works in a world where there is supply to meet demand and a healthy market to go with it, should Amazon or anybody else enforce MAP as a Maximum and not a minimum it no longer becomes something that the average storefront could compete against, it would kill 90% of what is on there leaving only manufacturer direct using Amazon as the middle man or the large box stores who own and operate their own distribution or have contracted Amazon to handle their distribution. It would be anti-competitive by its very nature, what needs to be done is enact some sort of Anti-Scalping regulations that define what scalping is in a legal sense and enforce that. There is a social construct of what scalping is but legally things are a mess, that is certainly something that needs addressing but trying to enforce it with MAP as you would there would not work out in anybody's favor.
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MAP is already anti-competitive and the only thing this would do is kill people who are scalping, who are buying and reselling at above retail price. Anyone would still be able to use Amazon and eBay to resell at retail price, or even below if the unit was used/refurbished (MAP only applies for new items), just not above. Yes that means things would be out of stock, and that's fine.
 
SamirD said:
The only thing that seems to have become normalized is high prices for everything and short supply.
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Huge parts of the supply chain are expected to be fucked well into 2025 because in the mass production and panic buying the sudden explosion in demand exploded base component costs and those components purchased at those high prices need to be used up and gone before anybody is going to lower their prices to meet the new (pre 2019+inflation) pricing.
Based on current demand they are expecting those components to be kicking around at that pricing until 2025 or so and because there are huge stockpiles that companies already paid for when demand crashed they arent ordering more so output on those components has decreased but to maintain operation they had to then increase prices to cover their operating expenses since the economy to scale metrics changed and blah blah blah techno-economic jargon.
Basically, covid broke a lot of supply chain shit and putting it all back together is gonna take some time, the important people recognize that they have to get it done sooner than not because the market won't support these conditions for very long and there are talks of bailouts or tax breaks to speed things along but we have no say in any of that so we are all just along for the ride. YAY...
I am just lucky that I have too much GW plastic crack right now to have much time to play, and the game my friends dragged me back into is WoW and you can run that on an overclocked potato, no need to upgrade for a bit, hoping to ride it out, otherwise I may just need to find a new hobby or settle for lower settings because this shit is not going to fly for long.
 
Lakados said:
...leaving only manufacturer direct using Amazon as the middle man or the large box stores who own and operate their own distribution or have contracted Amazon to handle their distribution.
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If you haven't noticed, a lot of manufacturers are moving to selling direct anyways. By doing so, they not only control the price, but also eliminate 1 level of distribution which is worth at least 10% additional net to them.
 
Sycraft said:
MAP is already anti-competitive and the only thing this would do is kill people who are scalping, who are buying and reselling at above retail price. Anyone would still be able to use Amazon and eBay to resell at retail price, or even below if the unit was used/refurbished (MAP only applies for new items), just not above. Yes that means things would be out of stock, and that's fine.
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While you make a good point and I actually agree with you. having Ebay, Amazon, or whoever else enforce it on their own is problematic, it goes against their best financial interests for one as they lose their cut and all it would do is move them to a different service.
Something federally mandated would be better and they love finding ways to fine or tax people so it's a win-win for everybody, except the scalpers. Who can die in a fire.
Fortunately for us, the Swifties are on a war march so we can hopefully see some action there, because Ticketmaster is still getting grilled for their "totally not scalping" business practices, and any rules placed on them will trickle down everywhere else too.
 
SamirD said:
If you haven't noticed, a lot of manufacturers are moving to selling direct anyways. By doing so, they not only control the price, but also eliminate 1 level of distribution which is worth at least 10% additional net to them.
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And to do so many are actually signing up with Amazon and having them handle warehousing and distribution because the startup costs of getting a distribution chain in place are stupidly high.
 
LukeTbk said:
We could assume it would be hard to catch all the scalper has well, cannot end up being ebay reserve the right to remove the sales when they want it seem.
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It's not 'hard'. That's just a bs excuse because the 'marketplaces' profit from anything sold. Literally if drugs and whatnot were permitted, they would light it up!

Today business world is a lot of 'I'm going to do wtf I want to make money unless there's a law against. F ethics, F morality, F everyone and give me my money!'

In this type of environment, governmental regulations are the only way these type of people will get in line or go to the third world where they belong.
 
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