Amazon enters the fight against console scalpers – what does it mean for your products?
For someone who plays video games, there’s nothing more exciting than a new console or piece of hardware going on sale to the public. A release date can have the same magical feeling that Christmas morning did (does?), but too often scalpers have consumers feeling heartache instead because rather than receiving gifts, they find a note under the tree from Santa asking for $1200 plus shipping to deliver that $500 game console they asked for.
2020 was undoubtedly the year of the scalper with a plethora of opportunists taking advantage of the need for critical supplies at the outset of COVID-19. With the release of the Playstation 5, XBOX X/S, and other high-end PC hardware, scalpers had even more lucrative options for how to further darken a year that had already kept the punches coming – which is why we are suddenly seeing various Amazon sellers trying to hock their PS5’s for as high as $1,693.
These scalpers use automated programs called “bots” that are designed to purchase a specific product once it’s listed on a site like Amazon, and then resell that product for up to three times the MSRP as a third-party seller. Products that are in high demand but low in stock often disappear within seconds, and the PS5 is just the most recent product to go MIA. This frustrates the hell out of gamers everywhere – not to mention their significant others, who sincerely don’t want to hear about it anymore. (Tonia, my darling, please come back.)
Last year, Amazon was under fire for allowing third-party sellers to price gouge customers on necessities like toilet paper because of the pandemic. In response, it took a proactive approach to put a stop to price gouging. Amazon has since disallowed anonymity for third-party sellers, making it easier to identify and report scalpers. And when all else fails, improvise! Enjoy that cache of useless controllers, ya robot jerk!
Some regulation is great because it brings some law and order to what is otherwise the wild west of e-commerce. By allowing only legitimate third-party markets to flourish in the Amazon-O-Sphere, Amazon offers customers a fair deal and sellers less stress about competing with ridiculous prices on either end of the spectrum. Which is great, because when it comes to gamers, maybe one spectrum is enough.
