What is Scalping?
Scalping is the act of buying products with stock shortages and reselling them for a big profit. They often get resold for more than 100% profit margin.
What are examples of such products?
Consoles like PS5 and Xbox Series X/S (10-15 % are estimated to be bought by scalpers)
New models of CPUs (Scarcity also related to Crypto Mining)
New models of GPUs (Scarcity also related to Crypto Mining)
Sneakers
Why is it so bad?
Scalpers often organise in groups and this way are able to manipulate the markets more effectively. Bots are frequently used to search the internet for "bargains"and win auctions but in turn use up a high amount of bandwidth for retailers with Scalper bot traffic, which regurly causes crashes and higher costs.
The scarcity issue becomes bigger and the prices go up. Nowadays even sites like Amazon sell these products for a more "adjusted" price. In conclusion many customers are forced to either wait or pay up.
Some might say that Scalping is elitist since mostly the people with the right amount of cash get to buy a product which origionally cost half the price.
What are some defense arguments by the Scalping Community?
Many of them say that they try to help others and do it for charitables purposes. They spend their time searching, auctioning and making the product easily avaible (although for a much higher price) and a get paid for it.
It is also believed that what they are doing is nothing different any other distributor, altough in my opinion at some point it might become a taxes issue.
What can be done to reduce Scalping?
The government in the UK is working on a retail bot use ban, which makes one believe that it is not a minor issue. There are doubts that the ban will be of help.
Some companys already offer Anti-Scalper Bot software and services. Of course it costs money but it might be a good measure.
The retailer Newegg invented the "Newegg Shuffle" to combat the "first come first served" principle but many customers were not happy about it.
What is your opinion on Scalping? What can be done about it?
Comment below