Console Scalpers Bitten In The Ass By Karma
Dear Console Scalpers,
I hope you catch syphilis and die, but only after an excruciatingly painful series of attacks on your nervous system.
Love,
BoT
It seems that those jerks ruining console launches for the rest of us folks who camp out for days and then end up selling new systems on eBay are having a tough time trying to move their overpriced goods through the digital market.
Apparently, the holiday-crazed hordes have calmed down a bit now that Christmas has passed. As a result, people don’t really seem all too eager to shell out over $2,000 for a PS3 or $1,000 for a Wii:
Trevor, who didn’t want his last name used, lined up for 18 hours to pick up PS3 the day it was released, and has been hanging onto the system since Nov. 17. The 23-year-old was waiting to sell it in the hope of making some extra cash.
“I figured, hold it to Christmas and everyone will be rushing to get one for their kids.”
He’s selling a 60GB system with one game and an extra controller for $1,540 or best offer. Although he’s had a couple of responses to his ad, no deals have resulted.
Dwayne Paul, 27, also hoped to make some extra money during the holidays by unloading a PS3. He’s asking $2,000 or best offer for a 60GB system.
So far, there have been no takers.
Excuse me while I point and jeer at these jerks. I despise scalping, any kind of scalping, on principal and I really hate the people who obliterate available supplies so they can drive up demand to insane levels before they cash in on doting parents’ desperation and gamers’ general lunacy. The fact that they can’t find anyone willing to pay their outrageous demands smacks of karma biting them on the keister, and I really hope they have receive no end of merry hell when they try to return the consoles to the stores where they purchased them.
Scalpers returning PS3s to stores [Hamilton Spectator]
[via ArsTechnica]
Boy of Tomorrow
Posted to on 27 December 2006
· Comments (9)
Other stuff like this: just desserts, nintendo, ps3, scalpers, scumsucking bottomfeeders, sony, wii
There’s nothing wrong with scalping – ask any economics professor. And it’s not a karma issue either.
What bit these unfortunate profiteers in the ass wasn’t karma, but competition – from more savvy entrepreneurs willing to sell for a lower price.
People with even the most basic, basic marketing skills would have been more cautious about setting the price closer to demand.
It seems that even desperate doting parents and lunatic gamers have their limits. For “Trevor,” that limit was $1,540.
I’m acutally guilty of this. I didn’t stand out in the cold on the 18th of november though. I just walked into my local Target looking for a iPod Hi-Fi and lo and behold, they just got a shipment of ps3’s they didn’t know they were getting here a week before christmas. I’m more of a Wii guy (not to mention I don’t have HDTV) So me in my crafty evilness decided to put one on my credit card and see what it will go for on ebay, and if no one wants it i’ll just take it back and won’t have to worry about getting charged interest for it on my card. Turns out they were selling for maybe 10 bucks more than I payed for it, not including shipping costs. So I took it back and got a full refund (the box was still sealed). That’ll teach me.
I think the PS3 was just too overhyped and overexposed in the media for what it turned out to be, so there just isn’t enough demand. It really doesn’t have any advantages over the 360 other than the raw processing speed it is supposedly capable of (and even then, it’s only marginally better than the 360’s cell-like processor)
I sure wont be taking them back until I take a magnifying glass to the box, and scanning the receipt many times, and possibly kicking the box before saying no.
I feel really strongly about this issue, and I’ve discussed it with a number of people, and many say it’s supply and demand and ‘business ethics’.
True, if people really want something (as I did), they should preorder, but simply buying something merely to sell it on at a later date at a much higher price… Well that just feels like exploitation to me.
Now people know of the massive hike in console prices over Xmas, this will continue so long as companies produce insufficient consoles – which they always will.
There were THOUSANDS OF Wiis sold on Ebay. My local store only had 170 preorders. The rest were sold by purchasers on Ebay for twice the RRP. Isn’t that just a bit unethical?
If your conscience allows you no guilt in denying the on-a-budget Mrs Smith who dearly wants a console for her son Jonny at Xmas, then that’s fine.
But the principle of it feels very wrong to me.
my friend somehow got hold of 4 PS3s and is selling them for only 60$ more. personally, im a wii kind of guy but i thought that he would be able to sell them for a lot more. but now that the hype died down, no one really cares anymore
A friend of mine that works at Best Buy had told me that in the days leading up to Xmas, there were PS3s just sitting there until the day before. They expect the next shipment of PS3s to not really sell well. In fact, the day after Xmas, 7 PS3s were returned and exchanged for Wiis.
If you are going to scalp a console, at least do it right. The maximum price is always achieved (almost exactly) 24 hours before release.
I would have been guilty of PS3 scalping had I the money to do it. it came down to buying a Wii for me, or a PS3 to sell. I went all too eagerly with the Wii
we can boo-hoo people “ruining” the launch of a console or for others by seeing an oppurtunity and taking it from here to timbuktu and back; the issue at hand is people wouldn’t do this if no one bought in on it. I see little shame on the person who managed sell an Xbox 360 for $3k last year, or PS3 sellers who made $2500. where I see the blame, is on the consumers who buy into these prices.
a fool and his money are easily parted.
I bought a Wii about 24 hours after launch, on ebay, for $80 over retail including an extra game.
I bought my second Wii, for a gift, about 3 weeks later, also on ebay, for $150 over retail with just Wii Sports.
Clearly there was something different about this console launch from a scalping perspective.
Personally, I didn’t feel bad about paying either amount because it was certainly worth $230 (a total of under 50% markup on both Wiis combined) to not stand outside in the cold all night with a bunch of…. well, people. It’s okay because if any of us waited another couple months, we could have it for retail prices or maybe even at a discount as the used market starts to take shape. In the case of ticket scalping, generally speaking there’ll just be the one event and scalpers monopolizing your only chance to experience that event is pretty unethical.
The fairest thing would be for Nintendo, Sony, and even concert promoters to do all ticket sales through online auctions until they start fetching prices at or below list price, and then do a general release. All that keeps Nintendo and Sony from doing this is the fact that their lifeblood is the retail distribution chain, and by cutting out the extra middleman (scalpers) they’d also be cutting out their main source of distribution.