UK Government to pass Scalping Ban of next-gen games consoles

[rushboarduk]

The UK Government has begun actively proposing a motion to ban scalping and the use of bots, to purchase gaming and console equipment.  The news comes mere days after Discord server Express Notify discovered a loophole in infrastructure on the Argos website, enabling users to grab thousands of Playstation 5 consoles before stock was even disclosed to customers by email.

 

Amazon UK and John Lewis suffered technical issues for several hours, through 24th to 26th January when stock became avaialble, causing frequent failures to their storefront and mobile apps.  Currys reported similar problems, where 160,000 users attempted to secure their limted supply, which were sold out in just over an hour. Other UK retailer GAME, meanwhile, have been blocking any accounts on Twitter who report suspected scalpers, opposed to investigating complaints.

 

The ban has gained support after a motion was proposed by the Scottish Parliament mid-Dec 2020, when a recent study indicated a collective $58 Million on console sales came from scalped purchases ($34 Million for PS5, estimated $23 Million for Xbox Series X | S consoles).  Scottish National Party MP Douglas Chapman spoke to BBC Radio 4, after he outlined the motion in the Scottish Parliament:

 

Quote

“It's simply not in the consumer's interests to have lots of stock for in demand, very exciting new products just being bought up en masse...”

 

“It doesn't give the ordinary consumer fair access to the market... It's just so unfair for the ordinary person who just wants to play their game or give a gift to their child for Christmas. This situation's just going to get worse and worse.”

Prices on eBay for the resold consoles are expected to range from the MSRP of £749 up to £1999 or more...

 

On a personal note, the ban should be extended across ALL items in the UK, given an estimated £15 Million was spent in scalping protective equipment against COVID-19, depriving adversely effected people who actually needed it.

 

Sources

https://gamerant.com/ps5-scalpers-buy-stock-early/

https://gamerant.com/ps5-xbox-series-x-scalpers-uk-government/

https://gamerant.com/ps5-xbox-series-x-scalpers-profit-millions/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p094cjdg

[GorujoCY]

not bad, uk is doing something but that wont stop miners buying 100s of gpus let's say and we are not sure how ebay is going to handle every gpu sold in the uk...

and it seems like it is mostly focused on consoles so i dont think uk residents will expect "stable" stock in GPUs...

[wanderingfool2]

27 minutes ago, rushboarduk said:

On a personal note, the ban should be extended across ALL items in the UK, given an estimated £15 Million was spent in scalping protective equipment against COVID-19, depriving adversely effected people who actually needed it.

An issue becomes, where do you draw the line?  While I do think there needs to be laws in place to prevent unfair exploitative scalping, the bigger thing is the retailers could prevent this by having better policies in place.  (e.g. Checking delivery addresses and such).  At the end of the day though, the consumers need to stop paying an arm and a leg for these things.  If the consumers stopped paying scalpers would be a lot less incentivized.

 

Ultimately though, how do you decide what items should and shouldn't be considered; or rather how scalping should be limited.  If you look at Costco for example, they sell to businesses that stock vending machines, and those people turn around and sell it for a profit.  Should they be considered scalpers?  Or the companies that started selling PPE's during this time, should they be punished?  (Even if they were doing that prior to the situation).  It's a difficult subject to approach really.

 

 

[Fasterthannothing]

I see the UK is very happy to restrict the free market. As soon as the little guy can make a profit suddenly there is a need for regulations. 

[elfensky]

I understand the good intention, but regulating how much specific "used"/"reselling" goods should go for is ridiculous.
Either ban ALL scalping or none at all.

[jagdtigger]

36 minutes ago, elfensky said:

, but regulating how much specific "used"/"reselling" goods should go for is ridiculous

Good thing its mainly aimed at selling new stuff at outrageous prices.....

[wanderingfool2]

8 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

Good thing its mainly aimed at selling new stuff at outrageous prices.....

...where would you draw the line?  If they buy it, open it, play it once then resell it...would you classify it as new.  There will always be ways scalpers will work around the laws built.  Another example being, would you consider things such as oil being "scalped"...after all, the supply is artificially limited to keep prices certain levels (for profits or to starve out up and comers)

[jagdtigger]

7 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

...where would you draw the line?  If they buy it, open it, play it once then resell it...would you classify it as new.  There will always be ways scalpers will work around the laws built.  Another example being, would you consider things such as oil being "scalped"...after all, the supply is artificially limited to keep prices certain levels (for profits or to starve out up and comers)

So what you are saying we shouldnt do anything and let those good for nothing parasites rip off ppl.....  Yeah thats definitely better than actually trying t do something even if its not perfect.

[wamred]

This is great! Now if only we could get the slow U.S. government to pass the same laws.... 

[wanderingfool2]

1 minute ago, jagdtigger said:

So what you are saying we shouldnt do anything and let those good for nothing parasites rip off ppl.....  Yeah thats definitely better than actually trying t do something even if its not perfect.

Just saying that all good and well intent it could be, regulations can have some truly unexpected consequences.  It can easily also lead to a lot of over-regulations (or burdens being passed onto smaller businesses).  By the way things are being reported/politicians are speaking, it seems as though it could easily go that way.

 

An example being Prop 65, it was well intended but has lead to so many products listing warnings about cancer that it means nothing (i.e even Estrogen is considered a cancer, so using it in a product you would need to label it).

[LogicalDrm]

*** Thread locked ***

 

This thread uses a lot of old articles or articles which don't actually report on any new development. The news here was posted already in December:

 

The update would be new interview and this line:

Quote

Members of Parliament in the UK are continuing their efforts to take action against scalpers, though many are disappointed at the lack of response thus far.

= There's no updates worth of own thread. The only new thing would be to use loophole/vulnerability in e-commerce software used by store. Of which the title and half of the content don't represent.