Scalping

[Grumble]

This is of personal interest to me, as I’m trying to buy a PS5 when they come available. Demand for the PS5 has well outstripped supply, this has led to “scalpers” moving in. This refers to people buying consoles solely in order to sell them on eBay or other private sale sites, for sometimes more than double the original purchase price. They run bots to snap up the consoles before mere people can hope to compete. How much can and should this practice be banned or regulated? At some point the scalpers will be left with a stock of consoles that they can’t shift above retail price and the situation will return to normal, but in the meantime it’s incredibly frustrating.

[Bird on a Fire]

Automated speculation. Late-stage capitalism is a beaut.

[Bewildered]

Why is this thread not about actual scalping?

I want my money back.

[Cardinal Fang]

This annoys me about tickets for things. I've had times where I've sat on the phone for (literal) hours waiting tickets to come on sale then within seconds we're told they're sold out. Meanwhile there are loads of tickets on resale sites for vastly more than the cover price.

With tickets there was an attempt a few years ago with a private member's bill to regulate it - basically sellers wouldn't be able resell a ticket to a gig or sporting event for more than 10% above the original price (10% extra means that genuine fans who are selling tickets they can't use can also recoup things like postage costs, credit card fees etc). But it didn't get through as one major party voted against it (guess which one).

I wonder if there could be similar restrictions on other items - so if you're reselling within a period of it going on sale (say 3 months), then you can't change [x] amount over the list price?

CF

[Grumble]

Automated speculation. Late-stage capitalism is a beaut.

How many more stages are there?

[Herainestold]

This annoys me about tickets for things. I've had times where I've sat on the phone for (literal) hours waiting tickets to come on sale then within seconds we're told they're sold out. Meanwhile there are loads of tickets on resale sites for vastly more than the cover price.

With tickets there was an attempt a few years ago with a private member's bill to regulate it - basically sellers wouldn't be able resell a ticket to a gig or sporting event for more than 10% above the original price (10% extra means that genuine fans who are selling tickets they can't use can also recoup things like postage costs, credit card fees etc). But it didn't get through as one major party voted against it (guess which one).

I wonder if there could be similar restrictions on other items - so if you're reselling within a period of it going on sale (say 3 months), then you can't change [x] amount over the list price?

CF

Just make the whole thing illegal.

[jimbob]

Automated speculation. Late-stage capitalism is a beaut.

How many more stages are there?

Mad Max?

[sTeamTraen]

I'm afraid that neither my inner Trotskyist nor my inner free-market supporter (they have interesting meetings at 4am when I can't sleep) can get very excited about any sort of regulation of the price or resale conditions of non-essential, high-marketing-content consumer products such as video entertainment consoles, or tickets to see popular beat combos playing live. Nor will either of them have any sympathy for the less successful scalpers who get stuck with those products when the price starts dropping.

[Orabona]

Why is this thread not about actual scalping?

I want my money back.

Money back be damned. I want my hair back.

[Bird on a Fire]

With ticket sales, some places (often at bands' requests) limit the numbers individuals can buy, and put people's names on the tickets, to make scalping less attractive.

PlayStation presumably works through online accounts these days, so they could limit sales to one per account or something, and make the signup process bot proof.

But they probably don't care very much. This way, its perceived scarcity generates a bit of extra attention and free publicity and makes the normal price seem more acceptable. (And I don't believe for a moment that they couldn't have made enough of them to meet expected initial demand before launching the product)

Apple used to do this with the iPhone releases, sending them in dribs and drabs to retailers, with unpredictable delivery schedules, so they were always sold out and we had to tell customers we didn't know when we were getting more. It's a deliberate marketing choice as much as anything.

[Grumble]

With ticket sales, some places (often at bands' requests) limit the numbers individuals can buy, and put people's names on the tickets, to make scalping less attractive.

PlayStation presumably works through online accounts these days, so they could limit sales to one per account or something, and make the signup process bot proof.

But they probably don't care very much. This way, its perceived scarcity generates a bit of extra attention and free publicity and makes the normal price seem more acceptable. (And I don't believe for a moment that they couldn't have made enough of them to meet expected initial demand before launching the product)

Apple used to do this with the iPhone releases, sending them in dribs and drabs to retailers, with unpredictable delivery schedules, so they were always sold out and we had to tell customers we didn't know when we were getting more. It's a deliberate marketing choice as much as anything.

There is a worldwide shortage of chips, so I’m not sure that they could have made enough.

[bjn]

Why is this thread not about actual scalping?

I want my money back.

Scalping was introduced to North America by europeans when they were paying bounties for the murder of native Americans.

[tenchboy]

Why is this thread not about actual scalping?

I want my money back.

Scalping was introduced to North America by europeans when they were paying bounties for the murder of native Americans.

That's what I thought too; I was going to add that it was something that they had picked up in India and had then taken to America; I thought I'd best check first: seems that iablctt

Of the approximately 500 bodies at the Crow Creek massacre site, 90 percent of the skulls show evidence of scalping. The event took place circa 1325 AD

some days are school days.

[dyqik]

Though it'd be a mistake to think that that has much in the way of implications about native americans at other times and places.

North America was a big and diverse place pre european settlement. The two groups at Crow Creek spoke different languages from separate primary language groups, for example.

[Bird on a Fire]

Though it'd be a mistake to think that that has much in the way of implications about native americans at other times and places.

North America was a big and diverse place pre european settlement. The two groups at Crow Creek spoke different languages from separate primary language groups, for example.

Wikipedia seems to suggest it was quite widespread before the European arrival https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalping

But it doesn't have a definitive list or map of the practice. What are the brass tacks here?

[tenchboy]

Wikipedia seems to suggest it was quite widespread before the European arrival https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalping

But it doesn't have a definitive list or map of the practice. What are the brass tacks here?

Humans are c.nts and especially c.ntish when they have power over other humans with no consequences to themselves.
Wikipedia/atrocities: from gengis khan to the thirty years war from the first world war to the german and russian revolutions from the kings of benin to the incas and the aztecs the german genocide and bosnia. civilisation is a very thin veneer. create an outgroup, demonise them, create a command structure whereby the consequences of disobedience are fatal to the individual regardless of the inhumanity of the orders and also create a 'brotherhood' of troops that demands loyalty to each other and within which disloyalty results in social outcasting from your entire life: oath taking helps. That's yer brass tacks.
Happy days
TB

(off now so won't be able to engage)

[Cardinal Fang]

This annoys me about tickets for things. I've had times where I've sat on the phone for (literal) hours waiting tickets to come on sale then within seconds we're told they're sold out. Meanwhile there are loads of tickets on resale sites for vastly more than the cover price.

With tickets there was an attempt a few years ago with a private member's bill to regulate it - basically sellers wouldn't be able resell a ticket to a gig or sporting event for more than 10% above the original price (10% extra means that genuine fans who are selling tickets they can't use can also recoup things like postage costs, credit card fees etc). But it didn't get through as one major party voted against it (guess which one).

I wonder if there could be similar restrictions on other items - so if you're reselling within a period of it going on sale (say 3 months), then you can't change [x] amount over the list price?

CF

Just make the whole thing illegal.

I disagree

I've bought tickets to things that I then couldn't go to, and had to sell them on. I've listed them at a couple quid above face value, just so I can also reclaim postage costs and credit card fees (and don't get me started on the stupid fees some places charge for you paying with a debit or credit card). I had an instance a few years ago when goddaughter wanted a "must have" something for Xmas, and I put my name on the waiting list in a few places (and paid for them), and ended up with 3 of the same thing. Again I sold the 2 I didn't need for slightly higher than list price to recoup postage etc (but again literally only a couple of quid extra. I didn't make a profit). I've no problem with people selling things on they genuinely don't need. It's the ones who buy (especially buy in volume) with the specific intent to sell, and who mark prices up far beyond the list price - in other words the profiteers.

Making reselling illegal would penalise those who have legit reasons for selling. But capping what you can resell for would still allow the genuine resellers, who are just doing it to get rid of it, to do so, whilst taking out the scalpers.

CF

[Grumble]

Finding a way to limit automated buying would be the best way I think, and limiting how many people can buy of in demand items. But tricky, I can easily imagine a group of 10 friends wanting to go to a gig and having to buy them in one transaction so they’re all sat/stood near each other.

I don’t think a regulatory solution would be sensible, more if a retailer wants to make people happy they could try to limit scalping.

[bolo]

Buying at a lower price and reselling at a higher price is how the entire economy works. Have you ever bought cheese from a supermarket or a bottle of wine from a wine shop or a car from a car dealer? You paid more for it than they did. So if you want to stop scalping, you're going to need a better definition than just selling something for more than you paid for it.

[jaap]

Buying at a lower price and reselling at a higher price is how the entire economy works. Have you ever bought cheese from a supermarket or a bottle of wine from a wine shop or a car from a car dealer? You paid more for it than they did. So if you want to stop scalping, you're going to need a better definition than just selling something for more than you paid for it.

It would bring an end to all those antiques programmes on tv.

[Grumble]

Buying at a lower price and reselling at a higher price is how the entire economy works. Have you ever bought cheese from a supermarket or a bottle of wine from a wine shop or a car from a car dealer? You paid more for it than they did. So if you want to stop scalping, you're going to need a better definition than just selling something for more than you paid for it.

Scalping is disrupting the market by forcing the supply situation to be artificially bad. Much like panic buying of toilet roll before lockdown 1 but deliberate and with no intention of being the eventual user.

[TopBadger]

Not sure what the problem is... I managed to buy tickets for a James Blunt concert... paid face value from the actual ticket site, there were loads of them available...

[discovolante]

When Rage Against The Machine were selling tickets for their 2020 tour (yeah that one, what a corker) they set it up so that they kept back a number of tickets for each gig. The price of those tickets would always just undercut the price of the tickets that were being resold by scalpers, and they donated the difference between the sale price and the standard ticket price to local charities and activist organisations. At least that's how I remember it.

[bolo]

Buying at a lower price and reselling at a higher price is how the entire economy works. Have you ever bought cheese from a supermarket or a bottle of wine from a wine shop or a car from a car dealer? You paid more for it than they did. So if you want to stop scalping, you're going to need a better definition than just selling something for more than you paid for it.

Scalping is disrupting the market by forcing the supply situation to be artificially bad. Much like panic buying of toilet roll before lockdown 1 but deliberate and with no intention of being the eventual user.

Scalping does not affect supply. It's possible only when supply is already constrained, e.g. by the fixed number of seats in a concert venue or by the limited factory capacity of a graphics card manufacturer. What's artificial is when the ordinary vendor sets a price that's lower than the market clearing price. Then someone can make money by buying at the artificially low price and reselling at the price the market will bear.

[Herainestold]

Buying at a lower price and reselling at a higher price is how the entire economy works. Have you ever bought cheese from a supermarket or a bottle of wine from a wine shop or a car from a car dealer? You paid more for it than they did. So if you want to stop scalping, you're going to need a better definition than just selling something for more than you paid for it.

Scalping is disrupting the market by forcing the supply situation to be artificially bad. Much like panic buying of toilet roll before lockdown 1 but deliberate and with no intention of being the eventual user.

Scalping does not affect supply. It's possible only when supply is already constrained, e.g. by the fixed number of seats in a concert venue or by the limited factory capacity of a graphics card manufacturer. What's artificial is when the ordinary vendor sets a price that's lower than the market clearing price. Then someone can make money by buying at the artificially low price and reselling at the price the market will bear.

It affects supply because the scalpers buy up a large portion of the tickets or graphics cards or whatever, leaving a much smaller amount for the ordinary folk who have no intention of re selling. Then the scalper can use the the contrived scarcity to drive up prices and reap windfall profits.
Event tickets and such are mostly digital these days, they should be like airfare tickets and non -transferable. Link them to the phone used for ordering and only that person can access the event. If the buyer cannot attend, resell them to the vendor. Excess profits are another way that capitalists disrupt the functioning of civil society. It must end.