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Beating off scalpers is not rocket science (for the retail/vendors)

Borsch

Borsch

Borsch

Soldato
Joined
10 Jan 2012
Posts
3,099
Discuss. Not mentioning competitors name, but a multilayer system of captchas, payment cards and addresses is a straight forward enough system to implement. As is demonstrated by the UK shop that shall not be named. Of course, with it being all on its own it can't save the world the UK gamers, but - judging by the threads in this forum - it's outlet is still the best way of gettign a GPU for the ordinary folk.

The algorithm is trivial to implement:

import blacklist #contains previous buyers info, non-UK bank cards, etc
1. Click on the listing leads to captcha
2. IF solved captcha DO: record buyer's IP, billing address, name, card number, linked forum acc, etc
3. IF the above info NOT on the blacklist- DO: sell the gpu AND add details to the backlist
4. ELSE: print "enjoy your previously bought gpu"

I mean really, the scalper problem is not just down to mining - just look at the PS5 fiasco. And thus, it is bound to happen again and again, and again - because easy automation, bots, social media market places, ebay, and other such 21st century stuff. And each time, we'll just say "Oh dear, this never happened and here it is again" ? :)

IMO the anti-scalper directive should come from the vendors like Nvidia/AMD, but retailers could also win a lot of consumer good will by being proactive. Us consumers may also help - by pushing these concrete proposals to the vendors/retailers instead of fuming into the ether about the market forces and profiteering.
 
I've offered a few eBay sellers MSRP for 6700XTs and obviously been declined. more importantly, the ones I'm watching have been relisted several times now, so they will have to cut prices to sell, one has dropped nearly £300. After fees, they'll be lucky to scrape a few percent profit. A few retailers seem to have stock but at near scalper prices. It's only a matter of time
 
I don't get the approaches so many places are using - I guess part of that is limits with their software system and/or lacking flexibility with out-sourced IT, etc. though a little bit of a controversial one prioritising customers with existing order histories vs new accounts and having a limited unit count per account for a set time period rather than just indefinitely blocking an account/address would be a much better approach.
 
While i'm all for anti bots and 1 card per person limit, at the end of the day if people are going to be so loose with their cash they're gonna get mugged one way or another.

A friend, who is smart enough to know better, told me when his renewals are due for bills he simply can't be bothered to change provider as he's often too engrossed in having fun. I dread to think how much money people waste through being loose with their wallets.
 
the 6700xt isnt such a great card, or great at mining, silly pricing has nothing to do with it either, if it were such a great card, it would be much sort after, but there is less take up, its the higher end cards that the majority is after and such in short supply due to the known factors
 
Trouble is we know that some scalpers will use other people's details to order with, and checks impact people who genuinely are buying for other family members. Personally I have always waited for cards to go end of life anyway and bought them at a discount, eg Nvidia Asus Strix 970 at £180 and Vega 56 for £235. If that doesn't happen this generation then I will just wait for the AMD 7000 series and a bigger generation increase. At the moment there isn't a game that my card can't play and it can use FSR as that is rolled out
 
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ASMB said:
Trouble is we know that some scalpers will use other people's details to order with, and checks impact people who genuinely are buying for other family members.
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No system is perfect, but this would prevent bulk buying, and would prevent bots. Atm a bot can buy entire available stock in a single swoop. Getting other people's details is already much harder for the scalpers, but if "shipping to billing addresses only" is enforced, then the whole bulk buying thing becomes much harder still. Buying for family members would not be a problem as you could buy from a different retailer (asking retailers to share and update a single blacklist database would be too much).
Rroff said:
I guess part of that is limits with their software system and/or lacking flexibility with out-sourced IT, etc.
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Ideally this should be enforced by the vendors. if they can enforce review embargoes, then they can enforce anti-scalping measures. I don't think that the retail competitor in OP has done something that is technically or financially difficult for any other such retailer.
CrazyGreggy said:
I’m not beating a scalper off. They’re making enough dirty money without sexual gratification from me!
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Beat'em and eat'em Atari style :D
300
 
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ASMB said:
I have always waited for cards to go end of life anyway and bought them at a discount, eg Nvidia Asus Strix 970 at £180 and Vega 56 for £235.
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I did this with GTX470 (£150) but the problem is sometimes cards just go EOL and disappear from sale without big discounts. Take Pascal for example, the 1080ti came out over 4 years ago but never really dropped down much under £600 iirc.

Sometimes it's just in the timing, a retailer or manufacturer wants to shift some stock and you have a small window to grab a bargain.
 
Quartz said:
OCUK could nobble bots by requiring Authenticator codes.
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Why bother. Extra IT developement cost for what? Oc ui sells the same number of cards regardless

retailers have no motivation to commit to 100% bot prevention unless individual consumers are happy to pay extra for that service otherwise the retailer doesn't care they just want to sel ml cards
 
There's flaws in this system, as with most.

What if you bought one and it broke, then wanted to purchase another due to very extended replacement times. You'd be on the blacklist having already purchased a card.

What if you had two systems, ie a workstation and a gaming desktop, and required a powerful GPU in each.

Or if you wanted to gift one to a child? Needed more than one for a company use?

Bots can be limited, scalpers cannot without detriment to the regular consumer.
 
It's just not worth the hassle for retailers.

It's a shame as OCUK went in the right direction with the MM forum deals. Then they put it on the public forum, no idea why, maybe for good PR but the thing was a **** show, and I think many ended up on eBay.

Now they seem to have just given up with it all together.

I think it's a bit of 50/50, I do believe it may not be that easy for retailers to put in protocols so cards end up with gamers, and also 50 where is the financial motivation to do it?

Reputational motivation maybe, but let's face it people are generally fickle, and the retailer they've been slagging off the most in a month's time somehow magically has vast stock at RRP I guarantee you people will spend their money there anyway.

I do also agree the technology we have today is aiding this but not preventing.

Imagine there were no such things as online retailers and we had to physically go to a shop, wait in a queue and buy one. No automated stock alerts, bots, etc etc. This problem wouldn't exist.

The point is, there is no question of whether technology could be used to prevent scalping.
 
Why should the retailer invest money implementing counter measures, when the consumer can sort the problem for free? The consumer votes with their wallet and has the final say whether scalpers should continue.

In a perfect world, a scalper with lots of GPUs will get stuck with them and be forced to give up and sell them for a huge loss. Surely that would be far more satisfying? I'd love that.

Unfortunately the consumer votes to keep scalpers in business.
 
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