Shoppers now have scalper bots to battle when buying online
Scalping on Ebay and Amazon is becoming a huge issue for games enthusiasts, writes Shaun Prescott.
2020 has been the year of shortages. Toilet paper, pasta, hand sanitiser, and other usually-abundant grocery mainstays went flying off the shelves earlier this year due to the COVID-19 panic buying spree. While some of that panic seems to have faded – supermarket shelves are no longer eerily barren – the pointy end of 2020 has led to another mad consumer rush: technology.
Nvidia’s new RTX 3080 graphics card is, as of writing, impossible to immediately buy at RRP, though many local outlets are offering either pre-orders or waiting list placement. The Xbox Series X and Series S likewise, are also impossible to pre-order if you want one on their November 10 release date. The same is true for the Playstation 5, of course, which you probably won’t get your hands on come November 12 unless you acted very quickly when pre-orders dropped. If you’re a gamer with a determination for early adoption, you’ve either been very lucky or are out of luck.
While the big toilet paper shortage involved supermarket bullrushes that occasionally resulted in physical confrontation, the RTX 3080, PS5 and Xbox Series X shortages can at least in part be attributed to a shadier opponent: scalper bots. Make no mistake: the demand for all of these products was such that supply shortages were always inevitable, but they didn’t need to be quite this inevitable.
Not long after the RTX 3080 went on sale stateside, it appeared on Ebay for as much as US$96,000 ($134,465), which of course, is a ridiculous amount of money to spend on a graphics card. Major PC retailers like MWave are allowing users to receive notifications regarding any developments on stock, while the likes of Scorptec are taking orders, but with no indication as to when customers will actually get their card.
The console pre-order situation is no better, though one enterprising Ebay user was selling an Xbox Series X for over AU$30,000. At the time of writing the waters have calmed a bit, with most scalpers selling PS5 and Xbox Series pre-orders for anywhere between AU$900 and AU$1,500.
Scalping is something of a tradition when it comes to concert ticket sales, to the extent that some touring companies, such as the one who operated the now defunct Big Day Out, promised to cancel the validity of tickets sold on for profit, using its own tracking and registration system. Meanwhile, Cricket Australia went so far as to hire private investigators to combat scalping.
But it’s not actually illegal to buy something and sell it on for a much higher price in Australia, and the same is true for most of the world. So buying an RTX 3080 and selling it for 300 times the usual price… that’s fair game. As for what Ebay and Amazon are going to do about it, well, diddly squat apparently - what’s it to them? As for bots, they’re expressly allowed on Ebay as per the official Ebay website: “Bid sniping – including the use of software that places bids for you – is allowed on Ebay.”
Early adoption is quickly becoming the province of the lucky few, and there’s no light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to the fight against scalping. Mostly because there is no fight: just aggrieved, powerless potential customers. The best you can probably do, when it comes to the consoles at least, is turn up to your local bricks and mortar on their respective release days. But you’d better brace yourself for disappointment.
“While the big toilet paper shortage involved supermarket bulrushes that occasionally resulted in physical confrontation, the RTX 3080, PS5 and Xbox Series X shortages can at least in part be attributed to a shadier opponent: scalper bots.”