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NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080Ti to be "available" on June 3rd, RTX 3070Ti on June 10th

Associate
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10 Feb 2021
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608
Bots can obviously penetrate that system I would have thought.
I dont think so. The need for a new billing address and shipping address for each order makes it very hard. Im sure some double orders get through, but not many.
They also decline any order where the billing address cant be verified. Like when using virtual cards from the likes of revolute.

I think in general people over-estimate how many bots are actually in use. Bots are not easy to setup and run.
The most likely reason is actually loosing to people quicker than others. So many stock alert servers on Telegram, Twitter and Discord with 1,000s of members on each.
 
Associate
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10 Feb 2021
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608
the only way to make it fair is buy in person, and have limits on how may you can buy like above 1 per customer, to address and names, ask for photo id like passport
That creates a bit of a data protection nightmare though no?
Now the store needs to keep a copy of 100's of copies of photo ID? Then when a new sale is made cross reference against this?

Physical store only sales are also only fair if there are nationwide locations. Otherwise it limits the cards to just those near the store.
 
Associate
Joined
15 Apr 2016
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1,173
the only way to make it fair is buy in person, and have limits on how may you can buy like above 1 per customer, to address and names, ask for photo id like passport
That automatically excludes anyone who can't travel to the store for whatever reason, transport, work, other commitments etc
 
Associate
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I'm about 84 miles away and personally I'd have no problem jumping in the car or on the bike and driving/riding up for a GPU (I've driven much further for much more useless items in the past lol) but many people are not able to do that for whatever reason. In fact I have actually driven to the store for a GPU in the past.
 
Associate
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I'm about 84 miles away and personally I'd have no problem jumping in the car and driving up for a GPU (I've driven much further for much more useless items in the past lol) but many people are not able to do that for whatever reason.
In the US the retailer for the 3080Ti FE did this.
Ended up with a bunch of people camping outside each store for up to 3 days in order to get a card...
 
Associate
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I live 120 miles from OcUK, but would totally drive up if I had to (and in fact, I have done before!)
Again though it will always favour those closer, imagine they posted a message saying first come first serve at the store, people closer with less commitments would always get there first.
 
Associate
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10 Feb 2021
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608
Exactly, there is no way to make everyone happy and make it 100% fair.

Indeed.

Of the various measures I have seen employed:

Limit cards to 1 per billing / shipping address / customer name
Raffle cards in a lottery
Limit card sales to physical stores
Forum code

I think the best is the 1st. The raffles are an ok option too... but I hear the biggest US retailer that went this route ended up doing a bunch of bundles that way. So yes you get your 3080...but also an IED PSU or a Motherboard nobody wants.
 
Associate
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15 Apr 2016
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1,173
Indeed.

Of the various measures I have seen employed:

Limit cards to 1 per billing / shipping address / customer name
Raffle cards in a lottery
Limit card sales to physical stores
Forum code

I think the best is the 1st. The raffles are an ok option too... but I hear the biggest US retailer that went this route ended up doing a bunch of bundles that way. So yes you get your 3080...but also an IED PSU or a Motherboard nobody wants.
lol at IED PSU, bundles are such BS.
 
OcUK Systems
OcUK Staff
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16 Nov 2007
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2,986
Location
Stoke-on-Trent
Limit cards to 1 per billing / shipping address / customer name
Not currently able to do this long term without massive manual processes.
Raffle cards in a lottery
that's illegal unless you have a license to operate a lottery and a reseller doing this is likely to get royally hammered in the media because it's tantamount to scalping.
Limit card sales to physical stores
We don't have any anymore, closed during lockdown and converted due to a desperate need for space
Forum code
That's the most likely but it's going to upset some people still.
 
Associate
Joined
15 Apr 2016
Posts
1,173
If it was me I'd post a thread on the forums inviting people to buy a raffle ticket for £100, literally a paper raffle ticket from a ticket book and then actually post it to their house. 1 per customer and only to a physical UK address, and have a good old fashion ticket draw live streamed on YouTube or whatever platform where they draw 1 ticket for every GPU they have in stock plus a few extras as backup, the winning ticket holders (who at this point have valid UK addresses and have already paid £100 so are serious buyers, not bots or casual chancers hoping to cash in or whatever) get the chance to pick the GPU they want to purchase (1st ticket gets first dibs etc), if they decline or don't respond within 24hrs a backup drawn ticket holder gets their place. All winners get their £50 back by way of a discount applied when they purchase the GPU over the phone and all non winning ticket holders get their £50 back minus the cost that OC incurred to ship the ticket. That way you are not trying to sell 20 (for example) items to a few hundred people and keep the announcement and distribution of those items fair across the board. You can sell a few hundred raffle tickets over the space of a few days or whatever.

Or something like that anyway.
 
Associate
Joined
3 Jun 2021
Posts
41
Location
Wales
With the upmost respect. How can we tell that you're not a scalper? How do we know that you're not one of these people who are operating bots? We've had thousands of forum sign ups in the last year, even ones with funky user names like yours, but not all of them are going to be genuine.

I hope that you can see it from our point of view. On the day that 3080Ti launched over 90% of the traffic in the graphics card section was flagged as bots and cloudflare is far from perfect. We can't, in good conscience put the cards up for public sale when we know that genuine customers aren't as fast as bots. The last time we put 3070 online we received over 200 orders in a matter of minutes (This is proof that the vast majority of these were auto-buy bots)
When we last tried to do a sale via the public forum, a significant chunk of the cards that we sold ended up being scalped. I personally banned about fifty customers over the two weeks following the sale. I don't have time to keep doing this every time we sell some cards and we've been very open about the fact that our current systems don't have the capability of identifying a genuine customers with order history before allowing purchase. There are scalper collectives operating hundreds of bots with hundreds of names & addresses of genuine people. Those people hand the cards to the scalpers and receive a fee. From a ecommerce software point of view there's absolutely no way to discern these from genuine customers.

I love that we have loyal customers and I'm well aware that we have a lot more loyal customers than we have forum members, but if the technology doesn't allow it, and we don't have hundreds of staff to take calls, the options available to us are incredibly limited.

I can see it from your point of view, really I can. And I'm not suggesting that I have a better solution, because I don't. I was going to suggest you could use the age of the account, but reallistically that means nothing. I'm merely pointing out that the MM solution alienates a significant number of loyal customers.

You're absolutely right re: scalpers, literally anyone could be one. Providing proof of address, proof of ID, or even turning up at the store in person proves precisely nothing. It just proves you're a human with a valid identity. Johnny Human could do all of those things, then drive home smiling, safe in the knowledge he'll be palming his card off to a scalper for a finders' fee.

I'm just venting frustration more than anything. Very strange to be in a situation where I *want* to give a specific retailer my money, and they're actively preventing me from doing so :D
 
Soldato
Joined
19 Oct 2002
Posts
4,469
Location
wiltshire
For any raffle to take place, you also have to have a free entry option as well, thats the law, like send your name and address on a postcard for free entry, i think the only way forward, is code on forum, but like Scott said, will upset some people, but any option they choose, will upset someone.
 
Associate
Joined
15 Apr 2016
Posts
1,173
For any raffle to take place, you also have to have a free entry option as well, thats the law, like send your name and address on a postcard for free entry, i think the only way forward, is code on forum, but like Scott said, will upset some people, but any option they choose, will upset someone.
This is true but you'd be amazed at how many do not read the small print that states you can enter for free and even less people actually go through with it because apparently the simple act of posting something physically is enough to put a lot of people off. I started entering those competitions to win cars etc via post after reading their terms on how to do it but you'll never guess what, none of them ever responded to say that my entries had been acknowledged, I was doing several at a time regularly just to see what happened and never had a single reply, even though they stayed that you'd get confirmation. I even messaged them all via email about it and guess what, no replies.
 
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