UK Scalper Group Claims It's Snagged 3,500 PS5 Consoles

Hive of scum and villainy

If you do this, please stop.

I gave in and paid exactly 1028$ shipped. Got screwed by Walmart 4 times. Even when PS sent me my link to pre order i got screwed. I knew i wasnt going to get one for list price for a long time.
Honestly I really wanted to play Godfall as those boring linear beat em ups are my jam.
Oh and Souls

All true

Just a bit crap really. After a couple of bad experiences trying to order, to find out that people are buying for the sole reason to resell or smash them on YouTube is really disheartening.

Why did they do that ?
And where did they get tons of money to resell the things with insane price ?
Who are those peoples actually ?

I wonder if Sony will make any changes going forward to avoid this. Like maybe implement captcha on their site and not give stock to any retailer who doesn’t use it. It would be a start.

Geez man, why do people have to be like this. There's an unlimited number of ways to make money without being a jerk, damn shame..

just the purest form of capitalism at work, buy and re sell

I wish ebay would decide to just not allow ps5's to be sold through them so that this kind of thing wouldnt happen. Didnt they once try and stop music tickets from being sold on their site?

but i guess these people would still find some way to sell them regardless.

I stayed on my PC along with my Wife on her PC trying 4 stores back to back for 10hrs and 45 minutes. Lucky for me Best Buy online site crash they didn't go live until 3:45AM. We both got a preorder in for 2 PS5's. We both held onto the order just in case one got canceled. I thought about selling the second one for maybe $800. About two weeks before launch we just canceled one of the preorders for someone else to buy. I didnt want to mess with possible buyer scams or a buyer of non-payment on ebay.

I'm not even mad at them. Instead i'm mad at Sony and retailers who refuse to implement a system that curves this during checkout.

I’m not buying PS5 from them or any other 3rd party for that matter. I’m just gonna have to be patient here when Sony can get more in stock.

The people that continue to pay a ton of money for something they can get at half the cost in a month or two is why these groups exist. Stop paying them!

I dont really care no more about ps5 or xbox tbh

Here's to hoping nobody caves in to these scalpers and are able to buy a console from a legit source.

The people buying these things at such an insane inflated prices are just as much to blame as the scalpers...

As others have said, the sad aspect is that the reseller sites won't ever do anything serious to police them. Just can't understand why someone would pay well over RRP meantime when in all likelihood if there's any warranty issues they're left high & dry with a reseller thats long gone? New gen fever unfortunately can be a powerful drug.

@Bamila so why are you here?

If people are willing to pay then why not? It's not an essential it, no one needs a ps5 right at launch, and it lets people make easy money, and what's wrong with that, wages for the average person is terrible, gotta find a way to make some extra income taking advantage of people who are impatient or have a lot of money.

Individual scalpers are one brand of scum, but a coordinated attempt to capture and extort a market like this strikes me as something that has to be actually illegal in some fashion. Ugh.

This is absolutely appalling. How they can even get away with it is beyond me. No wonder there's very little stock and it's now become clear why. Oh my god I'm furious. These scalpers are NOT legit sellers. I'd rather get a PS5 from a real, legit retailer, at their proper price, rather than scalpers who sell them for stupidly & ridiculously high prices, only getting one from retail is VERY slim pickings now.

If people stop buying off them, then they will be stuffed ending up with stock they cannot sell.
I understand you want a PS5 and they are hard to come by, but just say NO to these I would say humans but they fall into the category of being a pinch of dirt.

I'm sorry but it should be illegal with retailers enforcing a limited number per person.
Especially during a pandemic.

Im sorry but we as people all of is can stop this dead in its tracks if no body payed not one penny over what it worth . It whold not happen simple. More stock to go around . Common people use your brains

If the people got them legitimately... and can make $ off of impatient people more power to them. Simple rule of buy low sell high.

But if they got them illegally like switching products in Amazon packages I say send in the wolves.

@Subsided
It's just common sense.
Say you are in a queue to buy something and the person in front of you buys all the stock to resell it *2 the price.
Are you going to say, 'what's wrong with it?'

@JJ2 it's a slight annoyance for you, it's a supporting income for him, I don't see how mild inconvenience trump's livelihood

@Subsided Yeah what if start doing it with stuff that is a base need you ok with that?

Sony should start using the serialnumbers and give people a way of reporting this cheap *****. If Sony or Microsoft would nice it should start selling on console per person untill they have reasonable stock.

For me its no problem ill wait till next year so should other people work make them sell them at storeprices.

@Flaming_Kaiser Base need is very different for the obvious reasons that people actually need it and people shouldn't be deprived of needs because that results in genuine suffering, and 3500 may sound like a lot but PlayStation is selling like 10 million, scalpers get a small percentage of that and get a bit of a bonus to their minimum income

Yeah I guess its terrible, but the people paying those prices are just as bad. Its there own fault, Ps5 is not needed its a luxury, these guys wouldn't be in business if people didn't pay 2x the price
So its time to move past it now if you didn't get for normal price just wait or pay the stupid price. End of story simple

Hmmm, not saying it's true but seems like a lot of speculation. The selling of the PS5 in the UK (and I guess around the world too) was shambolic at best with inaccurate release times, servers been down, instant stockouts... I only managed to get mine when the second and final batch was released by sitting a waiting que for days, watching the clock count down to scheduled opening time and buying it as soon my slot became availabe, there was no waiting around, I had to be quick and no ways I could have ordered two never mine 3500.
So my view is that it couldn't have been bots as the release times were all wrong or indeed people as they would have needed an army of people waiting in ques to purchase machines and that just wouldn't have been viable or make economic sense.
But if true, then I think there must of been an organised crime syndicate working with specific retailers and getting stock before they were released.
If you buy or sell shares in a company to make money or mitigate loss based of information not yet available to the market that will affect the share price of said company , this is called insider trading and is illegal. In a way, if they bought counsels before they were released to market with the intention of profteering this feels like the same thing and should be investigated further by the police and indeed Sony. Wouldn't it be great if Sony could brink the machines they knew had been involved in crimes? Would stop this dodgy business in it's tracks. You might argue that the end consumer loses out, yes agreed initially they would but in other situations this already happens and is accepted to be fair, for example buying a stolen car, police will confiscate it, or buying a bricked IPhone, only worth the parts

I think Sony needs to shoulder some of the blame.

It wouldn't be that hard to implement a system where you have to log in to your PlayStation account to get a code that you need to pre-order from the seller.

This ensures one ps5 per account. (They would also need to make sure the bots can't create accounts).

Other vendors are doing this around the world for various things, so why not Sony?

Unfortunately it’s up to buyers as well if this is to be stopped. It’s supply and demand, if someone’s willing to pay £1k for a ps5 then that’s partly where the problem lies...

Meh hopefully they can't sell em and give them back to the place they got them. This is what it's gonna be like from now on. Really put me of pre-ordering . I think i'll just wait , besides IL wait til they work out the bugs.

@Oz_Momotaro
Yeah I cant understand why they are willing to pay and then cry oh I had to 2x for mine...I hate Sony blah blah blah
But of course they gotta be in the trend and have the newest tech ASAP🙃

Normally I just shrug and except that it's an unfortunate side of trying to get hold of something that's a limited release, but this is getting out of hand.

I actually had two pre-oredered and have to admit I was tempted to sell one when some crazy prices were starting to get thrown about, but in the end I decided it wasn't worth £500 or so to ultimately feel bad about myself in such a way, so I cancelled my second order with game. It doesn't help when you get high street shops like cex jumping on the scalper band wagon too.

I guess the only comfort you can take from this kind of thing is that people who do this are not and probably won't be happy people, mainly because they have to resort to such a desperate way to make money in the first place. Really, scalpers are to be pitied for not being able to find more productive ways to make a living.

Ultimately there is not much that can be done unfortunately. Any possible tech will be beaten by further tech, and that won’t prevent people simply sitting down buying legitimately to resell.
You could say Sony shouldn’t release until they have built up so much stock that everyone can still get one, but that would just punish everyone by ree were easing later, not to mention make it much more difficult to have logistical capacity to ship all at once. Plus Sony would be losing more money per unit paying for storage so the price would have to be higher...
I was lucky that my wife was off work during the first batch of PS5 to be on sale and managed to snag one. There is no way I’d pay more than the asking price as I refuse to line a scalpers pockets.

@Oz_Momotaro fair challenge, the programmers are probably far cleverer than I will ever be and as you say they probably have created code to activate whenever the product sales become live. Something just doesn't feel right though, just doesn't seem plausible that they can get that many. Also, if they did indeed get that many, wouldn't it make sense NOT to say anything and keep their scadulous trade secrets to themselves, so they can redo it multiple time again in the future on other products without others trying to get in on their actions?

Sony won't care, their console is selling out, that's all that will matter to them. I hate to be this cynical, but this is business. I am in no rush for a PS5, I still have a load of PS4 games to keep me going into next year.

I agree this practice is a lame money making scheme at the expense of genuine fans of the product. I also appreciate some people really badly want a PS5. But at the end of the day it's just a toy guys. Just wait a bit and stock will replenish.

Exactly why I would never buy one at an inflated price, I will gladly wait another month or two until I can easily pop over the road to argos or PC world and pick one up with no hassle, until then i got a new m1 mac mini with the money that sony would have got

Couldn't ebay put a cap on the highest amount people can ask for, for certain items anyway.

So for example they put a £600 cap on the ps5 so people can't set their price higher than that

@JohnKarnes Thats what I did. I had a pre-order with Box.co.uk, who I'd never heard of to be honest, and completely forgot about the pre-order I'd placed with shopto.net. I thought about keeping both and selling one on for a profit, but then realised that would make me as bad as the vile scalpers/touts that I hate, so I cancelled my box.co.uk pre-order which I'm pretty sure someone will have snapped up within a few seconds.

@1_W1NG3D_4NG3L I agree, people are willing to buy consoles etc from scalpers, so if people stop buying them for the scalpers, then they’ll have to stop it. I don’t see why anyone would pay 2-3 times the value of a console for it personally.

@Subsided Bored much?

Yeah, poor little scalpers only out to make a living.

😉

Cry me a ***** river mate!

@Medic_Alert Aren't you the modern day hero.

😜

What do they call that? A humblebrag or something?

@Th3solution Unfortunately Captcha can be easily bypassed with the right software, which these scalpers are definitely using. Here in the States, Walmart sold out in 4 seconds last Thursday while us regular people were stuck in a Captcha Hell. This means that Captcha actually ends up helping scalpers because it slows everyone else down.

@Flurpsel Toy my arse!

PC gamer by any chance?

@get2sammyb iI've said it before and i'll say it again, Sony could have very easily set up a system where you couldn't purchase a PS5 without a long term active account and lock your pre-order with a code for that account that you have to input when you first start up your PS5 transfering your PS4 profile.

No new profile can be added for 12 months. It makes scalping pointless as they can't buy them, it makes stealing them pointless unless you hang onto them for a year..

It does stop new users, but hey loyalty has to count for something.

I want to be annoyed at the scalpers but no... they are just taking advantage of the system, companies should do more to stop them

@Link41x agree. If people stopped buying them everyone would have a ps5 now

As someone said earlier, simple Captcha code would have helped a lot. Limiting to one per delivery address too, but probably harder to implement.
Ultimately this is down to the retailers, not Sony. And quite frankly, they don't care, all money in the bank for them.
Saying that they have to go to the bother of implementing queuing systems and deal with server overloads, so perhaps it would be in their interests after all.

@Yaycandy You're literally part of the problem, they do it because fools like you will pay the inflated price.

This is partly in retailers hands, and implementing capcha's during the ordering process is not a difficult thing to do.
Put 2-3 consecutive picture selecting capchas, not those simple box-ticking ones. It will keep people from fast ordering and bots from being used.
But hey, who cares about customers, if the consoles are sold, they don't really give a f..ck who buys them and where they end up.
And it's also up to the buyers so abstain and avoid buying at inflated prices. But let's not kid ourselves here, this is human nature, it won't be easily overcome. When the holiday season approaches and gifts have to be bought, and you have a little one at home that basically begs you to buy him/her a console, what are you gonna do? Explain to him/her : "I won't be able to buy you one this year, you must wait for a few months, because the only ones available now are sold by bad people called sclapers, and we have to teach them a lesson". Heh... i'm sure the kid will understand the situation and will wait patiently.... mmhhhmmm... after a few explanation attempts... "www.ebay.com - search - playstation 5"

@tabris95 Yeah, I’ve been (probably foolishly) hitting the Wal-Mart site at each new restock and I haven’t even got to a captcha screen yet, so I guess I haven’t even got that far. I got the console into my cart a few times and once got all the way to the payment part before it locked up and then came back “out of stock”
But yeah, I didn’t know scalpers have captcha-beating tech, although I guess it doesn’t surprise me.

After my first pre-order was cancelled by the retailer, I ended up securing 3 pre-orders a week later from different retailers (in the UK), to be on the safe side. You're all gonna hate me, but I got all 3 delivered on release day, and sold 2. I suppose I should have cancelled them - I knew I was likely going to make some profit from them, but had no idea they would be selling so much more than RRP. Am I a bad person?

@Subsided @Medic_Alert Here’s the problem though — everyone is thinking about this from the perspective of the average buyer like us and the scalper, but the real loser here is Sony. They chose to sell this console for $500 at a loss. The reason they don’t sell it at a market value price (because it appears they could’ve used supply/demand economics to charge much more) is because they make their revenue by selling games and each PS5 out in someone’s home means that person is buying stuff from PS store, buying PS Plus subscriptions, posting videos online of gameplay to build their brand, telling friends how great the system is, etc. It completely hurts Sony to have this going on. Each PS5 that sits in a scalpers house means one that isn’t being played and games that aren’t being bought. And in the instance where a person buys one for $1500, that’s that many fewer games that can be bought with that person’s extra $1000. That’s like 15-20 games that don’t get purchased because of the higher price point for the console.

It just seems like Sony would be motivated to stop this. They are losing money with each unit that doesn’t get bought legitimately at MSRP. They set the price at $500 for a reason, and it’s not because that’s how much it cost to produce.

@Th3solution Though by and large I agree with you, I don't think this part is necessarily correct: "And in the instance where a person buys one for $1500, that’s that many fewer games that can be bought with that person’s extra $1000. That’s like 15-20 games that don’t get purchased because of the higher price point for the console."

Not sure what kind of person would pay $1500 for a ps5, but perhaps they have a lot of disposable content? And many of them perhaps are interested in just a few games and wouldn't purchase 15-20 anyway?

Just a thought
(like I said, overall, I most certainly agree)

@thehappyjack Personally, I don't think you are. It's easy to judge others and call their names and in most cases, I'd say the situation is much more nuanced than that.

I really think that the reason MS and Sony aren't doing anything about it is that they know that there is no better promotion than the one done by fans who want to buy something, but can't, and post about it online. This makes the item "hot" and "everyone" wants to have it. It's how masses work. I'm no exception. I usually don't buy consoles at launch, but now I'd feel I won the lottery if I got to order a ps5.

How ridiculous is that? To feel lucky that you're allowed to pay for something.

@naruball Yeah, I did consider that the person who buys it on EBay for 2-3X the MSRP is likely the same type of person who is just going to keep throwing hundreds of dollars more and will still buy multiple launch titles. But it definitely is an opportunity cost for the average person who
Only has enough cash to buy like 2-3 launch games. Most of us have to decide — “should I buy Demon’s Souls or Sackboy? Or shall I get a PS Now subscription and an indie instead?...”
But yeah, the wealthier among us will just buy all of it. And good for them. But I think it’s probably, what... like 10-15% of the user base that has no limit to their discretionary funds? Sony certainly will want to have a wider appeal.

Actually I think MS and Sony do have an interest in stopping this. We all know that hardware, especially at launch, is often sold close to cost or at a loss. The money is in software and subscriptions.

If a console is bought by a scalper, it sits there until someone buys it. Eventually they may all go but it could be weeks - often scalpers will drop the price as demand increases. It means that al this time, that PS5 is generating no revenue. No one is buying games for it or potentially taking out PS Plus subs. Those that do buy an inflated priced item from a scalper may therefore have less money to again, invest in the eco-system.

@thehappyjack Yes, yes you are.

Worse than Hitler in fact.

😉

This is why Sony's online only sales because of Covid-19 just won't work. It hands professional scalpers just such a massive advantage. Similar stories are cropping up all over the place and stores don't care. They've sold their stock. Sony should though. Because every console sitting in a warehouse is losing them money, because people aren't buying games for consoles sitting in a scalpers warehouse. Plus any extra money people have to spend to get is potential lost revenue for game sales. Sony need to get across this ASAP, because they've handled the launch atrociously. They were warned, and they ignored those warnings.

Capitalism at work. Love it or hate it they are just doing what every business does, supply and demand.

@Bamila starting to feel the same way. Point about gaming and that it's for well gamers, all retailers needed to be do was allocate one per person like they said, but instead have shown corporate greed due to this plandemic.

Wow these people actually form groups, sad scum, but then again the people who buy them off them paying more are moronic and part of the problem, simply because they can't wait a few extra weeks or months.

@Yaycandy You are the cause of the problem.

@PixelRunner

Spot on. It would stop these scum dead in their tracks.

@Rudy_Manchego Yeah, and honestly, this hurts everyone — including those among us who do have a PS5 and are happily sitting at home playing Astrobot’s playroom, because if a game sells less (or at least less quickly) because of lack of market share, then it’s that much longer before we all will see price drops for games. I’ve seen a few comments from people who say “I’m not sure about Demon’s Souls, sounds good but I think I’ll wait for a price drop” ... but I would surmise that those price drops will take much longer to see when the console is not getting out there to people and games aren’t getting bought. Imagine how many more copies of Demon’s Souls would have been bought this last week if all those thousands and thousands of consoles were actually in players hands. The industry loves to post “Best selling games this month” lists and those lists are simply not going to be accurate for a while. The drip-feed of getting the consoles out over the next 3 months will just delay the whole process. So I hope no one was expecting any game price discounts for a long while.

Easy: Limit the Console sale to 1 per PSN ID. To buy it, you need to 'use' your PSN ID.

It's likely a person has different PSN accounts, yet not in the same region. You tackle that by not shipping overseas.

@Th3solution Absolutely - price drops tend to occur when they feel they have squeezed enough out of a sales to then appeal to people who are on the fence. If there aren't sales, these prices arent going down.

My local shop sells a pint of milk for 65p...............but Sainsbury's a couple of miles into Town charge 50p for the same item............it's not an issue for me I can walk into Town but the Elderly can't.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyhORVxLZ2g
R.I.P Dave Greenfield

@Yaycandy You're the problem you know that right? Damn you're dumb

@Subsided
'Supporting income'?
Flash news a lot of people trying to buy 1 PS5 are not rich at all and work hard for it. Those scalpers are not the victims you sound like painting them as haha
Let's move on living in different realities 😀

@IcedFreon
I wanted one. So i bought one...
I dont mind paying more for it because i know its worth it as im here playing it now. Im a victim of supply and demand and fine with it.

Haha, the look on gamers faces when they finally realize capitalism sucks. I guess all it took was the hyper inflation of their games console. Welcome to the free market boys, it happens every day. Just take the home you live in for example, we just don't call them scalpers, we call them landlords 😉

Happens with all tech. Ps5, Xbox Series X, Nvidia 3080,3090. Big Navi.
How the world works when tech is priced right

Concerning hot ticket items, Sony and Microsoft could require retailers to require in-store pickup.

EBay could have listing caps for these hot items.

I don’t know what it would take for these suggestions to occur or if there is some cons to what I’ve listed that may cause a new batch of problems.

Anyone that indulges in this practise needs purging at the earliest convenience.

Sony can't control how many retailers sells in one purchase, but those whom bought from ebay and other non-official website. They are the ones really screwed in the end if the playstation break or anything happens to their console the warranty is voided. Because they won't have the original payment card.

@Th3solution True. True. Even if it's just 10%, Sony would still lose some money, so they could at least try to do something about it from now on. I just wouldn't hold me breath...

@SirEvilJebus
Im not a "fool". Wanted a console so i got one. As im sitting here playing it, dying over and over on souls. I think im doing just fine, money is not an object to me. Most people will have to wait till next holiday to find it in store for 499$. And 1028$ shipped for a disk based ps5 console is a very good deal.

Same thing with the Switch. I paid nearly double launch week, while trying to buy a second one at list price i wasnt successful for over a year.

@JJ2 yeah it is stupid thing to do for them to buy them then resell them on high price instead play games on ps5 for fun.. i feel sad for people who has hard time to find ps5 to purchase it online.. Online suck for real due to cheating bots by scalpers

The value of $1 is not an objective fact. Understand that, understand that there are people that have different priorities or value scales than you do.

If you have a decent enough disposable income then paying twice the MSRP for a hard to find, (relatively low cost), device is not stupid, nor is it paying more than its worth. That worth is subjective and depends on its value to you compared to the value of the money you are paying for it.

I generally avoid scalpers (scum) because I do not want to support this behavior; it's often hard to find because they made it so; but to everyone that has bought one through a scalper. Enjoy your console.

Flipping scalpers. String them up by the dual shocks.

@Subsided Nah. true gamers want one and has hard time to find one in stock to buy ps5.. true gamers doesn't want pay over 1,000 for ps5. they are like too lazy to work their job

@DotM You know that you can create an unlimited number of PSN accounts, right? You can also get around any "one per address" restrictions quite easily as well. Its not that easy of a problem to solve on that end.

The only way to solve the problem is on the other end (eBay, for example). There are a lot of things you cannot sell on eBay, and restrictions about the things you do. It wouldn't be very difficult to come up with a policy that prevents scalpers from selling goods on eBay. eBay makes too much money from this though so its unlikely to ever happen.

@Yaycandy I stand by my original comment, if it wasn't for fools like you we wouldn't be in a situation like this.

@Subsided That's BS, because firstly where did they get the money to acquire so many units and if it is to supplement a low income refer back to 'where did they get the money to acquire so many units'. These people are purely opportunists and not your average Joe working class person looking to turn a small profit on one or two extra consoles they pre-ordered using a credit card. You mention that that is a small amount considering Sony produced and sold 10 Million units, well, 1 console is a small amount and yet the majority of people who just want that 1 console cannot even get that because of the scum scalpers, so no matter how you look at it, scalpers are scum!

@Yaycandy But money IS an object for most other people and by gladly giving it up to these scalpers YOU are the one creating a market for them, which makes it harder for literally everyone else in the world trying to get one. Also paying more than double for an item is never a "good deal". With business sense like that, I'm surprised you're so well off and even more surprised that you can't understand why people here are calling you a fool. Enjoy your PS5

@Th3solution Hey nothing foolish about at least trying! Scalpers can't have them all lol. For Walmart, you'll have better luck if you use the Walmart App. I hear the best way is to add it to your cart on desktop, then immediately checkout through the mobile app as it just processes more easily that way.

Retailers like Best Buy, Game Stop and I believe Target are all funneling their stock online to make it harder for bots to snap them up. Best Buy in particular was pretty effective with a limit of 1 per customer and pick up only. You have to wait for stock to be available every 5-10 minutes and by clicking the Add To Cart button when it isn't available yet forces you back to the top of the screen so bots can't spam it and refreshing the page frequently causes the site to think you're a bot and simply never unlock your Add To Cart button. Target should drop any day now and Walmart is on Wednesday 9EST. Best of luck!

@get2sammyb A start would be if FaceBook and eBay stopped allowing people to use their platform to sell these consoles on at an extortionate price. You can't sell an event ticket higher than face value, so why not implement the same conditions for this sort of thing?
Another question I would have is; where would one stand if you bought a PS5 from these scalpers as regards a warranty? Especially with all the reports of these first shipped consoles having some issues, I'd be very worried about that. As far as I'm aware warranties aren't transferable, but I'm still waiting to hear back from Sony regarding that. I'm sure some people will say "if you've got the original receipt then you'll be fine". But how many scalpers are going to give you the receipt with their details on?

#&*$@$ds !
Deep into 2021 Q2 or Q3

Keep cool .... Keep cool ...... ( Listen to dolphin sounds and Ummm 3 mantra )

Heart breaking a lifetime playstation gamer.

"Exactly what can be done here remains to be seen."

Simple. Don't be a fool and line a scalper's pockets by buying one at an inflated price, be patient (not something gamers typically excel at) and wait for more stock to buy at retail prices later next year.

Sadly there will always be people with cash to burn foolish and desperate enough to want the newest, shiniest thing at whatever price, so the scalpers will continue to find their market. So it goes.

Me personally, I know the PS5 and currently limited library of games isn't going anywhere, will have expanded the killer app titles by the time the stock levels are good, and mainly want one to play PS4 games on with slightly better graphical fidelity and a much quieter machine. Since I already have a PS4 and several titles to either replay or play for the first time (including God Of War Rebooted and Marvel Spider-Man, believe it or not) I have no particular problem waiting to get a disc based version next year, and many of the launch titles on disc at a fraction of their brand new price.

If more people had that attitude, scalpers would find it a less lucrative business ripping people off who willingly choose to be ripped off, but there you have it. As it stands, the patient person gets to sit back, wait, and reap the rewards of not being so maniacally obsessed with something that they make stupid decisions to acquire it.

Ah, capitalism. Gotta love it. 😂😍

Hopefully this is one of those instances that helps people see that regulation can be a good thing that helps ordinary people.

In many jurisdictions this type of thing is already illegal. It wouldn't be too hard to track them down if they are selling online and shipping from an address. Whether or not law enforcement can be bothered is a different matter.

@Subsided Hahahaha. You think these scalpers are "average people" with terrible wages? That must be how they're able to buy tens and hundreds at a time right?

@KippDynamite Agreed, this highlights everything wrong with 'laissez faire' capitalism. People will always find new ways to fleece others for a quick buck, unless there are rules to prevent it.

That being said, I think it's hard to make a legitimate legal argument against these people, as a PS5 is the epitome of a luxury item. It's morally questionable that these people exploit our desire to own a PS5, but the worst thing they're doing is inconveniencing us. It's extremely irritating--I'd love to have a PS5 now if one were available--but I don't really see this sort of thing ever changing.

@thedevilsjester
Of course I am aware. But what i gave you is a solution whilst having coffee. You can think of more measures. Like Banning accounts created in the past year, accounts that are seldom used etc...

What you mention is also a good solution

@DotM All of those solutions are going to end up hurting regular buyers that happen to fall into one of those categories.

Capitalism in this form is broken, unfortunately I don't think this is something that can be solved on the initial sales end of things. Targeting the mechanisms that allow scalpers to resell the products at inflated prices is the best way to combat this.

When we are not in pandemic mode, this kind of issue doesn't usually last more than a couple months (and having in-store pick up only, limits its impact) but the current world makes it worse than ever.

The one good thing for xbox getting destroyed in sales is if you want an xbox you dont have to worry about scalpers 😂

@Yaycandy jesus man, not good. You are helping the scalpers by doin this. Smh

Just read that this scalper group is meant to have thousands of members. Suddenly this 3,500 doesn't even seem that impressive. As before I thought it was only a few people making £100K+ but it's more likely that an average of £500-£1k is made per person.

They targeted hot tubs earlier in the pandemic too

It needs to keep being said, don't buy them, don't give scalpers the money and eventually they will give you.

@tabris95 this service is a business for those people to get those systems

@MichaelHawj true gamers don't use the term true gamers because they're not children that have completely random ideas of what someone who plays videoges is that lets them pay themselves on the back, you could just as easily say true gamers will do whatever they can to get a new system

@JJ2 those paying scalper prices are either rich or impatient, and they certainly don't need a ps5

@Subsided "what's wrong with that, wages for the average person is terrible."
That's a point against what you're saying. Scalpers aren't the average person - they had enough money to buy 3,500 PS5s. That's £1,575,000. So a group with about one and a half million are trying to exploit actual average people that are just trying to buy their kids a present for Christmas.

It's true people don't need to buy a PS5 but then that logic just makes the whole thing fall apart; the scalpers don't need to buy a PS5 either - but they at least have a more genuine reason behind the desire than to rip other people off.

The worst part about this is how simple it is for retailers to fix it. 1 simple CAPTCHA box that says "I am not a robot" before you are allowed to add it to cart. Add to that a limit one per customer restriction and boddabing boddaboom - problem solved.

Governments should go after these businesses that are trying to help scalpers or scumbag resellers or whatever you want to call them. Retailers should put pressure on law enforcement entities to stop this from happening. eBay should put a cap on how much someone can charge for an item that is being sold in stores. If someone honest sells a PS5 on eBay for a reasonable price it's being bought by a scumbag to resell for even more.

Buying something through a retail outlet and then charging 200% markup does not make you a reseller, you are a scumbag. A reseller is someone that buys through distribution channels and sells at MSRP or close to it.

This type of behavior seems to be getting worse and worse as time goes on. Worst was people trying to make money on medical and PPE goods: sanitizer, masks, even thermometers. So sick of this.

@-Sigma-
I've been saying this for a while and Im probably the only one that thinks they are doing this on purpose to drive up demand.
Prior to covid nintendo did the same ***** ,yet magically everyone forgot or didn't care. They trickled out limited stock to drive up demand and when that slowed they had all this surplus with wii and wii u in some markets.

@Yaycandy
You didn't get screwed by Wal-Mart. You got screwed by scalpers who use bot software that lets them circumvent the line. They're pieces of f***ing s***.

@Matroska that's a network of scalpers that just pay the company for the boys, not a single person getting 3500, just a bunch of people using the service

A captcha would've prevented a lot of this. I hope either no one buys any of the marked-up PS5's and the scalpers get stuck with them, or some kind-hearted hacker unmasks these scalpers and posts their addresses and phone numbers online.

@Matroska the average person also doesn't use the PlayStation to make a living like scalpers do so it's not the same, no one needs to play on a shiny new console, scalpers like everyone else needs money and they use ps5 to do it

There is a special place in hell for people like this.

@Th3solution doesn't really effect Sony, these will eventually reach consumers hands, not to mention there's probably only 10,000 of less in scalpers hands worldwide, thats paltry in comparison to the 10 million shipped and 100 million lifetime

Here's my thing with scalpers - they know it's morally questionable but try to justify the situation by saying something along the lines of, "It's just supply and demand" or "This is capitalism". As if that makes it somehow ethical anyways.

But here's the thing: that's a bastardization of the concept of supply and demand. They are not suppliers in any traditional sense.

When you have any product you have something called the "value chain". Imagine a line, and each step of the process of getting the product to the consumers hands is a point on the line - this includes R&D, marketing, manufacture, and distribution. Each step on this line adds value to the end consumer, hence the term value chain.

Scalpers did not invest into the R&D of the PS5, they didn't put up any money into buying the raw materials or refining them to create the product, they didn't pay for the trucks/plane expenses to get them shipped. They are trying to profit off of something they didn't put anything into - that's not capitalism. Traditional resellers are on the value chain because they offer a storefront and ease of access to the product.

Scalpers are actually forcibly inserting themselves into this value chain and taking value away by charging above-market prices. They did not contribute to creating this product in any way, they are just looking to opportunistically profit from something they did not make. They are not offering a meaningful service, either - you used to be able to make that (weak) argument when you had to wait in line for these consoles.

They are leeches, in the sense they are latching onto the value chain and trying to siphon money out of it for personal gain when by rights they didn't provide anything tangible towards the product. It's unethical for sure, just not actually illegal in most places. The law hasn't caught up to it just yet, but if scalping keeps getting more and more out of control as it has each year, it will be regulated. They will kill their golden goose.

TL;DR - Scalpers are very, very bad and they misapply economic concepts to justify their bad behavior.

Source: college edumacation.

In some countries scalping is illegal and there have been cases against commercial concert ticket resellers for doing exactly that and profiteering.
eBay etc should shut down this crap as it no doubt violates terms of service at least.

Either way people like this are scum.

For the next launch Sony need to implement a system where you get a login code from your psn account for the first wave of new systems.
Maybe a certain amount of trophies are required, or amount of time the account has been active.
They have 1 day to purchase then its free for all.
Real gamers are happy.

@Subsided “doesn't really effect Sony, these will eventually reach consumers hands, not to mention there's probably only 10,000 or less in scalpers hands worldwide...”
I would have agreed with you if not for this article. If we can believe this one UK group has 3500, then we can probably multiply it many times over to account for the U.S. and Canada, South America, Europe, and Asia. That would be way more than 10,000. But for argument’s sake, even 10,000 units represents probably 30-50,000 units of software sales that Sony isn’t getting, or that they won’t get for 3+ more months because all those people will get their unit late and buy their games late.

So, like I say — everyone is affected by this. Even those who bought a PS5 for $500 legitimately. In the long run everyone will pay more for games and services if units are not sold at the market price to customers. Otherwise Sony would have charged $1000 for the console. They were banking on us spending the extra $500 on games, subscriptions, and peripherals.

People that Blame SONY, it's not even their fault. Scalpers waited with all their Bots, plus the idea of this pandemic killed the idea of people shedding out cash for these new consoles. So only a chosen few actually got their hands one one. Money is the issue to where who has the cash and whom don't. Scalpers been doing this crap for some time now. The only way this could have been avoided if Sony did what they did with the PS4 and have a Large amount of stock of these PS5 consoles. Scalpers would of had a hard time buying so many. The More Stock you have some will still be in Stores across the world. But instead we have Scalpers & Idiots that buy from them. Retailers should create the only way to buy a PS5 or XSX is bundles. Then Scalpers can't just buy them all. Bundles must have 3 or More. Yes it sucks but it would stop the BS Scalpers are doing.

Scalpers have been doing it for years they did it with the AMD RX480 GPUs for bitcoin mining they snapped up every GPU going to make mining markets. If any piece of hardware is in demand they will scalp it with bots which are only going to get even more intelligent and faster. Why we need to save our shops and highstreets because then it can be avoided a bit better, it would also save jobs and get people out and about. They only thing they need to do is shops is try and meet online prices or the government start making online prices the same.

@Yaycandy lol You are a fool for paying so much to a scalper. I got the digital edition for 399 from Amazon Germany when they restocked again on Nov 19. All I did was wait and monitored twitter for restock information from retailers.