News Best Buy's GPU Paywall Ended Up Helping Scalpers Instead Of Gamers

[Admin]

The dumb restriction of a single purchase of any particular SKU didn't stop scalpers from buying up tens of thousands of dollars of Nvidia GeForce 30X0 graphics card models.

Best Buy's GPU Paywall Ended Up Helping Scalpers Instead Of Gamers : Read more

 

[Co BIY]

The only real solution is increased production and availability.

Scarce resources are valuable, that value will be reflected in the behavior of those seeking those resources.

For many of us the solution is substitution - In my case substituting more spending on my biking hobby than on my computer hobby.

 

[RareAir23]

Well, when this site put up the article earlier this week about Best Buy placing GeForce RTX 30 series behind the TotalTech paywall I'm gonna be honest: I saw this specific article coming down the pipeline the minute the second I read through the article about the GPU's going behind the TotalTech paywall (which they'll highly likely stay for the foreseeable future). Now, as I continue let me try to tell both sides of the story here starting with...Best Buy Corporate (who made this call) at least in their minds: they meant well in their own collective, corporate mind. Best Buy Corporate's mental thinking wavelength over this was this, "Let's put all nVIDIA RTX 30 GPU's behind TotalTech. Scalpers won't pay the extra $200 to get in on it. They just won't!" Per the usual, scalpers proved Best Buy Corporate wrong...hard!

I knew (and I imagine many of you did too) this wasn't going to stop them. This is because to them an extra $200 just to get in on the product is a drop in the bucket to the scalpers, especially if they are professionals who have been doing this long before the pandemic and have massive financial capitol saved up behind everything they do. They'll pay the extra $200 to get into TotalTech because all they will do after they buy the cards and place them on eBay or the Amazon/Newegg 3rd party vendor networks is they just pass the extra $200 down to every card they sell when they put their price up. We talk about it some in politics: we say about some politicians they are out of touch with the common man and the common problems of the world with some of the things they do. Best Buy Corporate showed a similar thing here: mentally they are out of touch with their customer base and the retail environment going on around them. There's my thought and until next time I am out!

 

[VforV]

What a mega fail we have here! It's both hilarious and sad at the same time...

 

[spongiemaster]

Any reason this site has not mentioned that Best Buy did another drop the next day that wasn't behind the pay wall?

Best Buy NVIDIA RTX 3080 FE Stock History | NowInStock.net

View this page to find when the RTX 3080 NVIDIA RTX 3080 FE has been in stock at Best Buy in the recent past.

www.nowinstock.net

And you know what? I bet not putting those cards behind the paywall didn't stop the scalpers either.

When the 3000 series launched, Best Buy had them on their website, and bots cleaned them out, and everyone else as well. The angry mob bitched that the cards were gone almost instantly and that there were no anti-script bot systems in place. So, Best Buy implements one on their website that adds a delay in the buying process and doesn't allow anyone to blow through the buying process almost instantly and get multiple cards consecutively with one account. It works to some extent, as I was able to buy a 3070 on launch day. Best Buy has also done staggered stock releases where they do multiple releases a few minutes apart which helped me get a 3090 on the day the 3060 launched. The angry mob still brought the pitch forks anyway. Then Best Buy tries in store only releases. But the same angry mob strikes again because other people were willing to camp out for longer than they were to get a card. Best Buy then does a single drop behind a paywall service, which still makes the cards far cheaper than the market price, followed the next day by a regular online drop and look who's here to riot again? It really doesn't matter what any of these companies do, all they are going to do is get trashed. As far as I can tell, Best Buy has tried more things than any other company and given shoppers more chances to land a card at a lower price than anyone else. If you haven't gotten a current gen card by now and you've really wanted one since launch, it's on you at this point.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

A gamer that wants 1 or 2 GPUs is not going to spend hundreds for this program. A scalper that will be buying as many GPUs as possible will probably spend the money on it.

No brainer this would happen.

 

[RodroX]

in my country we don't have such problems. We have others .... lol

We do not have a lot of GPUs either, but the few on stock are soo overpriced that no one can't buy them, and scalpers know no gamer will pay more than that, cause theres no enough money on our wallets lol

 

[domih]

Greed at the vendor level, greed at the buyer level (crypto-miner). No wonder the "regular" people become cynical.

Best Buy, NewEgg, Amazon, etc are then surprised to see a lack of customer loyalty :-(

While eBay has its own issues, you can find Pa & Ma vendors there. You just need to do your homework finding them.

 

[waltc3]

Somebody is welcome to buy $20,000 worth of ridiculously priced GPUs if he wants...he just shouldn't count on me paying ridiculous prices to buy one of them... To pricing that is 2x-3x MSRP, people should simply say No. And stick to it. If these guys couldn't find suckers, they wouldn't even think of buying lots of horrifically overpriced GPUs that they could not sell--if people wouldn't buy them. But as the saying goes, "A sucker is born every minute." I think that is too bad. The current GPU market stinks, really stinks. Nobody should encourage it by getting scalped.

 

[Johnpombrio]

6 months after getting my Alder Lake ASUS mobo and Intel CPU, I FINALLY was able to buy 32 GB of Corsair DDR5 memory on Amazon Prime at only $10 above MSRP from Corsair. What happens to the scalpers who have $500 price tags on their memory sticks? If they were able to buy them at MSRP, I guess they will have to eventually drop their prices below MSRP to compete against RAM coming directly from the manufacturer. If they have a lot of it, they are going to be seriously out of pocket. I wonder how much money people have lost trying to scalp stuff? Like lotteries, cryptocurrency, and stock pickers, we usually only hear about the mega winners. I am sure there are tons of folks who have lost substantial amounts of money trying to scalp only to be stuck with the product once the initial rush goes away.

 

[GenericUser]

We hope that Best Buy will remedy the apparent loopholes that the scalpers exploited with such relish

They won't, because whether a card goes to a gamer, a miner, or a scalper, a sale is a sale, and ones persons money is just as good as the next persons.

 

[hotaru251]

bestbuy doesnt care about customers.

the $200 paywall proves that fully.

they are a business only after the next sale.

scalpers/miners/whatever doesnt matter as long as they make more $.

 

[passivecool]

The only real solution is increased production and availability.

the only real solution is reduced demand. Drink tea and wait for sanity to return. Purchase what you must, only when you must.
Invest in games which invigorate the mind, not just the eyes. Or run foldathome while playing scrabble with the neighbours.
Try to think a wee bit beyond your infintile momentary pleasure.

When you die, will your highscore be all you leave behind?
Surely you have something better to offer.

 

[InvalidError]

The only real solution is increased production and availability.

Even better would be more governments banning PoW crypto. Whenever a new country bans crypto, some of the countries the miners end up relocating into start experiencing power grid collapse. That would free up a lot of inventory, fab capacity, renewable energy, reduce e-waste, etc.

 

[jacob249358]

I thought I would stop caring about GPU stuff because I just sucked it up and paid $800 for a 3060 ti. but this still aggravates me.

 

[spongiemaster]

A gamer that wants 1 or 2 GPUs is not going to spend hundreds for this program. A scalper that will be buying as many GPUs as possible will probably spend the money on it.

No brainer this would happen.

You shouldn't be joining this service just so you can get a chance at a video card. That's not the primary benefit of the service or why it even exists in the first place. That said, if you decided you were going to join just to get a GPU anyway and you did get one, the service more than paid for itself. RTX 3080 was $900 including $200 TT fee. Ebay price is about $1300-$1750 now. Where can you buy a 3080 for anywhere close tp $900 right now? How is spending $200 to save $500+ a no brainer don't do decision?

 

[InvalidError]

Ebay price is about $1300-$1750 now. Where can you buy a 3080 for anywhere close tp $900 right now? How is spending $200 to save $500+ a no brainer don't do decision?

Why stop there? Buy every different model available, keep one, sell the others, now you make a net profit on your sub!

 

[NightHawkRMX]

You shouldn't be joining this service just so you can get a chance at a video card. That's not the primary benefit of the service or why it even exists in the first place. That said, if you decided you were going to join just to get a GPU anyway and you did get one, the service more than paid for itself. RTX 3080 was $900 including $200 TT fee. Ebay price is about $1300-$1750 now. Where can you buy a 3080 for anywhere close tp $900 right now? How is spending $200 to save $500+ a no brainer don't do decision?

Because you don't immediately get a GPU plopped into your lap. You could spend $200 and still can't get a GPU. You get a chance at one, the same way you get a chance at getting a GPU anywhere else... that doesn't cost $200...

 

[spongiemaster]

Why stop there? Buy every different model available, keep one, sell the others, now you make a net profit on your sub!

I'm sure you're being sarcastic. but there are probably people that pulled that one off. You'd only need to get one extra card at some point to turn a profit.

 

[Co BIY]

I think buying directly from the manufacturers is a good way to cut out the scalpers and ensure that any "obscene profits" at least support the provision of the demanded good.

It also reduces the number of corporations with access to your data.

Worked for me to get a web cam from Razer when they were "unobtainable".

 

[Geef]

they are a business only after the next sale.

scalpers/miners/whatever doesnt matter as long as they make more $.

You might be right. They will do another small thing to say they fixed this but it will have fixed nothing really. As long as they get their $$ they will do as little as possible to keep the sales going and people ... indifferent.

 

[jacob249358]

Why stop there? Buy every different model available, keep one, sell the others, now you make a net profit on your sub!

and that's how you turn to the dark side and become a sith lord (aka scalper)

 

[Scimmy]

I just want one of the manufacturers or shops to just have a waiting list, I'll pay MSRP and you just ship it to me when you have stock. I'm not going to pay over for anything.

 

[maximiza]

insane times

 

[NightHawkRMX]

insane times

That we can all agree on...