How to combat scalpers

[ZyroXZ2]

DonFerrari said:

ZyroXZ2 said:

Ugh, I'd have to find it, but I remember someone extrapolating that 20% (or something) of PS5s have never been turned on despite being sold, I could be wrong, but I recall this being an article somewhere.  I assume the reality is that the scalping part is lower, but I can't imagine buying a PS5 and never turning it on unless *dun dun dun* scalper stock.

Chrkeller said:

Absolutely, which is why not caving to scalpers is the best practice.  I have to assume most scalpers but their upfront charge on a credit card.  If somebody has $5,000 on a credit card, let them have 15% APR for a few months....  see how that works out for them.

Yea, I don't get why people buy from scalpers.  I've never bought anything from a scalper in my life because scalpers generally ONLY scalp non-essentials.  If I can't buy and I can live without it, then I'll live without it until I can buy it lmfao

Hey don't worry. No need for source, if you have confidence in remembering it was 20% I have no reason to dispute that, as there is no defense for Sony not doing better to prevent scalping problems. The solutions we may think or propose may or may not be practical, but their responsibility is to solve the issue anyway. After over 18 months from launch they had enough time to find a solution.

Welp, it was obvious I wasn't sure on the percentage, so I went and looked it up anyway lol... Maybe you did, too, and didn't want me to look it up because it turns out it was 25% hahaha!

Granted, that was reported over a year ago, so if I had to just extrapolate some spitballing, I'd say stock issues have lessened and that might be down to 15%.  And THEN, to meet the middle ground with you, let's just say 5% of that is people who bought it for their kids for Christmas or birthdays (surely, many parents are smart enough when an item is THIS hot to try and get it while they can, and then just hide it away until it's time).  That would mean 10% is still scalped stock, which is still twice what you're estimating and still enough to say that it's a problem.  Imagine 1 out of every 10 PS5s isn't actually landing in a customer's hands directly, then this whole thread about this makes some sense because that's still a high enough number to disappoint 1 in every 10 people trying to get a PS5.

Naturally, there's more variables there, but even Amazon has moved to some sort of email system and GameStop tried to bank on the demand by creating bundles (I actually don't think bundles combat scalpers at ALL, that's just the cover story to sell bundles).  It's just a mess, and it wasn't any better for GPUs: I consider myself extremely fortunate to have gotten an RTX 3080 at launch at MSRP straight from NVIDIA.  The way that price nearly doubled, I could have sold it and got a 3090 at ZERO cost to myself.  But I really couldn't bring myself to take advantage of the situation like that.  I instead chose to shake my head looking at things went to shit and threads like this form as a result