Randall Stephens
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And people think cars are the problem with the environment...
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Scalpers Have Sold 50,000 Nvidia RTX 3000 GPUs
- Thread starter FrgMstr
- Start date
Sell it through stores?
"Okay, that will be $950,000, please."
"Look, the thing about that is I only got $10 on me, can I pay you the rest later?"
"Sure."
(A worker drone walks by and places a sold out sign on the video card display case)
blackmomba
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No one took anything out of your cart... No one even cut you off in line... I didn't hear any stories of scalpers stealing gamer cards...
I did hear a lot about shitty storefronts without the required measures in place to throttle users that were out to buy as many cards as they could. Even grocery stores know how to do the whole "one per customer" deal when Pepsi is on sale
Some sense of entitlement you got there
GoodBoy
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Fuck....
NightReaver
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Boy am I glad that I have a stupidly huge backlog to work through.
SuperSubZero
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There was a time when this would have been more obvious. These days there's bound to be a bit of pushback to "you need to clean up, put on your mask, stop crying about having a compromised immune system it was only cancer, and go buy a card at the closest open store which is.. well.. where IS the closest open store that sells RTX cards around here?"
Nearly 7 percent of all U.S. Xbox game consoles were resold on auction sites along with nearly 50,000 GeForce 30-series cards in recent months, according to a new study.
We covered data scientist Michael Driscoll’s initial scalper report in December. In newly published data, it appears that some 113,220 Xbox game consoles were resold on auction sites eBay and StockX, spanning both the “Xbox One” and “Xbox Series” generations. That’s enough to equal 6.85 percent of all Xboxes sold in the United States.
https://www.pcworld.com/article/360...force-gpus.amp.html?__twitter_impression=true
Great post. Some of these Free-Market types have been guzzling the Kool-Aid for so long they think there is no other taste.
Simply requiring two-factor authentication with a cell phone text and a one per customer limit would go a long way. It’s a lot harder for bots to spoof a massive amount of phone numbers to pull off their mass buying operations.
Krenum
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I laughed at this more than I should have.
I could really imagine this playing out at a Best Buy.
The “free-market types” are speaking from logic rather than emotion, which is a much better mechanism to understand the world than raging against the machine. If you do that you just stay pissed off forever and do nothing to improve your position.
In a free market economy luxury product prices are set by the buyer. Always. Repeat like a mantra.
While it sucks for people like us who are either unwilling or unable to pay current market prices for a luxury product we want, there’s nothing remotely illegal or immoral about it on either the buyer or sellers (retailer or scalper) end.
Key differentiation: luxury product. These are products that no one “needs”, they just want them. GPUs are a luxury product. If this were a quality of life product, the government can and will intervene (see Martin Shkreli)
SuperSubZero
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I like the texting idea except for people that don't own cell phones or are uncomfortable giving out their phone#. I'm sure I'm not the only one who gets annoyed when a store wants to text me with specials and offers.
Krenum
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Haha! I knew that sounded familiar. Exactly what's happening now.
Oh, The Simpsons, is there anything you can't predict?
Fair, but if you’re buying an RTX 3080 but you don’t have access to a cellphone yet, you probably need to re-evaluate your tech priorities lol.
The promotional text thing can be countered with anti-spam legislation forcing companies to ask customers to opt-in before being allowed to send texts.
Flogger23m
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Actually I did. Repasting with the important part in bold:
Making it illegal for people to spend their own money how they want should be illegal. And it is absolutely immoral.
I'm okay with putting some things in place to prevent people from using bots to auto buy dozens of items. Anything else (someone buying 2-3 consoles, selling 1-2 for profit) is perfectly fine. If some rich guy wants to over spend that is fine and their right. And if it means some low/middle class guy can get a free console out of it with the profits then good for them.
Auto buying 50-100 stock in 1 second is another animal entirely.
I'm not sure how much more clear cut that can get. What you're suggesting is disallowing people to make profit, period, on certain items. Which is price controlling and immoral. If someone places a pre-order online, heads to a local store, finds said item in stock, they should have every right to buy it. And then sell the extra one they purchased for whatever they want.
That isn't a loophole. The scenario you used, cutting in line, isn't the same as theft. Not legally or morally. Even snatching something from someone's cart before they paid isn't the same, legally or morally.
The idea that cutting in line is just as bad as someone stealing from someone's house is dumb.
SuperSubZero
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I work for a company that has some tech pioneers in their ranks, including some folks that designed some of the code that got the internet "up and running" back in the day. Some of these folks don't own cell phones, or are *extremely* reluctant to share their phone# or install any apps including stuff like 2FA apps which are sorta critical. These folks act at a tech priority level many of us can't even process.
When you say "anti-spam legislation" do you mean like a Do Not Call list? I'm sure that would work great.
Ok, so what’s your alternative? If they don’t want to do 2FA, then they can go to a brick and mortar store like they did back when they were designing the code to get the Internet up and running. Doing nothing is not a strategy if we want to mitigate the issue.
We have anti-spam legislation in Canada. With respect to legitimate businesses, it works very well.
cybereality
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I don't think it is unreasonable for online stores to require 2FA and a valid phone number for purchasing hot ticket items.
Maybe 1 purchase per phone/address/credit card. That would stop a good deal of these scalpers.
Maybe 1 purchase per phone/address/credit card. That would stop a good deal of these scalpers.
sfsuphysics
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I used to be very anti-credit card, and then I wanted to go on a trip and for some reason paying cash to get on an airplane is kind of frowned upon. Then I was anti-cell phone as well, but I told my wife that if she got pregnant I would get a cell phone so she could contact me if necessary... so now I have a cell phone, but I get by on a 1GB data plan real easy as I probably spend more time charging it than using it.
Well it could have worked, but I think that ship has sailed, online retailers couldn't give two fucks about who buys the cards as long as someone buys them and they don't crash the site doing so.
In Canada, it's an offence for adds to be sent to a cellular device, same with those auto-dialers calls unless you specifically opt into them. Assuming they can ever find the people responsible, and that you've taken the time to report it.
N4CR
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Not everyone has cell network reception, nor wants the privacy bullshit associated with being active on such a network with a backdoored modem in every handset.
So then go to a brick and mortar store, or just deal with scalpers. I’d like to think the majority of people who have access to the internet also have access to a cell phone in some way, shape or form, particularly if they’re shopping for a $700 video card. No solution is perfect, but your options are do nothing and deal with months and months of no stock and exorbitant prices from scalpers or try to find realistic solutions that are suitable for the vast majority of the market.
Also, I see plenty of people expressing privacy concerns, and yet continue to own smartphones, have Instagram accounts, and use Google Maps all the time on said device, so I’m convinced that the vast majority of people would be fine with a 2FA proposal. If you have a better idea, I would love to hear what it is.
Comixbooks
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Scalpers are here to stay alot of people are out of work so its income to them. Hopefully the cards with updated memory will see better stock.
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sfsuphysics
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So in Canada they don't put in wording in everything that you sign up for that says something to the effect "you agree to have your numbers used for commercial purposes" or what not.
Nope, the law was passed when "Pay as you go" was the standard model for cellphone payment plans, as such those activities cost the person on the receiving end money. When the model changed to a standard subscription type the law was just never repealed because we like it.
SuperSubZero
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This discriminates against people who don't live near a Best Buy or whatever. This would include large swaths of Canada actually.
From a legal standpoint I have trouble reconciling "if you walk into a store you can plunk down enough toonies and we won't even ask your name, but if you want to buy online, you're obligated to give us your cell phone number in order to buy things."
The legitimate businesses aren't the problem.
Large swaths of Canada have bigger issues accessing product that doesn't include $700 USD video cards. Not every place in every country at every time has access to every same thing that larger markets do. Welcome to reality. A friend of mine lives a few hours north of Toronto and was only able to get dial-up internet at a very high price even as recently as a few years ago. What do you propose, they restrict everyone to super expensive dial-up to avoid perceptions of discrimination?
Regarding ordering online, you have your full mailing address in order for them to ship you the parts, so I'm going to assume if you're that paranoid about privacy, you're not ordering online at all.
The working assumption in this discussion is that you're going to be ordering your $700 USD RTX 3080 from a reputable source, not some sketchy back-alley nonsense who happens to also have an internet website where they sell expensive electronics. I assumed we were all under this same understanding.
If you have a better solution than what I'm proposing, feel free to let us all know. It's super easy to criticize and say things won't work. Barring that, I'm glad you're so satisfied with the status quo.
Yes, all of those out of work people who also happen to have the disposable cash enabling them to buy large quantities of $700 video cards for resale are really dependent on scalping for survival in these desperate times.
cybereality
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It's possible. Even if you have, lets say $2,000 in savings, and you know you can buy 4 PS5s and double your money or (more) in a week. Well that would be worth it for a lot of people.
I live 5 hours from nowhere in the butthole of BC, half my area doesn't even have access to dial-up because the telecoms have let the copper infrastructure rot out and we still don't have good cellphone coverage for most of the area either. So yeah accessing physical brick and mortar is a weekend-long event for anything of that nature unless you feel like driving 10h through some shitty mountain passes and dodging Moose and Deer in the dark is less than pleasant. So it's not something you do in one day unless you really have to.
If you know you can make your money back in a week you really do not need any saving, even a bad credit card with terrible interest take significantly more time than that to kick in. I would imagine many scalper massively use credit cards earning a lot of points. If you scalp for $30,000/$40,000 a year on that card with nice reward it is worth it.
Maybe some in person scalping are the out of work of people with a lot of time to exchange for money, but the type of people with the skills set to work from home scalping video cards/personality trait are probably not the people hit the most by the pandemy (but people that can work from home and in industrie not particularly hit hard). Maybe the scalping agency that make all the work and recruit "worker" we saw made it possible for low skills people to get into the game now too.
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sfsuphysics
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You lucky Canucks! Because even if the law was like that here, you know every advertiser with a penny would "lobby" to chance the laws in their favor here.
Yeah I remember a good 10 years ago when one of the political parties “forgot” that little law and autodialed the crap out of everybody looking for donations. Basically cost them more than they got from it when the fines were all put in.
No supply from Nvidia in January for Asia Pacific region !?
포시포시 (@harukaze5719) Tweeted:
I_Leak_VN (@I_Leak_VN) Tweeted:
via https://www.hardwaretimes.com/nvidi...any-rtx-30-series-chips-in-january-exclusive/
포시포시 (@harukaze5719) Tweeted:
https://twitter.com/harukaze5719/status/1356580146522677254?s=20Umm... NVIDIA doesn't supply GPU chip to partners since January?
If true, it would be a shock
I_Leak_VN (@I_Leak_VN) Tweeted:
https://twitter.com/I_Leak_VN/status/1356581971720245256?s=20
via https://www.hardwaretimes.com/nvidi...any-rtx-30-series-chips-in-january-exclusive/
Chinese New Year is a big deal, most of China’s manufacturing and labour slows to a near stop in January, it picks back up mid Feb. There are also reports that they are dealing with large outbreaks right now and will be enforcing slowdowns and stoppages to limit the number of people working in proximity to each other.
Furious_Styles
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They can't be taking a month holiday for the NY. This stuff is so in-demand I'd imagine they are running an extra shift if possible to keep pumping them out.
Well if you take a look at what news and reports are coming out of China they basically stopped late December and aren’t expected to get back into operation late Feb. Most Chinese exports have ground to a halt, as have many internal operations. I don’t know what’s going on there but it certainly isn’t all fun and celebrating, but it isn’t great that’s for sure.