"Some people consider it a reasonable service for someone to go fetch them a Wii, then they will pay that person $100-$200 over retail.
The service they're paying for is something they couldn't do (or don't want to do) on their own: go wait in line for a Wii early enough or enough times to get it."
That's only one half of the equation. They are swiping it out from under somebody who DID take the time to get up that morning on their own, and line up at the store, or who checks the store daily after work.
Plus if you are 2nd in line at some major event and we've been their for hours, what do we think when a crowd of 'friends' of the person in front of you all cut in just before the event opens?
Do you think, "oh, well that was pretty smart of them, getting someone else to standing in line for hours so that they wouldn't have to."
Or do you think "bastards. I've been standing here for the last 5 hours, and these jackasses just waltzed in and cut in front of me. I deserve to get in first. They shouldn't be able to all just ride in on the coat-tails of their friend."?
Most normal people think the latter. And there is usually always muttering and grumbling when this happens. And I've even seen crowds get really ugly over this if it means people who were in the line a long time are now going to lose out.
Now what if you found out their 'friend' was just some guy they paid to 'hold the spot'? Would you consider that a 'reasonable service'? What if because of this you go from being 2nd in line and all but assured a Wii, to 9th, one more than the number of available Wii's? Still think its a reasonable service?
During the Wii launch a lot of stores had one unit per household policies, and some were even coming out and giving people vouchers, precisely to help prevent this sort of bulshit, so that people couldn't buy up all the units, hold spots in line for friends [well they could, but when their friend arrived their friend didn't have a voucher], and so people could go to the bathroom without losing their spot in line... in other words many retail stores were recognizing that abuses of the first-come, first-serve policy were pissing off their customers, and they took steps to help mitigate it.
Resellers may be legal, but that doesn't mean society should like them. They are parasites in the same way as cell phone companies that charge you $3.99 for a 20 second ring tone clip of a song you already purchased or could buy on itunes for .99 cents. And who go to lengths to prevent you from loading your own ring tones, to the point of disabling it on phones that actually have it as a built in feature.
