News PS5 Scalpers Explain How They Can Sleep at Night

[memydidydo]

Scalpers aren't buying consoles then tossing them in a closet hoping they go up in value in a few years. They turn around and sell them immediately, so they aren't preventing kids from getting them. They're preventing kids with slightly less rich parents from getting them. I say less rich parents, because poor parents are going to spend the MSRP of $500 on a console either.

So the spoilt brats get them but the less fortunate kids don't. That's ok then.

 

[memydidydo]

The best way to negatively impact scalpers and bots is "self restraint". Don't buy their goods, let their inventory pile up and let their losses grow. That's how you discourage and put an early end to bots and scalpers. Creating laws won't work because the authorities can't trace cash or the exchange of goods. Now if the world banned physical currencies then the laws could be easier to enforce because the authorities could track the sale.

But we get the part about scalpers and their motives and they need to be wiped off the face of this planet. However it's not the scalpers who are the problem but those who lack the restraint or self discipline. When someone sees a scalper selling a boatload of tech goods on Ebay for a huge markup, it encourages them and others to join in.

What we have today is a lot of people with too much idle time because of lockdowns. In cases some of those individuals don't have to pay rent because of State and Federal laws not allowing landlords to evict tenants during the pandemic who are out of work and some of these individuals are even collecting unemployment insurance and stimulus checks. That's a recipe for buying from scalpers because they consider it free money.

I am not making excuses for bots and scalpers. What they are doing isn't cool or nice. It's the people who buy from them who are making the problem even worse.

Exactly. If no one bought from the scalpers there business model would be over in an instant.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

And therein lies the rub. If people would just stop dealing with them it would be over pretty soon but the world is filled with ranting and raving little lunatic children who must have their video cards at any price

 

[memydidydo]

And now comes the predictable appeal to emotion. You're not upset for yourself, you're just concerned for the children.

I'll bet any sum you care to wager that scalpers increased the number of children who got consoles for Christmas. A busy working parent doesn't have the time to wait overnight in a line at Best Buy or loiter nonstop on a website purchase button -- but they can afford to buy one off Ebay. So the overall result was that some millennial snowflakes with severe entitlement-syndrome did without PS5s, in favor of the children of upper middle-class working parents. As you care about the children so much, that should make you happy.

No way they have increased the number of kids who received consoles at Christmas. Most parents would stand in a line at midnight to nab something that would make their child's Christmas.

Are you a scalper?

 

[Abion47]

In a non-free market, however, the opposite is true. Walk into a department store in the days of Soviet Russia and it was like an art-student's exercise in perspective drawing -- rows of empty shelves stretching to infinity.

Yes, 1960s USSR and 2020 Newegg. Same thing. I get them confused all the time.

Meanwhile, outside the big cities, factories were producing untold millions of products that no one wanted to buy. Shortages and oversupply. Prices were not allowed to float, so there was always too little or too much of everything.

Prices had nothing to do with it. There was too much of what people didn't want and too little of what people needed because it was they were living in a fascist dictatorship under circumstances where the term "dystopia" wouldn't be too far off.

If the price for the factory products reflected their supply and demand, the factories would be selling at an overwhelming loss and would soon be forced to shut down which would prevent them from being able to produce the things people actually needed (which is what happened in many cases anyway). On the flip side, if the price for things people needed (like, say, food) was allowed to be priced as dictated by the demand and supply, there would be just as little of it but virtually no one would be able to afford it. Shortages wouldn't have disappeared but so many more people would've starved to death. There's way more that goes into something's price than the supply and demand factor, and not all of it has to do with pure cold economics.

I hope for the general population's sake that you never are put in an upper position of government.

Scalping can only exist when there is a shortage. (...) But shortages only exist when prices are being held artificially low: below the point at which demand would match supply.

Or - and hear me out here - shortages exist when demand far outstrips supply? And supply is low because there's a shortage of components necessary to manufacture the product?

I'm sure you've noticed your local market placing overstocked items on sale? That's to increase demand, and balance the overage. When prices rise, the opposite happens. Demand decreases, to the point that supply can fill it. With no shortage, there is no scalping.

So in a bizarre bass-ackwards way, you're saying that the scalping epidemic is purely the fault of AMD, Nvidia, Intel, Microsoft, Sony, etc. to fail to rise their prices to astronomical highs in proportion to limited supply? I mean first of all, these products already cost significantly more than their predecessors and they are already receiving flak for it. If they increased prices by another 50-100% to where scalpers are currently offering, what do they gain from doing that? How much goodwill does that cost them? And for that matter, what makes you so sure that the scalpers wouldn't just do the exact same thing at that price point, defeating the whole point?

Scalpers are not an essential part of the economic machine. In fact, they are the indication that an economy is struggling - they are the vultures circling overhead a dying animal. At the end of the day, the same number of customers end up with products. The only difference is that the customer ends up paying significantly more than they would've otherwise and a middleman pockets the difference for absolutely no reason having done nothing additional for either the manufacturer or the customer to justify the difference in cost. If that's not parasitic behavior that should be outlawed in the strictest terms, I don't know what is.

You are right in the sense that scalpers can only thrive when demand far outstrips supply, but to then jump from there to saying they offer a necessary service because they do customers the "service" of artificially inflating prices to where they "should" be? That just sounds like the kind of baseless logic that scalpers would use to justify their practices to themselves and others when they know they don't have any real defense. There is nothing redeemable about their self-centered opportunistic behavior, and I can't even begin to imagine how your mind works that you think they are even worth defending.

Why not read an economics textbook sometime, and find out?

Or maybe you should pick up a textbook either on socio-economics or on business administration and realize that there is more to both than what you learn in the first few weeks of Econ-101.

 

[Endymio]

Yes, 1960s USSR and 2020 Newegg. Same thing. I get them confused all the time.

Instead of confusing them, why not learn what caused both shortages?

if the price for things people needed (like, say, food) was allowed to be priced as dictated by the demand and supply, there would be just as little of it but virtually no one would be able to afford it.

But food prices are dictated by supply and demand. Why do you think your grocer charges more for filet mignon than bologna? Why does every supermarket place perishable items on clearance when they have too much of them? They're using price to manipulate demand to match supply.

Prices are the market signal that allow supply and demand to equalize. Price controls always generate shortages or surpluses. Always. A freely-floating price prevents both phenomena. There isn't much economists agree upon, but this is one. And for very good reason.

Or...shortages exist when demand far outstrips supply?

The point you're missing is that, excluding price considerations, demand always far outstrips supply. Resources are finite, but human wants and desires essentially infinite. The global demand for million-dollar hypercars is tiny -- because of their cost. If yachts, mansions, and exotic sports cars were free, nearly everyone would want one. Or two. Or why not three?

Land in Manhattan is far scarcer (low supply) and more desirable (high demand) than land in rural Montana. Yet pull up an online listing -- go ahead, do it now! -- and you will see no shortage of land for sale there. Why is demand not outstripping supply in that market? (Hint: high prices are involved.)

So...you're saying that the scalping epidemic is purely the fault of AMD, Nvidia, Intel, Microsoft, Sony, etc. to fail to rise their prices to astronomical highs in proportion to limited supply?

Yes. Although "astronomical" is overstating the case. In general, they'd have to raise their price much less than what scalpers are charging, in order to eliminate shortages and scalping entirely. Additionally, those higher prices would allow them to increase supply as well, and thus return prices to what you mistakenly consider a "normal" level faster.

Or maybe you should pick up a textbook either on socio-economics or on business administration

I have a few hundred on the shelf besides me now. Did you wish to make a specific recommendation -- or were you simply blowing smoke?

 

[Heat_Fan89]

Well good news and bad news. I was FINALLY able to score an Xbox Series X thru Walmart but had to buy the All Access plan which includes the console and 24 months of game pass ultimate.

Today Walmart had a restock for just the Xbox Series X. I tried to score one and within 2 seconds they were all gone. They released a few more every 10 minutes for the same thing to happen so I gave up.

The Playstation 5 was no different as it sold thru it's allotment within 1-2 seconds. After 3 tries I also gave up. Hopefully things will be different by July or August.

 

[Phaaze88]

Well good news and bad news. I was FINALLY able to score an Xbox Series X thru Walmart but had to buy the All Access plan which includes the console and 24 months of game pass ultimate.

Today Walmart had a restock for just the Xbox Series X. I tried to score one and within 2 seconds they were all gone. They released a few more every 10 minutes for the same thing to happen so I gave up.

The Playstation 5 was no different as it sold thru it's allotment within 1-2 seconds. After 3 tries I also gave up. Hopefully things will be different by July or August.

Huh? Did you mean Series S for one of these?

 

[Heat_Fan89]

Huh? Did you mean Series S for one of these?

Nope it was the Series X with All Access which I bought from Walmart on Feb 26th. Because Walmart was selling them for around $840 plus tax it took awhile to sell thru their allotted stock. The same went for the Series S All Access.

Walmart was selling the Series X and Series S today without the Game Pass Ultimate plan. The Series X sold out within 1-2 seconds while the Series S took around 45 minutes to sellout. I even had the time to put one in my cart and go thru checkout but removed it.

The same goes with Best Buy. Depending on the area they still have the Series S if you are interested.

 

[Phaaze88]

@Heat_Fan89
Oh, I misread the post.
I read that you finally scored a Series X from Walmart.[first line]
You tried to score one, they vanished in seconds, and then you gave up.[second line]