Browsing through the completed listings for PlayStation 3 game consoles on eBay, I can’t help feeling gratified at the large number of speculators who are now stuck with hardware that they will be lucky to sell at a loss.
What’s that old saying? Bears make money, bulls make money, pigs get slaughtered.
'splain please?
There were a whole bunch of people who, upon the day of the PS3’s release, bought two or more units purely on spec, hoping to turn around and resell them on eBay for a huge profit, knowing the limited supply, the fact that every store was going to be sold out within minutes of opening, and the massive demand there was going to be because of this. Within hours of opening there were eBay listings for PS3s as high as $15,000 per unit and more. I don’t know if any actually sold at that price, but for the first few days to a week there were lots of units sold for as high as $3k.
So some people profitted from being the first to jump on a good idea, but most who just followed didn’t. Sounds like the stock market.
Sadly, most of those PS3 scalpers aren’t going to be punished for their actions. They’re apparently returning the PS3s to the stores they bought them from, for a full refund (since the box hasn’t been opened).
Why shouldn’t they be able to return them? And why do they deserve punishment aside from their own wasted time and effort?
Pretty much. There’s always a crapload of amateur prospecting when new and highly anticipated products are released. It happened with the Elmo TMX doll in late September; people were selling them as high as $400 each – and getting it. At least for the first couple of days. After that, once the craze died down to a dull roar, you were lucky to get your money back, never mind turn a profit. Much of this though was because eBay became absolutely saturated with them; at any given time there were 2-3,000 of them listed.
Did you try to buy a PS3 when it shipped?
Scalpers made it harder for everyone else to buy PS3s, and didn’t even have to take a serious financial risk to do so, since they can just return them for a full refund. Granted, they’re out the time it took to stand in line for the product, but I don’t think that’s enough of a loss compared to how they inconvenienced everyone else- quite a few of the people in line behind them ALSO waited for a long time to legitimately purchase a PS3, only to lose out to someone who just wanted to make a quick buck on the PS3’s rarity.
I don’t have a problem with people who bought the PS3 to enjoy it, and for whatever reason had to return it. I do have a problem, though, with the people who purchased the device merely to make more money off of the demand for the thing, and who can now return it when their gamble didn’t pay off.
If someone speculates on the stock market, can they then return the stocks they purchased for the full purchase price if the bottom falls out?
Well, yeah, I don’t really disagree with any of that. Still, as far as I’m aware, there’s no law against buying a Playstation 3 with intent to resell on eBay. It may have been a jerk move, but if they didn’t defraud anyone and didn’t break any rules, I don’t see why they should be punished or prevented from returning the PS3 to the store. What kind of punishment are you envisioning, anyway?
I’d be perfectly happy if they were unable to return the PS3s, personally. Now, how to enforce that, I don’t know… but I’d really like it if they were somehow out the initial purchase price. Heck, I’d be satisfied if the stores insisted on a 15% “restocking” fee to return the console.
Well, you are right-in 3 weeks, my stepson has tried to sell a PS3 system on EBAY. All he got were scam buyers from Nigeria. very sophisticated-sent emails promising to pay $1600-via PAYPAL. They used buyer IDs with excellent ratings 9must have stolen legitimate buyers IDs0. Also, sent a fale PAYPAL statement., Amazing that crooks are so sophisticated. Needless to say, the PS3 has stayed with him.
You mean, like a store? 
My ex preordered the Wii system with the intent to make a profit on ebay. He waited in line like everyone else and picked up his systems like everyone else. I believe he tripled his money on ebay. Supply and demand. I see nothing wrong with this at all.
I think some store employees bought up the units before the general public ever had a shot at them.
It’s not like they’re concert tickets where if the scalper just tosses the ones that he can’t sell, that many people truly miss out on the show forever. All that they did was make a few people wait an extra three or four weeks before they could own a PS3.
I think that waiting all of that time for the thing, then not getting the money that they expected and assholes like me laughing at them is punishment enough.
I also see nothing wrong with buying something just to make a profit on Ebay - just seems like good business smarts to me - nothing unethical about it at all. If someone just HAS to have the Wii in time for christmas and is desperate enough to pay megabucks for it on Ebay - that’s just their choice. They could just wait a few weeks till supply increases and prices are sane again, but there’s no point bitching about someone who’s smart enough to make some money out of a good opportunity.
If by, “nothing wrong with this at all,” you mean, “although it’s an example of greed being manipulated for cheap but effective marketing, it appears to be legal,” I agree wholeheartedly. Not illegal, but something doesn’t need to be illegal to strike me as an ugly mixture of greed and marketing.
I’ll use Sony as the example, but Microsoft and Nintendo do the same thing. Do you really think that Sony spends millions of dollars developing, testing, and scaling up production only to find out, “oops, we don’t have very many to ship to the stores!” Not a chance. The artificial shortage is in the marketing playbook just like proprietary cables necessary to get an HD picture or bug fixes only available in premium priced special additions. Supply and demand my ass.
Every idiot lining up to scalp a game system is an unwitting cog in the marketing machine. Those especially exuberant idiots that make the news for fighting while in line are worth their weight in Guitar Heroes game controllers.
There is also nothing wrong, nor illegal, with wishing such idiots some comeuppance.
What’s the social utility in buying a scarce product, only to immediately resell it at an exorbitant profit?
If anyone should be “punished” for such a fiasco, it’s the retailers who sold multiple consoles to a single buyer. Why didn’t the adage “one unit per customer” not apply here? It’s not like the stores were afraid of the units going unsold and sitting in inventory. How is that even remotely fair to the legitimate buyers who only wanted one? Assume you deny selling more than one to the prick who is willing to pay cash for a dozen of them. What’s the worst that could happen, you lose one customer and gain ten more? Nah, let’s piss off the ten legitimate buyers to indulge the shithead who wants to resell all twelve of them on eBay even though we won’t see another nickel for it. Unless, of course, the little free-market maven struck a deal with the store manager for a cut of the online auction profits … now that would be a story, eh?
What a clusterfuck.
If we were talking about AIDS medication, I’d agree with you, but the fact is that we’re talking about a video game console. Scarce or not, it’s not an essential item. There’s probably little “social utility” in the practice except to teach us all that if people are dumb enough to pay $500 for something on Ebay that will be readily available at a store at a quarter the price just a few weeks later, they have no right to bitch about it.
As one poster said earlier, it’s supply and demand. If you want it that bad and there aren’t that many of them, you have to pay a higher price. Either wait for a while till there are more of them, or poney up the dough now. It’s just basic economics.