AMD issues guidelines to retailers to prevent Radeon RX 6000 scalping

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"UK politicians want to ban PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC component scalping" -- https://www.techspot.com/news/87992-uk-politicians-want-ban-ps5-xbox-series-x.html

(Curtesy of KarateBob )

"Every recent big tech launch has had one thing in common: availability issues. The PS5, Xbox Series X/S, RTX 3000 series, Radeon RX 6800 cards, and Ryzen 5000 CPUs were all snapped up within minutes of going on sale, ending up on eBay for way more than their MSRPs."
I'd rather the selling over MSRP than the government getting involved tbh.

Sure it sucks but It is better than allowing the government to step in.
 
"UK politicians want to ban PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC component scalping" -- https://www.techspot.com/news/87992-uk-politicians-want-ban-ps5-xbox-series-x.html

(Curtesy of KarateBob )

"Every recent big tech launch has had one thing in common: availability issues. The PS5, Xbox Series X/S, RTX 3000 series, Radeon RX 6800 cards, and Ryzen 5000 CPUs were all snapped up within minutes of going on sale, ending up on eBay for way more than their MSRPs."
I don't think that is the way to go about it. I think the retailers must me put in a position to handle this. We don't need more laws.
 
I don't think that is the way to go about it. I think the retailers must me put in a position to handle this. We don't need more laws.
Given its pretty obvious the system is broken, how does one put retailers in a position to handle this without laws?

nVidia clearly doesn't care about scalpers and is happy to sell to them, wouldn't be surprised if that is the general sentiment from all manufacturers and AIBs.
 
I would not be opposed to a regulation that prevents selling a new item for more than the original retail purchase price for the first 6 months after launch. Not an undue burden upon industry, retailers or resellers - but it guts the predatory purchase of high demand gear
 
One would also think they got have more important things to be worried about
One argument could be made that a bunch of lawyer elected to vote law should concentrate on laws making instead of what they are often worrying about, trying to do more than that.

Laws become particularly helpful for when market incentive differ from social goals (think car exhaust laws, people that sell cars will tell you that in 20 years not a single client ever asked about the car emissions)

Here retailers/reseller do not have 0 incentive to handle this, but not that much, specially relative to the incentive the scalpers has, under those force it is hard to imagine them not keeping the upper hands.

That said, good luck.
 
I would not be opposed to a regulation that prevents selling a new item for more than the original retail purchase price for the first 6 months after launch. Not an undue burden upon industry, retailers or resellers - but it guts the predatory purchase of high demand gear
We don't need go government to get involved. This stuff is all luxury items. Nothing that is needed.
 
Maybe the government should get involved as it's clear the parties (manufacturers and retailers) don't seem capable of even doing simple things to combat this.
 
We don't need go government to get involved. This stuff is all luxury items. Nothing that is needed.
If there is a giant amount of tax evasion going on and competition to tax/benefit business on a black market, government getting involved is not just about the people access to luxury items.

I doubt the UK has a high bar for the level of need to get an form of government involved.
 
As far as I'm concerned the only part of the system that really failed is that AMD and Nvidia either set unrealistically low MSRPs or didn't wait long enough to have supply. Scalpers are an economic side effect.
 
AMD's efforts to thwart scalpers seem to have fallen flat.
AMD gave recommendations, that I don't think were followed. If retailers actually did something, the situation could be very different.
 
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AMD gave recommendations, that I don't think were followed. If retailers actually did something, the situation could be very different.
Doubtful it would have made any difference with what seems like not even 1000 total cards out in the wild in reality
 
it was just a race to release products. Even with scalpers we should have seen much higher availability. No one had product to meet demand and I’m convinced both sides knew they didn’t have it. It was just a PR paper launch race. Which created a sense of demand based on scarcity.

both companies will sell well once they get in line with production needs. People just can’t wait to find a card in stock.
 
Hi All

I think that this falls at the Retailers feet. I don't believe more laws are needed. The Retailers have to act on behalf of the Hobbyist/Gamer who these products are intended for.
 
Hi All

I think that this falls at the Retailers feet. I don't believe more laws are needed. The Retailers have to act on behalf of the Hobbyist/Gamer who these products are intended for.
Corporations/Retailers will not care to do something until it somehow hurts their bottom line.

I'm fine with scalpers existing. I'm just not happy with the tactics (bots) they're using to completely sweep up inventory. Level the playing field and if a scalper wants to scalp a product that they scored the same way as everyone else then have at it.
 
Corporations/Retailers will not care to do something until it somehow hurts their bottom line.

I'm fine with scalpers existing. I'm just not happy with the tactics (bots) they're using to completely sweep up inventory. Level the playing field and if a scalper wants to scalp a product that they scored the same way as everyone else then have at it.
I agree. Twenty years ago I recall people waiting in line overnight to buy a PS2 so they could turn around and sell it on Ebay for double its retail price. The difference was they had to stand in line with everyone else and only got to buy one console.

The current situation for Xbox, Playstation, Ryzen 5000 series, RTX 3000 series, and Radeon RX 6000 series is just way outside of acceptable. Essentially a group of people are seeking rent on the market because the supply of these items is small enough, and the way the stores work is simple enough, to be mostly hovered up by bots and then sold for a high profit. Eventually the ability to profile will wane, or something else will change to allow for regular users to get enough of the product.

EVGA and Best Buy are currently doing a decent job in making it possible for actual end users to get these items, so at least there's that.
 
Retailers don't need to do anything, government doesn't need to do anything... retailers job is to take people's money. Their job isn't to care "wait, does this money come from a scalper's hands? I think I'll refuse this person's money now and they can take their business elsewhere."

They're a business.
So is AMD and nVidia. The difference is, AMD and nVidia are being insensitive to consumer demand and the fallout this supply issue may pose for them. Either they are very narrow sighted (money now is all we care about) or ... I don't even know. Greed, and taking advantage of the situation (low supply due to covid, so it's okay if we can't meet demand, mentality).

The only entities that can and should do something to help the supply situation is nVidia and AMD themselves. Can't make enough products to meet the overwhelming demand?
Then don't launch said products until your supply chain and supply quantities are in order to the extent that consumers won't be pissed off at you. Hold off launches, hoard supplies, do what you need to do so that when you ARE ready to launch, you announce it, and people will know, and go buy the product at their convinience, instead of the company's convenience or blind luck at or having to buy off eBay at 2x the MSRP.

Everyone trying to shift blame to the retailers for not fighting bots/scalpers, or eBay, or scalpers themselves, are misguided. The real cause of this is nVidia and AMD. No one else. They didn't do the right thing, which would have been to secure supplies to meet consumer demand, prior to an official launch. Instead they are having your dumbasses (mine included) line up at Micro Centers at 3AM multiple times a week and refreshing Amazon fruitlessly all day long. When we shouldn't be doing this.

We should be upset at nVidia and AMD, not the retailers, nor the scalpers, nor the miners.
They are literally pulling an EA/Ubisoft right now -> releasing a product that's not ready, so they can take money earlier than later to look good on quarterly results and satisfy shareholders, and banking on fixing it post-launch, whenever they get around to it. As long as they know they will get your money due to being a duopoly with no where else to vote with your wallet, they have no reason to hold supply back for consumer's benefit. They are taking advantage of their position in the market and are letting everyone bend over and take it, on their own terms.

Not very consumer-forward of nVidia and AMD to not hold back supply in order to be able to meet demand without causing undue hardship and headaches for prospective buyers. That's really all there is to this supply story.
They're holding a dildo and you're pining for it and they're telling you "you have to work for it".
 
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The only entities that can and should do something to help the supply situation is nVidia and AMD themselves. Can't make enough products to meet the overwhelming demand?
Then don't launch said products until your supply chain and supply quantities are in order to the extent that consumers won't be pissed off at you.

Do the same mental experience with the Sony playstation 5 and think what that would imply.

Not so long ago such product didn't get world launch, playstation 2 had an almost full year long deployment from different market, even the playstation 4 released a good 3 month later in japan, now the release is squeezed to be almost worldwide.

The total demand could very well be around 50m, maybe more (around 115m ps4 ended up being sold after all, if 40% of the people wanting a new console would get it right away if it was easy to do, the number would be giant).

For such a product, there will always be a balancing act, that will include not satisfying all the sales in the first 2 weeks, for consoles first months, Imagine the amount of terrible waste that could occur for a company to build a supply chain / stock and so on for a product that is super popular 6 months every 7 year's, how much money and how many loans you tie up into the first batch that you take a year to build, how destructive it would be for that first batch of 60 millions units to have a common defect that show up 2 years later.

And has you just say:
As long as they know they will get your money due to being a duopoly with no where else to vote with your wallet, they have no reason to hold supply back for consumer's benefit.
And AMD cannot not launch their cards if NVidia launch theirs, and Nvidia cannot not launch their card if RDNA 2 get release and RDNA2 not getting released (thus no PS5 and XBOX) was probably not an option. Not sure they could afford to have the next gen console up there for 6 months without any new video cards to compete with them either.

Everyone trying to shift blame to the retailers for not fighting bots/scalpers, or eBay, or scalpers themselves, are misguided.

I think so (if it is not small part of the blame), a bit like we would have had toilet paper supply issue with zero hoarding going on by the fact that almost all commercial type toilet paper use declined massively (office, hotel chain, restaurant toilet paper) and all went into residential toilet paper for something that had an incredibly stable demand and a supply chain hyper optimized to meet that demand for who it was impossible to produce more (if the toilet paper factory near me is standard and I am pretty sure they are, they were already a 7/7 24 hours type of production), they needed to change their factory to augment residential type production with the time and money that take.

Banana being a good example of that, I doubt people hoarded them much, but they were incredibly hard to buy for a while, all the consumption of commercial banana (hotel chain, restaurant) that are too small to sell to regular customer shifted into residential banana and other supply chain that was incredibly well optimised for a very stable / predictable demand and that you can really not keep any stock and you lose all your overbuy. It was no one fault that they were hard to buy and for toilet paper it was mostly no one fault that they were hard to buy, hoarders didn't help and made things worse like I am sure scalpers do not help, but the situation would be virtually the same without them that I would not be surprised. Sony sold what I imagine over 5 millions units by now and we have stories about factory scalpers group hoarding 3,500 units (and for everyone buying from a scalper, it is one less person competing to buy from walmart, if scalper sell 100% of what they buy in a short window they have a near nill impact on scarcity).

When I counted AMD Radeon card on the biggest resellers market place in a 250km radius (in Canada), it was almost nil, either scalper speak to each other to create false scarcity on the second hand markets to keep price up or there is just nothing out there anyway.

I would not be surprised that a bit like for Banana/Toilet Paper, scarcity would have been a factor here even if the most well intentioned but reasonable people were in charge at every level and trying to find an easy to blame entity/person (scalper, CEOs of company) of a very complex world is just what we do.
 
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I don't think the retailers are to blame - I put the blame 90% on people paying scalper prices and 10% on sites like ebay providing a place for the scalpers to sell. It's tough to regulate though, to ebay these are just sellers like anyone else.
 
I'd rather the selling over MSRP than the government getting involved tbh.

Sure it sucks but It is better than allowing the government to step in.
Well, they got involved with ticket scalping back in the day, then a legit business figured out how to make money from it so now it's OK if it's online through a legit entity. The reason the stepped in then was because it was too easy for a scalper to sell a fake ticket only for the scammed person to be turned away at the door, I am guessing the best they can do is put protection in place so if a "business" sells a counterfeit product there are protections in place that will land on the platform that hosted the sale to cover the cost of. So if you get scammed on eBay for what turns out to be a photo of a PS5 then eBay has to eat the cost of the refund and it is on them to get their money back from the seller. But I highly doubt they have the ability to regulate the selling price of a device, I can see the chaos it would cause now because if they do it for one thing they have to do it for all things otherwise it is very very easy to loophole your way out of it and it becomes a useless piece of noisy legislation.
 
Honestly I am surprised retailers are not scalping themselves. When the mining craze was in full swing MC was selling 1080ti for $1200+. So was NE and other retailers. Maybe Nvidia and AMD got involved and banned them from doing so this time?
 
The thing that makes me most annoyed by this is the blatant scalping going on amazon and not listing the prices of cards forcing you to click to see the absurd buying "options" I would expect to see scalping on ebay, but i nearly lost my shit when i started seeing 3080's available all over amazon for 2400 Canadian. The scalpers pricing on amazon is actually much higher than even the local scalping market on FB marketplace / craigslist.
 
I would not be opposed to a regulation that prevents selling a new item for more than the original retail purchase price for the first 6 months after launch. Not an undue burden upon industry, retailers or resellers - but it guts the predatory purchase of high demand gear
That's alright, $MSRP + $1000 shipping.

I'm not sure why people would pay much more than MSRP to get the latest systems now, when you could wait a few months and have more games to choose from, a better patched os, and maybe some production improvements.
 
"UK politicians want to ban PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC component scalping"
It wouldn't surprise me if the scalpers aren't paying tax on the profits generated. While the article doesn't state this, it's probably one of the reasons the MPs are trying to push the legislation.
 
Legally there is little AMD or NVIDIA can do at that level. Sure there are ways to push influence but only that.
Don't they have near complete influence, i.e. can't they say if you sell the products more than X, we will pressure our distributor to remove you from the list of people that get any cards from us ?

That would be illegal for them to put such condition ?
 
Don't they have near complete influence, i.e. can't they say if you sell the products more than X, we will pressure our distributor to remove you from the list of people that get any cards from us ?

That would be illegal for them to put such condition ?
Wouldn't affect scalping resellers, due to the first sale doctrine.
 
Don't they have near complete influence, i.e. can't they say if you sell the products more than X, we will pressure our distributor to remove you from the list of people that get any cards from us ?

That would be illegal for them to put such condition ?
That is illegal in the USA.
 
nVidia clearly doesn't care about scalpers and is happy to sell to them, wouldn't be surprised if that is the general sentiment from all manufacturers and AIBs.
Why would they? As long as they are selling as fast as they can make them, manufacturers are getting their $$$. It’s shitty but that’s how it is.
 
That is illegal in the USA.
So if BestBuy want to sell something a company is obligated to provide them the device to sell ? Or they are obligated to have someone between themselve and bestbuy to start with anyway ? In Canada that seem legal to do, in the USA it seem also legal to do:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/06pdf/06-480.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leegin_Creative_Leather_Products,_Inc._v._PSKS,_Inc.
In Leegin, the court resolved the tension by overruling Dr. Miles. Citing Bork, Ronald Coase, and others, the Court held that manufacturer-imposed minimum resale prices can lead retailers to compete efficiently for customer sales in ways other than cutting the retail price.

Reading the different judgment, I feel they cannot tell them what price to sell their stuff but they can have a lot of incentive a la Apple to end up with strict price control or ultimately simply just not use you them as a reseller at all if they want based on their pricing policy and not provide them any product to sell (if court allow minimum price hard to imagine them have issue with maximum price).

In Canada:
https://mcmillan.ca/Files/ARTICLE_Price_Maintenance_View_from_Canada_0310.pdf
The supplier ensures compliance by penalizing the downstream party for any deviance from the supplier’s pricing policy. For instance, if a reseller refuses to maintain prices, the supplier would stop doing business with it. Maximum resale price maintenance usually raises less competition concerns. Indeed, under Canadian competition law, maximum prices have always been lawful.
the Canadian Government eliminated the criminal offence of price maintenance as part of its 2009 Budget Implementation Act


Specially in the case of a maximum price and not minimum price being set would be hard to prove that it make competition impossible and hurt consummers.
 
So if BestBuy want to sell something a company is obligated to provide them the device to sell ? Or they are obligated to have someone between themselve and bestbuy to start with anyway ? In Canada that seem legal to do, in the USA it seem also legal to do:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/06pdf/06-480.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leegin_Creative_Leather_Products,_Inc._v._PSKS,_Inc.
In Leegin, the court resolved the tension by overruling Dr. Miles. Citing Bork, Ronald Coase, and others, the Court held that manufacturer-imposed minimum resale prices can lead retailers to compete efficiently for customer sales in ways other than cutting the retail price.

Reading the different judgment, I feel they cannot tell them what price to sell their stuff but they can have a lot of incentive a la Apple to end up with strict price control or ultimately simply just not use you them as a reseller at all if they want based on their pricing policy and not provide them any product to sell (if court allow minimum price hard to imagine them have issue with maximum price).

In Canada:
https://mcmillan.ca/Files/ARTICLE_Price_Maintenance_View_from_Canada_0310.pdf
The supplier ensures compliance by penalizing the downstream party for any deviance from the supplier’s pricing policy. For instance, if a reseller refuses to maintain prices, the supplier would stop doing business with it. Maximum resale price maintenance usually raises less competition concerns. Indeed, under Canadian competition law, maximum prices have always been lawful.
the Canadian Government eliminated the criminal offence of price maintenance as part of its 2009 Budget Implementation Act


Specially in the case of a maximum price and not minimum price being set would be hard to prove that it make competition impossible and hurt consummers.
OK.
 
Retailers usually stick to MSRP, or fairly close to it. I know there was the issue of MSI scalping on ebay, but this is rare.

The price isn't the issue. If retailers doubled the MSRP, then scalpers would 4X it. The issue is supply, and also retailers unwillingness to fight scalping.

For example, when I have made purchases before on websites ripe for fraud (buying Steam gift cards in one case), they required a picture of my drivers license to complete the purchase.

If some random gray-market key site can manage checking IDs, then for sure a huge company like Newegg or BestBuy could do it. But they don't care, cause they are making their money regardless.
 
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Retailers usually stick to MSRP, or fairly close to it. I know there was the issue of MSI scalping on ebay, but this is rare.

The price isn't the issue. If retailers doubled the MSRP, then scalpers would 4X it. The issue is supply, and also a retailers unwillingness to fight scalping.

For example, when I have made purchases before on websites ripe for fraud (buying Steam gift cards in one case), they required a picture of my drivers license to complete the purchase.

If some random gray-market key site can manage checking IDs, then for sure a huge company like Newegg or BestBuy could do it. But they don't care, cause they are making their money regardless.
That's how you get your identity stolen.... So many times I have to deal with people trying to prove to me that they are real people by submitting me a picture of their DL on why I should trust them that they aren't trying to scam us. Then try to convince us they can only pay using Paypal because it's best.

Note:
We auction off and sell a lot of our surplus hardware when refreshes happen, not scalping and stuff...
 
So if BestBuy want to sell something a company is obligated to provide them the device to sell ? Or they are obligated to have someone between themselve and bestbuy to start with anyway ? In Canada that seem legal to do, in the USA it seem also legal to do:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/06pdf/06-480.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leegin_Creative_Leather_Products,_Inc._v._PSKS,_Inc.
In Leegin, the court resolved the tension by overruling Dr. Miles. Citing Bork, Ronald Coase, and others, the Court held that manufacturer-imposed minimum resale prices can lead retailers to compete efficiently for customer sales in ways other than cutting the retail price.

Reading the different judgment, I feel they cannot tell them what price to sell their stuff but they can have a lot of incentive a la Apple to end up with strict price control or ultimately simply just not use you them as a reseller at all if they want based on their pricing policy and not provide them any product to sell (if court allow minimum price hard to imagine them have issue with maximum price).

In Canada:
https://mcmillan.ca/Files/ARTICLE_Price_Maintenance_View_from_Canada_0310.pdf
The supplier ensures compliance by penalizing the downstream party for any deviance from the supplier’s pricing policy. For instance, if a reseller refuses to maintain prices, the supplier would stop doing business with it. Maximum resale price maintenance usually raises less competition concerns. Indeed, under Canadian competition law, maximum prices have always been lawful.
the Canadian Government eliminated the criminal offence of price maintenance as part of its 2009 Budget Implementation Act


Specially in the case of a maximum price and not minimum price being set would be hard to prove that it make competition impossible and hurt consummers.

What your referencing is MAP pricing, which is the lowest one can sell a product or be cutoff from the manufacturer. Absolutely no law against selling for above a MAP price or MSRP price point, however demand will always set the upper limit on pricing. MAP pricing is a whole other discussion tho.
 
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