News $10,000 for a $3,500 Apple Vision Pro? Scalpers mark up Apple's headset, despite the fact that it's still in stock

[Admin]

Scalpers have taken to eBay and Facebook Marketplace with Apple Vision Pro, some asking for sky-high premiums. Most may lose money, and it's not the best way to buy.

$10,000 for a $3,500 Apple Vision Pro? Scalpers mark up Apple's headset, despite the fact that it's still in stock : Read more

 

[bigdragon]

I wonder if these scalpers are reporting their 1099-K forms correctly or at all. I would bet they're not. Financial penalties need to be levied against Ebay, Amazon, Ticketmaster, and others for enabling scalping. We all hate scalping yet nothing is done to prevent it from happening.

 

[JamesJones44]

Hope they all go broke! Scummy practice.

 

[magbarn]

I wonder if these scalpers are reporting their 1099-K forms correctly or at all. I would bet they're not. Financial penalties need to be levied against Ebay, Amazon, Ticketmaster, and others for enabling scalping. We all hate scalping yet nothing is done to prevent it from happening.

Getting 1099-K on that $10,000 sale will help curb scalping. Especially when the IRS starts doing forced withdrawals from their bank accounts for failing to pay their taxes.

Those vendors who facilitate scalping will do everything they can to do keep it going as that's where their profits are coming from.

 

[Math Geek]

does seem a bit odd though to mark up an item that is readily available at normal (though still stupidly expensive) price. i guess they are hoping for that 1 in 1,000,000 idiot that won't see it available cheaper straight from apple.

 

[AgentBirdnest]

You couldn't pay me 3xMSRP to have sympathy for scalpers.

 

[watzupken]

For that price, might as well go for the top end Vision Pro, and you will still have enough money to buy a couple of Macs.

 

[Silicon Mage]

It’s only for sale in the US isn’t it?

Resellers have a global market to leverage.

 

[cryoburner]

The other is the price: it starts at $3,499 with 256GB of storage and goes up from there.

That's kind of a ripoff for Apple to be putting only 256GB of storage in a $3500 device, when an SSD or memory card with that capacity can be had for around $20-$25. There's no excuse for not putting more storage in the base model, aside from planned obsolescence. And moving up to 512GB adds an extra $200 to the price of the unit, a roughly 10x markup over what an additional 256GB of storage should cost. It also probably wouldn't have cost them much more than a dollar to add a microSD slot.

Another Facebook seller trying to sell the 1TB model for $4,999, which is $1,100 more than the MSRP for 1TB, told me that they hope to use the proceeds to help pay for a prep course to help get a job following a layoff last summer.

So someone supposedly lost their job half a year ago, but felt they had the money to spend $4000+ on a device hoping to con someone into buying it from them at a markup? Perhaps this is why they were let go. That is, assuming their story is even real, and not just something they made up to con potential customers into feeling sorry for them.

 

[aero1x]

It’s only for sale in the US isn’t it?

Resellers have a global market to leverage.

This. Duh. Yes only US for now. Def not in Asia.

 

[TheOtherOne]

It’s only for sale in the US isn’t it?

Resellers have a global market to leverage.

👆

A lot of times, new and shiny gadgets, are sold on ebay/amazon/alibaba etc.. for the countries it's not officially available yet and most of those countries actually NEVER see the official release locally.

People in those countries (with money) have only option to buy from third party resellers if they want shiny new toys to play with.

The obvious example would be most of the high end Smart Phones or handheld Game Consoles like SteamDeck.

 

[Neilbob]

That's kind of a ripoff for Apple to be putting only 256GB of storage in a $3500 device, when an SSD or memory card with that capacity can be had for around $20-$25. There's no excuse for not putting more storage in the base model, aside from planned obsolescence. And moving up to 512GB adds an extra $200 to the price of the unit, a roughly 10x markup over what an additional 256GB of storage should cost. It also probably wouldn't have cost them much more than a dollar to add a microSD slot.

I know right? Apple are usually so well known for being customer-centric, offering reasonable pricing and open-ended upgrade models.

 

[kaalus]

If back in the day these "scalpers" didn't buy all the RTX 3080s to resell them at "inflated" price (actually: market price), you wouldn't be able to buy one at all. As it was, at least you could have one at a premium. Those who wanted one most could still buy it. It's more fair than a lottery who clicked the buy button faster, isn't it?

It's the same flawed reasoning the parents apply when flight prices go up during school holidays. "The greed makes the airlines up the prices". No, there isn't enough seats for everyone, and if the prices didn't go up, the seats would all be sold out in minutes. Better be able to buy it expensive than not buy at all.

 

[aberkae]

They are scalping a meme product. 🤣 Who remembers MSI was caught scalping there own 3090s. Apple the sales are dismal, quickly scalping it by almost 3x so that the sheep can perceive this as super demanding and get hyper hysterical via market manipulation. Also Apple we already Scalped to $3500 ok release the scalpers 🤪.Me not implossible.

 

[Deleted member 2969713]

If back in the day these "scalpers" didn't buy all the RTX 3080s to resell them at "inflated" price (actually: market price), you wouldn't be able to buy one at all. As it was, at least you could have one at a premium. Those who wanted one most could still buy it. It's more fair than a lottery who clicked the buy button faster, isn't it?

It's the same flawed reasoning the parents apply when flight prices go up during school holidays. "The greed makes the airlines up the prices". No, there isn't enough seats for everyone, and if the prices didn't go up, the seats would all be sold out in minutes. Better be able to buy it expensive than not buy at all.

Are you a scalper, then? It's hard to imagine someone who isn't a scalper trying to justify it. No, scalping absolutely isn't more "fair" than letting people who genuinely want the product have a better chance of getting it at its original price. And if they weren't competing with scalpers, they would have that better chance. Scalpers don't provide a service; they are parasites, a drain on society.

And the airlines aren't increasing prices during high demand to give people a better chance of getting tickets. They're increasing prices solely to maximize revenue. They set prices as high as they feel they can get away with.

 

[etoven]

Not a issue.
I wouldn't give scalpers $10,000 or Apple $.83 for that dumb looking headset.