News Bot Wars: Enthusiasts Fight eBay Scalper Listings with False, Automated Bids

[Friesiansam]

Whilst I like the idea of scalpers being screwed like this, the only way they will be stopped is if no-one ever buys from them, as others have already said. Unfortunately, today's self-entitled must have now culture, means there will always be impatient people who will pay the high price of being amongst the first. Ebay will of course do nothing and just hoover up the high fees generated.

 

[MorganPike]

Sony only selling PS5 online for instance was asking for trouble.

Well, they sold their PS5 stock instantly, so I guess Sony is ok. But yeah, they were definitely catering to bots.

I tried to get a PS5 but they were gone within seconds. Had one in cart but couldn't click through fast enough! LOL Kind of glad now anyway. I don't really need a PS5, just got caught up in the hype and decided to give it a shot. Feel like I dodged a bullet.

 

[Colif]

if Sony cared about the customers and not the profiteers, then they would have seen this coming, based on all the GPU sales. People shouldn't be able to buy in bulk.

It shouldn't up to customers to fight back against this, it should be on the sellers.

 

[jepeman]

So, encourage people to break the law/rules to stop people from scalping nonessential things, which isn't against the law/rules?

 

[luissantos]

See, now THIS is a good article and a good way to fight scalpers!
Not that BS from last week about how to get your own scalping bots...
Applause!

 

[jasonf2]

Hmm, not sure if its a good thing to do. Its just creating problem for ebay instead. These pple also need to know that what they are doing may be illegal.

They also need to know that while scalping is frowned upon, it is not illegal unless it is considered essential items (eg. mask, sanitiser, food, etc.....). I am afraid graphics card thats mainly intended for gaming cannot be considered as essential items.

While I cannot disagree with the current legality there is a definite "social good" issue that bot buying is opening up. These companies, who are not directly affiliated with the distribution chain, are simply driving up prices. Unlike classical arbitrage where a trader would make a good available in another region where it was scarce or unavailable these companies are literally selling the product back to the person who would purchase it from the distributor (that they scooped it up from). This is all due to a online purchase loophole. I hate to see vigilante justice being served here but by causing a huge mess maybe ebay and the other auction sites will see a need to set a moratorium on selling items that are scalper prone rather than blind eyeing the fact that they are the problem. In addition the legal system does need to look at prohibiting the auction houses from allowing this activity. It would be near impossible to stop the individual scalpers, but ebay is an incredibly easy target here and should be on the scope for litigation and potential racketeering charges if the activity were made illegal. If the scalpers are unable to sell the product until supplies catch up they cannot make a profit, therefore they go figure out some other way to be a parasite. I am really surprised that some lawyer hasn't put together a class action for damages on one of these goods against ebay yet. I think it would be pretty easy to show damages based on the average price increase caused on these release products against msrp for every person forced to purchase them from ebay because of the shortage that their service was implicit in causing. Ebay and the auction houses are playing a dangerous game by operating much like a fencing operation does with stolen goods.

 

[saunupe1911]

Selling hardware online only is a dumb idea and only benefits the middle men who buy things and resell.

Soon sellers will need to slow the bots down to same speed as normal buyers, just like some stock markets have now.

Sony only selling PS5 online for instance was asking for trouble.

Then 100s of people would be camping out in front of stores in this covid madness. Just look at some of these microcenter lines. There needs to be a balance.

 

[jasonf2]

Then 100s of people would be camping out in front of stores in this covid madness. Just look at some of these microcenter lines. There needs to be a balance.

The focus needs to be on the redistribution channels and the legality of the act of scalping. Retailers are doing nothing illegal or manipulative by selling at msrp through established channels. I don't think that anyone here who isn't profiting from bot running disagrees on the fact that the behavior should be prohibited. The challenge is defining a law that does so without infringing on normal legal sales. This whole issue would resolve itself if ebay and the auction sites simply set a moratorium on these goods in which the maximum bid for the part is msrp for so many days after release. The only reason that they wont is that they are making a fortune on the resale activity that scalpers drive through them. This is like a pawn shop saying that they won't buy stolen goods, but they don't ask if the goods are stolen and still profit from it.

 

[bigdragon]

Hmm, not sure if its a good thing to do. Its just creating problem for ebay instead. These pple also need to know that what they are doing may be illegal.

They also need to know that while scalping is frowned upon, it is not illegal unless it is considered essential items (eg. mask, sanitiser, food, etc.....). I am afraid graphics card thats mainly intended for gaming cannot be considered as essential items.

Ebay has created many problems for me, so I like the idea of people creating problems for Ebay. Ebay's support of scalping is making it impossible for me to upgrade my GPU. Also, the last several sellers that I ordered something from also just drop-shipped items from Amazon despite saying they had stock on hand (lies). Ebay did nothing about it.

Scalping also affects tickets for performances, sports, and media events. Most places have laws designed to prevent scalping of these clearly non-essential products. You seem to be confusing price gouging with scalping. The definition of scalping needs to be expanded to cover actively manufactured or new release goods with an MSRP -- not just tickets.

 

[Mr5oh]

I'm more worried that scalping continues to be more and more normalized. It seems no one has any self control anymore and needs instant gratification. It's every where. They "hate"scalpers yet but from them. This market exists and continues to grow because they continue to buy from them. Gamers don't like what Epic or EA is doing to gaming (random examples), yet continue to use / buy from them.

If you want things to change, you have to vote with your wallet. In the instance of these video cards you don't even have to go "without" as you can have the latest video card. You just have to wait a month or so for one to come back in stock somewhere. EVGA has a wait list (others may too), Microcenter near me has been getting stock regularly, if I wasn't picky on brand, I could have already picked up a 3080. Best part is you save money, and stick it to the scalpers.

 

[jasonf2]

I'm more worried that scalping continues to be more and more normalized. It seems no one has any self control anymore and needs instant gratification. It's every where. They "hate"scalpers yet but from them. This market exists and continues to grow because they continue to buy from them. Gamers don't like what Epic or EA is doing to gaming (random examples), yet continue to use / buy from them.

If you want things to change, you have to vote with your wallet. In the instance of these video cards you don't even have to go "without" as you can have the latest video card. You just have to wait a month or so for one to come back in stock somewhere. EVGA has a wait list (others may too), Microcenter near me has been getting stock regularly, if I wasn't picky on brand, I could have already picked up a 3080. Best part is you save money, and stick it to the scalpers.

The problem here is that what you have described isn't what happens. The scalpers are locking up a significant portion of the inventory and actually causing a significant amount of the supply shortage. If they can't sell it at scalper prices they just move back down to MSRP later on when production ramp pushes beyond their ability to purchase all of the production. They are out nothing but tied up capital for a little while. You not purchasing the video card, console or cpu at the higher price doesn't fix this. The purchasing behavior change that fixes it is to refuse to buy anything off of an auction site and nothing above msrp period. Even so a seemingly innocuous purchase at msrp on amazon later on may also be contributing to the sellback of inventory part. The legal fix is to make scalping a federally illegal activity and then go after the auction sites for racketeering and systematically profiting from it.

 

[Mr5oh]

The problem here is that what you have described isn't what happens. The scalpers are locking up a significant portion of the inventory and actually causing a significant amount of the supply shortage. If they can't sell it at scalper prices they just move back down to MSRP later on when production ramp pushes beyond their ability to purchase all of the production. They are out nothing but tied up capital for a little while. You not purchasing the video card, console or cpu at the higher price doesn't fix this. The purchasing behavior change that fixes it is to refuse to buy anything off of an auction site and nothing above msrp period. Even so a seemingly innocuous purchase at msrp on amazon later on may also be contributing to the sellback of inventory part. The legal fix is to make scalping a federally illegal activity and then go after the auction sites for racketeering and systematically profiting from it.

Maybe in the short term, but long term this would start to die out. If it isn't profitable, they would stop doing it. Holding onto things to sell them at MSRP doesn't make much sense. Right now you have tons "normal people" (people who weren't scalpers before this) trying to flip video cards to get their piece of the pie. It's a lot of work, and hassle just to try and get your money back. Not to mention hardware drops in price fairly quickly if you can't unload it. Probably me giving scalpers and people too much credit...

Next, I know personally I won't buy things (new products) from anyone but authorized sellers for multiple reasons. Especially a "big" purchase like a video card. I know even Amazon scares me for PC parts, and I don't use third party sellers in the rare instances I do use it. (Recently, Amazon sent me a 4 TB WD Gold drive instead a of a 14 TB Gold drive, the replacement came from NewEgg).

 

[SamirD]

Hmm, not sure if its a good thing to do. Its just creating problem for ebay instead. These pple also need to know that what they are doing may be illegal.

They also need to know that while scalping is frowned upon, it is not illegal unless it is considered essential items (eg. mask, sanitiser, food, etc.....). I am afraid graphics card thats mainly intended for gaming cannot be considered as essential items.

Yep, this is right up there with 'an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind'.

Fake bidding and ghost accounts are forbidden on ebay and hence illegal. Selling items for large markups may or may not be illegal based on distributor and/or retailer terms. The only reason high markups happen is because the demand for them is there. In reality, this fake bidding will artificially increase the demand and further make prices increase, so the opposite effect will happen.

Being on the bleeding edge always has a price. Like when I walked into the local Nissan dealership and was willing to put down a deposit on the R35 GTR and test drive it to make sure it was what I wanted. The scoffed, stating that the 'market adjustment' markup of $30k is not negotiable nor is the sale--you bought it, it's yours. At almost the price of a twin turbo Porsche Carrera 997, I walked.

About a year later a buddy of mine was about to pick up his new R35 GTR in Kentucky that was a twin of the local car. He called up the dealership and told them if they wanted to sell him their car for the same price as the Kentucky dealership, he would just come get theirs, and otherwise he was about to drive up to Kentucky. They called him back in 5 minutes and sold him the car at sticker.

 

[SamirD]

if Sony cared about the customers and not the profiteers, then they would have seen this coming, based on all the GPU sales. People shouldn't be able to buy in bulk.

It shouldn't up to customers to fight back against this, it should be on the sellers.

To a certain extent sellers should definitely not allow 'stocking' for resale--that's not the point of retail sales.

But to artificially limit the amount of money a seller can make in order to make sure people aren't 'stocking up' hurts sellers. It's nice to have a lot of inventory move in a day--holding costs aren't fun.

 

[SamirD]

While I cannot disagree with the current legality there is a definite "social good" issue that bot buying is opening up. These companies, who are not directly affiliated with the distribution chain, are simply driving up prices. Unlike classical arbitrage where a trader would make a good available in another region where it was scarce or unavailable these companies are literally selling the product back to the person who would purchase it from the distributor (that they scooped it up from). This is all due to a online purchase loophole. I hate to see vigilante justice being served here but by causing a huge mess maybe ebay and the other auction sites will see a need to set a moratorium on selling items that are scalper prone rather than blind eyeing the fact that they are the problem. In addition the legal system does need to look at prohibiting the auction houses from allowing this activity. It would be near impossible to stop the individual scalpers, but ebay is an incredibly easy target here and should be on the scope for litigation and potential racketeering charges if the activity were made illegal. If the scalpers are unable to sell the product until supplies catch up they cannot make a profit, therefore they go figure out some other way to be a parasite. I am really surprised that some lawyer hasn't put together a class action for damages on one of these goods against ebay yet. I think it would be pretty easy to show damages based on the average price increase caused on these release products against msrp for every person forced to purchase them from ebay because of the shortage that their service was implicit in causing. Ebay and the auction houses are playing a dangerous game by operating much like a fencing operation does with stolen goods.

In the absence of legal action, generally the problem is that nothing is actionable. 🙁

 

[jasonf2]

In the absence of legal action, generally the problem is that nothing is actionable. 🙁

I agree totally.

 

[jasonf2]

Yep, this is right up there with 'an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind'.

Fake bidding and ghost accounts are forbidden on ebay and hence illegal. Selling items for large markups may or may not be illegal based on distributor and/or retailer terms. The only reason high markups happen is because the demand for them is there. In reality, this fake bidding will artificially increase the demand and further make prices increase, so the opposite effect will happen.

Being on the bleeding edge always has a price. Like when I walked into the local Nissan dealership and was willing to put down a deposit on the R35 GTR and test drive it to make sure it was what I wanted. The scoffed, stating that the 'market adjustment' markup of $30k is not negotiable nor is the sale--you bought it, it's yours. At almost the price of a twin turbo Porsche Carrera 997, I walked.

About a year later a buddy of mine was about to pick up his new R35 GTR in Kentucky that was a twin of the local car. He called up the dealership and told them if they wanted to sell him their car for the same price as the Kentucky dealership, he would just come get theirs, and otherwise he was about to drive up to Kentucky. They called him back in 5 minutes and sold him the car at sticker.

I don't think that anyone here is going to be able to argue that anything about the scalping for resale behavior is illegal at least in a federal sense. It should be however. The difficult part is that selling a product for the most you can get is a cornerstone of capitalism. However the predatory behavior of establishing an automated system or network of individuals to procure a retail item for the sole purpose of reselling the item at markup to the same individual that your system prevented the purchase of said item to in the first place should be made illegal. Also reseller organizations such as amazon, ebay etc should be prohibited from selling items procured in this manner and a liability for operators selling these goods should be opened for tort. If you find a rare coin, or auto mobile and want to sell it at auction that is great. If you go out and find a pallet of ps5s that someone will sell you and want to auction them, great. If you set up a system, human or machine, to circumvent systems that purposely limit the quantity of an item purchased, for the intent of resale, you should face criminal and civil damages. If your company facilitates the sell of items procured in this manner it should be subject to fines and civil damages. These organizations present no value in the system and are literally stealing consumer's money and self driving supply shortages for their own gain. That is not a fundamental premise of capitalism, but rather a predatory marketing tactic that plays an edge created unintentionally by technology that should be stopped for the greater good of society.

 

[neojack]

i checked ebay, i see more ads with "buy now" rather than auction now.
they ADAPT !

 

[crash6674]

Ebay is full of scammers anyway. I'm not sure if I'd trust buying anything. Someone is selling a graphics card STOCK PHOTO for $900+
Nvidia Geforce 3080 Founders Edition stock photo

You will be receiving a digital photo of the Nvidia Geforce 3080 and nothing else.
No refunds.
Picture will be sent via email
This auction is to combat bot purchases!
Video card is not included!

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Nvidia-Gef...028792?hash=item217f61ae38:g:PH0AAOSwcJhfyQha

What's the point of this? Isn't ebay where the scalpers are offloading the msrp cards they got from legitimate retail outlets like bestbuy? Why would they be scalping their own listing's on ebay?

 

[MorganPike]

What's the point of this? Isn't ebay where the scalpers are offloading the msrp cards they got from legitimate retail outlets like bestbuy? Why would they be scalping their own listing's on ebay?

I suppose an argument could be made that selling a picture on ebay listed at msrp of the represented product could trigger a bot programmed to purchase those products at msrp to make a purchase.

Or it could be to cause fear/uncertainty/doubt/mistrust in the validity of the market. Making potential buyers uncomfortable with making ebay purchases of scalped goods.

But what I think is more likely is someone seeing an opportunity to make some money at the publics expense while trying to circumvent ebay rules by way of a disclaimer.

What I find interesting is ebays eagerness to jump in and deal with that issue while continuing to ignore and profit off the scalping situation. 🙁

 

[Wolfshadw]

Play nice, people.
Only warning.

Wolfshadw
Moderator

 

[SamirD]

I don't think that anyone here is going to be able to argue that anything about the scalping for resale behavior is illegal at least in a federal sense. It should be however. The difficult part is that selling a product for the most you can get is a cornerstone of capitalism. However the predatory behavior of establishing an automated system or network of individuals to procure a retail item for the sole purpose of reselling the item at markup to the same individual that your system prevented the purchase of said item to in the first place should be made illegal. Also reseller organizations such as amazon, ebay etc should be prohibited from selling items procured in this manner and a liability for operators selling these goods should be opened for tort. If you find a rare coin, or auto mobile and want to sell it at auction that is great. If you go out and find a pallet of ps5s that someone will sell you and want to auction them, great. If you set up a system, human or machine, to circumvent systems that purposely limit the quantity of an item purchased, for the intent of resale, you should face criminal and civil damages. If your company facilitates the sell of items procured in this manner it should be subject to fines and civil damages. These organizations present no value in the system and are literally stealing consumer's money and self driving supply shortages for their own gain. That is not a fundamental premise of capitalism, but rather a predatory marketing tactic that plays an edge created unintentionally by technology that should be stopped for the greater good of society.

Well, there may be other regulations such as warranty voided, etc that manufacturers can do on their end. This is why 'authorized distributor' is a clause in a lot of warranty agreements.

You know, I don't know why I didn't remember this, but there IS something that can be done legally to hurt scalpers. Technically if they are operating as a business, they are doing so without a business license, and are not paying income tax on the sales which technically they would need to do since there is a gain. One way to limit these type of issues is to only allow personal accounts a certain dollar or transaction value before one needs to be a business account, and anyone circumventing such rules is permanently banned. And then these rules would need to be enforced, which is highly unlikely since the platforms benefit from the transactions of violators. But then the platform should be held liable for being a 'place' that harbors illegal activity since this would be no different than a physical 'trading house' that would allow goods to be illegally transacted--such an operation would be physically shut down.

Most TOS agreements specifically address automated transactions as well as circumventing security--but enforcement is always the issue (as it is in the third world that has all the same laws on the books as the first world).

Well said on the predatory tactics--and unfortunately it seems as if the law is being bent even more and more to allow such activities in the name of 'progress'--banking regulations, credit card security, personal information privacy all are LESS secure than they were 10 years ago.

 

[Awev]

I'm pretty sure 'laundering money' is a term used because the money goes in dirty at input and is clean at output. Legally speaking of course.

Correct me if necessary, I'm certainly not an authority on the subject, but what I am certain of is that money laundering and counterfeiting are two entirely different things.

Yes, in one cents I am misusing the term, as it tends to be applied to sale of illegal goods (think drugs) and make those profits look legal. In a more legal definition it is taking illegal money and hiding where it came from. Since counterfeiting is illegal it qualifies. Also, the term money laundering was made popular by Al Capone as he purchased laundromats to hide where the money from the sale of booze came from. Still, the hiding of the origins of money dates back to the year 2000 B.C. or so (The History of Money Laundering).

The main point was that the instructor provided the information on how to conduct an illegal act under the guise of helping a person decide for themselves if what they were seeing was illegal in nature or not.

 

[Awev]

It used to be that if you wanted a ticket to a sold out concert that you could go to the parking lot a buy it. A scalper would be happy to sell it to you for a price. And the police would arrest the scalper if they observed it. I have no idea of what makes it legal or illegal, other than maybe the ticket company has a clause somewhere that says that the purchase is for your own use, and that you will not sell it to someone else. But a breach of contract is more civil law than criminal in nature.

Depending on the state, some laws say price gouging is illegal all of the time, others only on certain items or during times of an emergency. In Virginia there is a declared state of emergency - thank you governor black face white sheet 😡. I just wish price gouging laws where applied all of the time everywhere - I hate the idea of paying $5 for half a liter of bottled water at a ballpark, when I can purchase a whole case of 24 bottles of the exact same stuff for less than $3 at a local grocery store. Don't even get me started on the $6 per hot dog at the MLB games, where no outside food or beverages are allowed. If price gouging laws can be applied uniformly, on a daily basis, everywhere, then it would be a whole lot easier to take legal action against the scalpers.

 

[jasonf2]

Well, there may be other regulations such as warranty voided, etc that manufacturers can do on their end. This is why 'authorized distributor' is a clause in a lot of warranty agreements.

You know, I don't know why I didn't remember this, but there IS something that can be done legally to hurt scalpers. Technically if they are operating as a business, they are doing so without a business license, and are not paying income tax on the sales which technically they would need to do since there is a gain. One way to limit these type of issues is to only allow personal accounts a certain dollar or transaction value before one needs to be a business account, and anyone circumventing such rules is permanently banned. And then these rules would need to be enforced, which is highly unlikely since the platforms benefit from the transactions of violators. But then the platform should be held liable for being a 'place' that harbors illegal activity since this would be no different than a physical 'trading house' that would allow goods to be illegally transacted--such an operation would be physically shut down.

Most TOS agreements specifically address automated transactions as well as circumventing security--but enforcement is always the issue (as it is in the third world that has all the same laws on the books as the first world).

Well said on the predatory tactics--and unfortunately it seems as if the law is being bent even more and more to allow such activities in the name of 'progress'--banking regulations, credit card security, personal information privacy all are LESS secure than they were 10 years ago.

Getting a tax ID number as a sole proprietor doesn't take too much on both the state and federal level. I have started (and closed) companies in the past and while maintaining the paperwork is a big pain, the legal means to file taxes are definitely there and very quick and easy (Closing them is another matter.). Hardware scalping has been something I have been mulling around a fix for for years and the ideals of how to slow it have been all over the place. Again an enforceable law that doesn't go after the supply and demand structure of capitalism itself is really tough. Without penalty the resale sites that make the resale possible are gaining enough from the activity that they are turning a blind eye to it. Manufactures really should care and back something to stop it because the money being sucked out has a high probability of being pulled directly away from them as either an upgraded part or another auxiliary sale. Their real ability to do anything is very limited and if a warranty issue were created it would only penalize the end consumer which isn't really the target. Targeting price gouging in general has ramifications that are too wide.

Any law that would be able to really fix this would need a laser beam specific definition going after the procurement process and listing the resale of such items as illegal. Making that activity illegal has an immediate upstream liability that would cause the auction/resale houses to put checks in place to moderate the resale to avoid potential racketeering charges or class action lawsuit. Make no mistake any of the resale houses could stop this right now by simply setting msrp moratoriums for 90 days post release of any of these scalp sensitive products. It could be argued that there would still be black market sales, but that will always exist anyways because the nature of the black market is illegal. The gross volume of this garbage is going on in the open with everyone complaining about it, accusing the manufactures of paper releases and millions of disposable dollars being sucked from the economy. There would be nothing I would love more than at the release of the PS6 the stocking shortages were simply what they should be, Sony was unable to make enough of them to fill demand. That is in opposition to the headlines today with "legit" companies bragging that they were able to snag thousands of units that they are directly putting back on market.