Reddit user discovers msi scalping own 3080s on ebay for massive profits

[Warin]

34 minutes ago, Jet_ski said:

That is my bad! I don’t know why they advertised it to me!

No idea.  For a minute I was afraid they had turned into scam artists, which would have made me really sad.  They are about the best brick and mortar retailer I have been able to find since NCIX was mismanaged into bankruptcy.
 

Maybe, if you saw it through here, it was just a well intentioned algorithm that decided you were cool enough to see Canadian ads?

 

More on topic, if this all ends up being a horrible idea from someone at MSI, I am going to be more than a little upset.  I like MSI products and it would suck to never buy another one.

[S w a t s o n]

It's definitely MSI.

 

Spoiler

Remember when Sapphire/ASUS were selling pallets of 580's to miners in china during the shortage at above market price?

Swatson Farms remembers

 

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

14 minutes ago, Quinnell said:

Glad to see this is fake.  

you might wanna look closely, it's far from it being fake.  

[Random_Person1234]

19 minutes ago, Quinnell said:

Glad to see this is fake.  

At this moment we don’t concretely know if it’s fake or not.

[GDRRiley]

2 minutes ago, Random_Person1234 said:

At this moment we don’t concretely know if it’s fake or not.

starlit partner is owned by MSI it says it like 4 posts up

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

6 minutes ago, Random_Person1234 said:

At this moment we don’t concretely know if it’s fake or not.

we definitely know from all the trademarks and legal infos associated with the ebay seller and MSI it isn't even close to being a fake with 3 years of reviews and trademark that's owned ages ago unless its confirmed its fake, its far from being fake 
 

Quote

Trademarks and company names are different concepts. You need to check the state’s Corporate Registration

https://www.sos.ca.gov/business-programs/business-entities/cbs-search-tips

This is 100% definitely owned by legit MSI

That said likely what’s happening is this is their refurb/returns arm, and typically they liquidate returned items and probably lets eBay auto-price. In 99% of cases this is below MSRP.

This might sometimes be new units as includes review units that weren’t accepted etc (eg you mail one to CNBC and they’re like.. no thanks) or sample they kept in box.

 

 

 

3 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

starlit partner is owned by MSI it says it like 4 posts up

reading is hard, also selective bias. 

[Random_Person1234]

7 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

starlit partner is owned by MSI it says it like 4 posts up

Although the current evidence would show that Starlit is owned by MSI, I don’t want to jump to conclusions before I see what someone like Gamers Nexus has to say after talking with people at MSI or what MSI officially says in a statement of some sorts.

[GDRRiley]

1 minute ago, Random_Person1234 said:

Although the current evidence would show that Starlit is owned by MSI, I don’t want to jump to conclusions before I see what someone like Gamers Nexus has to say after talking with people at MSI or what MSI officially says in a statement of some sorts.

I'm almost certain GN has talked about starlit before and it is 100% owned and run by MSI

[S w a t s o n]

5 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

I'm almost certain GN has talked about starlit before and it is 100% owned and run by MSI

They themselves are still "confirming" but I would bet all the money in my bank account it's MSI now, all the evidence points to it, it was shown that MSI does own MSI Computer Corp who owns Starlit Partner soooo yea, we got em.

New speedrun record for the internet shitting down a company's throat?

 

Edit: Now that I think about this company has existed for years? So they've been doing this for the last couple launches I bet, maybe not so speedrun

[SpaceGhostC2C]

2 hours ago, givingtnt said:

Now that's some price fixing.
 

It is the opposite of price fixing. Price fixing is when a number of potential competitors agree on a price, then adjust their supply to meet demands at the agreed price. Basically, MSRP is price fixing, except it's "suggested" and that's how they keep it legal. But the goal of MSRP is price fixing. This, on the other hand, looks a lot more like free markets. 

 

1 hour ago, Gamer Schnitzel said:

These retailers are allowed to price the goods at whatever price they like. The MSRP is meant to be recommended. This has nothing to do with the issue at hand.

How so? This thread is about retail pricing, I don't see how you can claim it had "nothing to do". Starlit Partners is a retailer setting a non-suggested price for graphic cards, as you said retailers could do. It would seem MSI owns this particular retailer, which isn't that uncommon either - many companies have partners or affiliates who flip customer returns and refurbished products. It's not clear to me whether Starlit Partners was also selling new, "untarnished" items, but even if so - what's the difference with Dell? That it is vertically integrated with MSI? So the point is that MSI should not sell their cards at market-clearing prices, but rather give it to other large companies at a fixed price, then let those set market-clearing prices de keep the profits? Why?

If you want to make a general argument against free market prices, go ahead, but you cannot claim some market prices are relevant and others aren't. If not, then what is the argument? Q

[Random_Person1234]

5 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

I'm almost certain GN has talked about starlit before and it is 100% owned and run by MSI

https://mobile.twitter.com/GamersNexus/status/1313725956578856960

[ShinRamen]

Oh Boy, what am I waking up to again? 2020 keeps on giving us shit even in Q4 it seems. 

 

Gotta admit it looks far from being fake right now, but I need a 100% confirmation before I get my trusty pitchfork out.  Until then boys:

 

[Ex14]

Just wondering... whats the difference between this and the whole pricing up during the 10-series drought cause of the mining boom. 

Dont get me wrong this is scummy. but most of these companies are scummy anyway.

[S w a t s o n]

Unrelated but actually very related:
https://old.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/j679u8/3080_stock_situation_in_canada_memory_express_way/
 

Spoiler

Dank

[givingtnt]

16 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

 

Oh yeah, I got the term wrong.

I ment price gouging.

[Spotty]

36 minutes ago, poochyena said:

if you don't like the price something is being sold at, then just don't buy it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I agree, but with a caveat...

This whole problem, whether it's MSI or not, is the result of people who are willing to pay double the retail price for a graphics card. No-one should actually be buying these cards listed on ebay, but apparently people were buying them.

 

I think the problem most people have with this news is based heavily on the supply/demand issues of the cards at the moment and their frustrations with it. It's not so much that the cards are being sold at a high price but I think it's the idea that MSI might be taking cards that would have been sent to retailers and is instead withholding those cards so that they can allegedly take advantage of the supply/demand situation to sell them at exorbitant prices on ebay under a different account.

 

If there were no supply/demand issues with the cards and you could walk in to Best Buy or MicroCenter and choose from a dozen different models of cards on the shelf no-one would care if MSI or someone else listed them on ebay for double the price.

 

The thing that makes me think that this might not be MSI is the quantity of cards sold. Someone posted earlier that the listing stated 4 cards were sold. Would a large company like MSI do this for 4 cards? Doesn't make sense... But then again when you look at stories of retail stores only receiving a small number of cards (single digits) then maybe it does make sense. Look at Bitwit's video about the people lined up for days to get a video card when the store was only getting 20 3080 cards in stock.

[Random_Person1234]

https://mobile.twitter.com/LinusTech/status/1313693786216644608
The listing for the 3080s have been taken down.

Edit: Now that I think more about it, if it is a regular scalper, why would they take it down? As seen in Linus’ tweet they might have gotten 1 or 2 curious buyers if they kept it up.

[leadeater]

7 minutes ago, Spotty said:

I think the problem most people have with this news is based heavily on the supply/demand issues of the cards at the moment and their frustrations with it. It's not so much that the cards are being sold at a high price but I think it's the idea that MSI might be taking cards that would have been sent to retailers and is instead withholding those cards so that they can allegedly take advantage of the supply/demand situation to sell them at exorbitant prices on ebay under a different account

I would also like to add the potential issue of MSI not honoring existing back orders to price gouge buyers on ebay, specifically this I think is worthy of some good slapping on the wrist from Nvidia if that is the case.

[Deus Voltage]

Just now, leadeater said:

I would also like to add the potential issue of MSI not honoring existing back orders to price gouge buyers on ebay, specifically this I think is worthy of some good slapping on the wrist from Nvidia if that is the case.

What kind of slapping is Nvidia capable of doing to MSI? This is a bit of a first I think, but my history on these things is a bit lacking.

[leadeater]

2 minutes ago, Deus Voltage said:

What kind of slapping is Nvidia capable of doing to MSI? This is a bit of a first I think, but my history on these things is a bit lacking.

Nvidia hold all the power here, make them look bad and you go down the list of GPU package allocation then you have nothing to sell at all.

 

Edit:

Which is the counter argument to MSI doing this at all btw

[Ex14]

2 minutes ago, Deus Voltage said:

What kind of slapping is Nvidia capable of doing to MSI? This is a bit of a first I think, but my history on these things is a bit lacking.

i dont think any. tbh this really isn't the first time manufacturers are selling above msrp. ( as i questioned earlier) in the end, its just bad press for nvidia which they might not really care. in the end they still sell chips.

[realpetertdm]

https://twitter.com/msiUSA/status/1313734160582803456

 

Statement from MSI

[Random_Person1234]

Just now, realpetertdm said:

https://twitter.com/msiUSA/status/1313734160582803456/photo/1

 

Statement from MSI

So starlit was mistakenly given rtx 3080s and priced them hundreds of dollars above msrp?

[Deus Voltage]

It seems like MSI is doing damage control and they know their backs are stuck to the wall. Where we go from here is anybody's guess.

[RejZoR]

3 minutes ago, Random_Person1234 said:

So starlit was mistakenly given rtx 3080s and priced them hundreds of dollars above msrp?

I too want to be mistakenly given some RTX 3080. Specifically, 1 mistakenly received RTX 3080 will do.