Anyone who has tried picking up a PS5 knows how difficult it is to refresh the Best Buy website and hopes the ‘Add to Cart’ button turns yellow. Not only do production issues limit inventory, but scalpers use bots to buy as many consoles as possible.
This has obviously created a lot of anger directed at scalpers who continue to buy up a limited stock in hopes of turning consoles for a profit. Yet some of them seem upset about all the ‘bad press’ they have received because they hoard these consoles like a modern Smaug.
Forbes’ Janhoi McGregor spoke to the co-founder of a scalping advisory group called The Lab. A person who goes to Jordan has strong feelings about how he and his group are portrayed in the media. Jordan insists that scalpers are completely misunderstood, and that their negative public opinion is completely unfair.
“There seems to be a LOT of bad pressure on this incredibly valuable industry, and I do not feel it is justified; we are only a middleman for limited quantity of items.”
Middleman is definitely the wrong word there. Technically, the retailers are the ‘middlemen’, as they sit directly between the manufacturer and the customer. But Jordan says further.
‘Essentially every business sells their products. Tesco, for example, buys milk for 26p per liter from farmers and sells it for more than 70p per liter. It seems like no one ever complains to the extent that they are currently doing to ourselves. ”
No one complains because it is not the same at all. Retailers certainly buy from producers and sell it at a profit, but it is not as if Tesco then uses bots to buy all the milk from its competitors and sell it to people for £ 1 per liter.
Basically, Jordan markets scalpers as the solution to a problem they have created themselves. Because if they do not store consoles like Scrooge McDuck store gold coins, people will only have systems available at Walmart, GameStop or wherever. There will still be limited quantities, but the situation will not be nearly as bad.
People obviously see through his transparent excuses, with one anonymous person telling McGregor that Jordan is ‘being misled’. He does not understand that he is still a low profit in his own Tesco analogy. He’s not Robin Hood. ‘
One staff member of Tom’s Guide also referred to Jordan as the “Martin Shkreli of video games”. Shkreli, called by some people ‘Pharma Bro’, became notorious in 2015 for obtaining the manufacturing license for the life-saving drug Daraprim and increasing the price by $ 13.50 to $ 750 per pill. He regularly justified himself on Twitter and news programs and bragged about his pursuit of profit. Shkreli is currently serving a seven-year federal prison sentence for security fraud.
Unfair benefits
Another scalper at The Lab, known as Regan, also showed McGregor how fast scalping bots are. One bot named Velox was about to buy a Supreme x Smurfs Skateboard in less than 2.3 seconds. It is much faster than any human can get it right, and it gives the scalpers an extremely unfair advantage. Not only that, Velox is capable of bringing about 3D Secure, an extra layer of security retailers in the UK need to be used. This confirms that the buyer is the legal owner of the credit or debit card used, and can add extra seconds to the purchase time.
Scalpers have such an unfair advantage that Jordan complained that they would sometimes be beaten by other scalpers with their own collisions. In other words, scalpers need to be just as vigilant as regular customers if they want to get their PS5 purchases on time. But the irony seems to be completely lost on members of The Lab.
Nevertheless, Regan also claims that scalpers perform a valid service, and if they did not buy consoles at a neck speed, some players would not be able to get units at all.
‘Your average person who just wants one of the consoles to struggle to get close. Many of these sites have minimal or easy protection against the bot. They often release shares at stupid times or without any form of schedule. A retailer I would not call the released stock of the PlayStation 5s in the early hours of the morning. Which shows the lack of care on their part. The only people who would know about this stock were people with monitors within cooking groups. ”
Uh huh.
Scalping only helps the scalpers
“Every villain is the hero of their own story” is the phrase that comes to mind when you read this comment. Jordan and Regan do not consider themselves the bad guys, and insist that they help people by giving them the chance to drive other prospective gamers out of their money.
‘I’m mainly trying to help others now, that’s all that matters to me. The whole group came close to the beginning of the first British exclusion and it makes me so happy that I can help people earn extra money for themselves. ‘
This is an argument that has been used by scalpers before, insisting that the pandemic means that people have fallen in difficult times and that the consolidated consoles are being sold for profit, helping people to pay bills and put food on the table . Jordan also claims that The Lab uses their income to do good.
“We also do a lot for charity. I myself, or collectively as a group, donate to charity almost monthly at this point. “Over the past month, we have donated a large portion of our membership fees to a local food bank,” Regan said.
Unfortunately, Regan did not provide McGregor with details of which food bank the group donated, meaning he could not independently verify the donation.
Charity or not, and no matter how they justify their actions, scalping is scalping. You physically take consoles and sell systems for higher prices in hopes of making money. Even if you do not buy consoles yourself and only help other people to take part in the action, you are just as guilty.
Jordan claims to have bought 25 PS5 consoles in January, selling systems for £ 700 ($ 967) each. As a reference, the disc-ready PS5 costs £ 450 in the UK.
Do not be tempted by hacked consoles
Do the scalpers deserve the death threats Jordan claims the lab received? Absolutely not, especially since sending death threats is a serious crime. But they deserve every grip of criticism and bad press sent to their side. Because when it comes down to it, they place themselves in the supply chain with the goal of making themselves money, and doing so at the expense of ordinary people.
But as long as people are willing to pay too high prices for a PS5, the scalpers will be there to take their cash. I also doubt that the attempt to make scalp illegal will deter determined storekeepers.
Whatever you do, do not buy one. We understand this, it’s outrageous to try to get a console only to find that they’s sold out in less than a minute. Buying a scalper just encourages them to keep going, and that means the PS5 stock issue will last much longer than it would otherwise.
Just be patient, sit back and keep an eye on the upcoming stock with our guide on where to buy PS5. It’s not going to be easy, but it’s worth picking up a $ 500 console instead of $ 1000.