“A PS5 for every room in the house, even the bow.”
Another day of new PlayStation 5 shares, another day of scalpers. The British retailer Argos is in the spotlight this time because he had the stock uploaded before it was officially offered for sale.
IGN reports that today’s planned inventory was affected by the fact that many consoles were fueled by an organized scalping group yesterday.
This group, which we will not mention here, claims that they were able to locate and visit URLs on the Argos website before they became publicly available.
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Unconfirmed reports from anonymous Argos staff members posted on social media last night suggested that managers at the chain be made aware of the early sales and that the orders be canceled.
But this morning, members of the paid scalping ring posted photos of themselves walking down to Argos to pick up their clicks and collect orders. We contacted Argos for comment.
Other chains were also hit by scalpers.
Another subscriber of the same scalping ring boasted on social media that he used the service last night to pick up seven consoles from four different stores.
“A PS5 for every room in the house, even the bow,” he wrote.
The group itself has meanwhile celebrated being named in the media coverage of its actions – something it hoped would attract more paying customers to its services.
Last week, fellow UK retailer GAME rejected the report from another scalping group that it had secured 2000 PS5 consoles in just one day, saying that these orders were only pre-sales that it had yet to verify.
And while these scalping groups do succeed – as today’s photos show – it’s also worth remembering why they like to have such big mouths on social media: because they’re constantly trying to attract their own customers. These scalping groups are run as businesses for their owners, with access to members charged behind high monthly subscription fees.
Last month, a group of Scottish MPs proposed that British legislation was needed to stop the increase in scalping for items such as game consoles, especially as the practice is already banned for tickets for events.