Petitioning Graphics Card Manufacturers/Retailers?

[slipperywhenwet]

**EDIT**

 

For anyone who is interested in also reaching out to manufacturer's/resellers directly, I'm going to see what professional contact information I can dig up, which I'll post it below.  There's always value in reaching out to the standard "info@company.com" or "sales@company.com" accounts, but it creates far less of an impact. 

Reaching out to management members in business development or customer growth/retention roles will have a much stronger impact.  Also, for obvious reasons, I'm not trying to find the personal e-mails addresses for any of these individuals.

 

Maybe nothing comes of this effort, but it's worth trying.

 

** END EDIT **

 

 

On the WAN Show, Linus mentioned sending e-mails to graphics card manufacturers to pressure them to deliver cards to gamers rather than scalpers/miners.  What about building a petition to do this?  I'm to set something up, however, I will be honest, I don't know the reps in the industry who should be targeted and my google skills are clearly terrible.

 

Can anyone send over some contacts who should be targeted at ASUS, MSI, NVIDIA, AMD, EVGA, Gigabyte, etc?  I can see what I can setup as part of a Change.org petition, and at the very least, we can let them know our frustration?  I'm also thinking that there is value in including the retailers in this petition, as it really wouldn't take that much effort for them to start tracking household details and limiting the number of cards that they're selling, so that bots/scammers/miners aren't buying up 1000s of cards at a time.

 

 

Also, Linus, PLEASE stop releasing your VAG drops during the workday!  I have been in 3-hour conference calls during both of them, and it's hard to tell my team that I'm jumping off the call to buy a graphics card...

Edited April 3, 2021 by slipperywhenwet
Additional information added.

[Eighjan]

4 minutes ago, slipperywhenwet said:

Also, Linus, PLEASE stop releasing your VAG drops during the workday!  I have been in 3-hour conference calls during both of them, and it's hard to tell my team that I'm jumping off the call to buy a graphics card...

Sounds like your job is more important than a graphics card... you prob. need the former to get the latter.

[Dedayog]

16 minutes ago, slipperywhenwet said:

On the WAN Show, Linus mentioned sending e-mails to graphics card manufacturers to pressure them to deliver cards to gamers rather than scalpers/miners.  What about building a petition to do this?  I'm to set something up, however, I will be honest, I don't know the reps in the industry who should be targeted and my google skills are clearly terrible.

 

Can anyone send over some contacts who should be targeted at ASUS, MSI, NVIDIA, AMD, EVGA, Gigabyte, etc?  I can see what I can setup as part of a Change.org petition, and at the very least, we can let them know our frustration?  I'm also thinking that there is value in including the retailers in this petition, as it really wouldn't take that much effort for them to start tracking household details and limiting the number of cards that they're selling, so that bots/scammers/miners aren't buying up 1000s of cards at a time.

 

 

Also, Linus, PLEASE stop releasing your VAG drops during the workday!  I have been in 3-hour conference calls during both of them, and it's hard to tell my team that I'm jumping off the call to buy a graphics card...

Change.org?  Seriously? For your entertainment and gaming purposes?

 

What are they going to change, how economics work?  How supply and demand work?

 

You are in 3 hour conf calls, so I assume you're an adult.  May want to start acting like one

 

[tishous]

34 minutes ago, slipperywhenwet said:

Linus mentioned sending e-mails to graphics card manufacturers to pressure them to deliver cards to gamers rather than scalpers/miners

That's the problem. The manufacturers can't be sure who they're selling to. If this happens, someone can just say they're a gamer and then use it to mine or resell it and the companies can do just about nothing about it. Nothing can be done until the supply is fixed as unfortunate as that is.

 

Edit: Unless you mean when companies sell graphics card en masse to mining companies, in which case something should be done about that.

[8tg]

This isn’t how businesses work. 
Toyota can’t decide, “oh we’re only going to sell our cars to people who will only use them for sub 20 mile a day commutes because people don’t like that we sell to rental car companies”.

They sell a product, the product sells to whoever can buy it. As much as it sucks that these video cards aren’t selling to the market who “deserves” it, the business is not obligated to care in the slightest.

Nvidia is here to make money, the AIBs are here to make money, the outlets and stores are here to make money.

 

Corporations are not your friends and they do not care about you as a customer, because at the end of the day, as long as someone buys their product, they’re making money. And money is what any business is all about.

These companies in particular are in a pretty powerful position where demand means they really don’t have to care about your business because their products will sell anyway. Even if like EVGA decided all RTX 3090’s are now 3000$ and screw nvidias msrp guidelines, they’ll still sell, their reputation will tank with the gaming community but people will still buy their cards.

[The_russian]

Have petitions ever actually resulted in a change? I truly do not understand why people choose to create a petition and then ask everyone else to sign it, are there cases where there was a change in policy or a decision was made as a result of a petition? To me they just seem like ways that people try to make themselves feel better, like they are doing something to cause change, when in reality all they are doing is putting their name on a meaningless list.

[tikker]

44 minutes ago, Dedayog said:

You are in 3 hour conf calls

If they are big then I'd even argue this is the perfect time to order a GPU Mine never require 100% attention 100% of the time.

1 hour ago, slipperywhenwet said:

at the very least, we can let them know our frustration?

Oh they know. The internet has been doing nothing but damning a variety of entities to proverbial hell for the last couple of months. The fact that they join the VAG, make their own mining lineup etc. show they are aware.

1 hour ago, slipperywhenwet said:

and limiting the number of cards that they're selling

but they don't want that. They want to sell as many as possible as quickly as possible for as much money as possible.

 

I'd be down for the 1 per household per month some Best Buys (I think) started doing to get through the shortage, maybe increase that to 1 per CPU or something. I'm still of the opinion that "gamers" only want these strict regulations now, because all of a sudden they have competition and can't get a GPU themselves.

[IkeaGnome]

1 hour ago, slipperywhenwet said:

to pressure them to deliver cards to gamers rather than scalpers/miners.

Yes, be sure to tell them why caving to year long silicon shortages, higher demand than normal and struggling supply lines inconvenience you. You should also tell Nvidia and AMD to not allow ships to get stuck in the Panama canal...

[Stockholmes]

4 hours ago, IkeaGnome said:

Yes, be sure to tell them why caving to year long silicon shortages, higher demand than normal and struggling supply lines inconvenience you. You should also tell Nvidia and AMD to not allow ships to get stuck in the Panama canal...

I heard it was an inside job. Jensen did it.

[slipperywhenwet]

Ah, I see that the trolls are out.

 

So what I'm reading is that you all are happy with the way that things are, and even if you aren't happy with it, you couldn't be bothered to do anything about it, and no one else should either.  You like overpaying scalpers for cards, and you like being at the back of the waitlist, behind bots and miners.  You also like that the manufacturers and resellers straight up lied to us about their knowledge about how many of their cards were going to said bots, scalpers, miners, etc.  Also, you don't have any relevant contact information, and no one should bother anyway.

 

That's a pretty shit attitude to have, but you do you.

 

 

To answer the question: yes, petitions and other forms of organized consumer contact programs are very successful.  Although Change.org is not the most productive form of petitioning, it is the easiest for participants to get involved in, and given this crowd, easy seems to be the preferred method.  Obviously the most effective form is through organized direct communication, but this seems way too hard for the commenters so far.

 

Regardless, I'll continue the search and update with whatever I find.  The more of us who reach out, the greater the impact.

 

Oh, and yes, I am an adult with an adult job.  It's a pretty sweet job too.  It's also one of the reasons that I know exactly how effective a strong consumer petition can be.

[Grabhanem]

25 minutes ago, slipperywhenwet said:

Ah, I see that the trolls are out.

 

So what I'm reading is that you all are happy with the way that things are, and even if you aren't happy with it, you couldn't be bothered to do anything about it, and no one else should either.  You like overpaying scalpers for cards, and you like being at the back of the waitlist, behind bots and miners.  You also like that the manufacturers and resellers straight up lied to us about their knowledge about how many of their cards were going to said bots, scalpers, miners, etc.  Also, you don't have any relevant contact information, and no one should bother anyway.

 

That's a pretty shit attitude to have, but you do you.

 

 

To answer the question: yes, petitions and other forms of organized consumer contact programs are very successful.  Although Change.org is not the most productive form of petitioning, it is the easiest for participants to get involved in, and given this crowd, easy seems to be the preferred method.  Obviously the most effective form is through organized direct communication, but this seems way too hard for the commenters so far.

 

Regardless, I'll continue the search and update with whatever I find.  The more of us who reach out, the greater the impact.

 

Oh, and yes, I am an adult with an adult job.  It's a pretty sweet job too.  It's also one of the reasons that I know exactly how effective a strong consumer petition can be.

Thanks for announcing your presence in the first sentence

[Lurick]

4 hours ago, slipperywhenwet said:

Ah, I see that the trolls are out.

 

So what I'm reading is that you all are happy with the way that things are, and even if you aren't happy with it, you couldn't be bothered to do anything about it, and no one else should either.  You like overpaying scalpers for cards, and you like being at the back of the waitlist, behind bots and miners.  You also like that the manufacturers and resellers straight up lied to us about their knowledge about how many of their cards were going to said bots, scalpers, miners, etc.  Also, you don't have any relevant contact information, and no one should bother anyway.

 

That's a pretty shit attitude to have, but you do you.

 

 

To answer the question: yes, petitions and other forms of organized consumer contact programs are very successful.  Although Change.org is not the most productive form of petitioning, it is the easiest for participants to get involved in, and given this crowd, easy seems to be the preferred method.  Obviously the most effective form is through organized direct communication, but this seems way too hard for the commenters so far.

 

Regardless, I'll continue the search and update with whatever I find.  The more of us who reach out, the greater the impact.

 

Oh, and yes, I am an adult with an adult job.  It's a pretty sweet job too.  It's also one of the reasons that I know exactly how effective a strong consumer petition can be.

You mean a webpage they can ignore? Oh yah those are SOOOO effective, next you'll tell me promises written on a napkin are worth their weight in gold! Seriously, unless you impact their bottom line by hundreds of millions of dollars at the minimum they don't give a damn and won't change anything, period. If you can't understand basic economics and how silicon shortages that have been building up for years can just be waved away with a magic petition then you need to look at yourself first. In addition we have manufacturing shortage because even pre-pandemic levels they were running fabs at 85%+ capacity to keep them profitable, now you ramp up demand more and suddenly that's not supposed to cause issues? And shiping costs that are skyrocketing as well which don't help the matter either.

[dilpickle]

Scalper Thread #3449

[tikker]

  

7 hours ago, slipperywhenwet said:

Ah, I see that the trolls are out.

 

So what I'm reading is that you all are happy with the way that things are, and even if you aren't happy with it, you couldn't be bothered to do anything about it, and no one else should either.  You like overpaying scalpers for cards, and you like being at the back of the waitlist, behind bots and miners.  You also like that the manufacturers and resellers straight up lied to us about their knowledge about how many of their cards were going to said bots, scalpers, miners, etc.  Also, you don't have any relevant contact information, and no one should bother anyway.

 

That's a pretty shit attitude to have, but you do you.

What I'm reading is a bunch of realistic people. Companies will not ignore the massive massive potential profits lying on the table. It's naive to think that companies still need to be told about our frustration. They've been ripped new ones continiously about selling to miners, having paper launches, making special mining cards. Even the VAG program is getting flack from people that happened to miss it. I don't know if your comment regarding that was serious, I don't think so, but plenty appeared and that goes to show that even the nice things will be twisted into negatives. If anything, these gamer privilige crusades might as well lead them to just throw in the towel, because apparently nothing they do will satisfy the gamers anyway.

 

Having websites put up more protections against bots and bulk buying I would happily support a petition for. A discriminatory market based on what the GPU will be used for not so much.

 

7 hours ago, slipperywhenwet said:

To answer the question: yes, petitions and other forms of organized consumer contact programs are very successful.  Although Change.org is not the most productive form of petitioning, it is the easiest for participants to get involved in, and given this crowd, easy seems to be the preferred method.  Obviously the most effective form is through organized direct communication, but this seems way too hard for the commenters so far.

Regardless, I'll continue the search and update with whatever I find.  The more of us who reach out, the greater the impact.

It's a fair approach, and if this was a couple of months ago you may have found more positive support, but I think the bridges are slowly burning because of the above reasons. I doubt if they are even willing to be contacted by random people at the moment, as the internet being the internet, bluntly said, the best they'll get now is a fuck you for whatever the daily favourite aspect of the problem is followed puppy eyes and "GPU plz". You might get more traction by just making one to see where it goes and figure out how to get their attention later.

[Eighjan]

20 hours ago, slipperywhenwet said:

The more of us who reach out, the greater the impact.

Until you get your head out of the clouds that an EVGA or MSI are going to refuse an order for 200 3090's because it's from a mining farm, to reserve those cards for direct sale to individual users... you'll remain on a hiding to nothing - $300,000 of inventory moved is still $300,000, do you think that any tech. company getting such an order is REALLY going to say no... 'cos you ASKED them to - petition or otherwise?!

[slipperywhenwet]

At the end of the day, you all do what you all want to do.  Obviously, I am not forcing anything.  Maybe this works, maybe it doesn't.  From my perspective though, it's not a lot of effort to reach out to the Nvidia/AMD/ASUS/MSI/etc/etc/etc of the world and send a direct e-mail that says "Hey, I get that you want to make a quick buck, but I've been buying your stuff for 25 years, and when crypto crashes and the scalpers and miners ditch you, I'm the only one who will be here to support you.  So put some measures in place to make sure that bots aren't buying up all of the cards you make, until after we get a chance."

 

You know, but written in a more elegant way.

 

I get that everyone might be exhausted from the bs already.  Like I said, I'm not forcing anyone to do anything.  All that I'm trying to do is figure out who the right contacts are, so that I can at least try.

 

For some background: I work for a pretty big company, and when I want to push things through, it's an absolute nightmare, but if I have a Customer or a group of Customers who are aligned, it's amazing how quickly senior management react.  More and more companies understand the importance of long term relationships.  I'm hoping that we can have the same influence here.

[tikker]

1 hour ago, slipperywhenwet said:

I'm the only one who will be here to support you.  So put some measures in place to make sure that bots aren't buying up all of the cards you make, until after we get a chance.

That's just a straight up (empty) threat or blackmail, so you may indeed want to go with the "more elegant way". It's wrong for at least Nvidia and AMD as well, as they still have their professional and datacentre segments. Nvidia, AMD (and Intel soon perhaps) have the luxury of a duopoly(triopoly) position as well. If you want a GPU you literally have no choice but them. Unfortunately it will be buy a GPU from them, or never enjoy videogames again.

 

1 hour ago, slipperywhenwet said:

All that I'm trying to do is figure out who the right contacts are

Most likely the usual social media accounts or contact forms is as far as you'll get if you are no special partner to them. As a rando from the internet your unlikely to be put in touch with the business contacts that e.g. Linus has access to or the top dog's private email.

 

I'd say just start your petition if you want to go that way. If that gets a decent following you can then start poking them through email, social media or whatever.

 

 

[slipperywhenwet]

On 4/3/2021 at 5:20 PM, tikker said:

That's just a straight up (empty) threat or blackmail, so you may indeed want to go with the "more elegant way". It's wrong for at least Nvidia and AMD as well, as they still have their professional and datacentre segments. Nvidia, AMD (and Intel soon perhaps) have the luxury of a duopoly(triopoly) position as well. If you want a GPU you literally have no choice but them. Unfortunately it will be buy a GPU from them, or never enjoy videogames again.

 

Most likely the usual social media accounts or contact forms is as far as you'll get if you are no special partner to them. As a rando from the internet your unlikely to be put in touch with the business contacts that e.g. Linus has access to or the top dog's private email.

 

I'd say just start your petition if you want to go that way. If that gets a decent following you can then start poking them through email, social media or whatever.

 

 

Thanks for the input, man, and sorry for the late reply.  April has been hell.

I did indeed craft the e-mails a little more eloquently than I had jotted down in my post, but there was definitely a subtle undertone of irritation/threat of moving to another manufacturer (it REALLY helps that Intel is talking about getting into the game, even if that might end up being a pipedream).  I agree with all of your comments though, it's still a bleak situation

I ended up just e-mailing the usual "info@insertnamehere" and "sales@insertnamehere" accounts for AMD, NVIDIA, Asus, MSI, and EVGA.  Although, I made sure to mention to EVGA that I'm glad that they provided the option to buy direct and hopefully avoid scalpers, but that they really need to fulfill their orders with my priority.  I didn't see much interest on the petition thing, so I went solo.

I did end up finding a guy on Linkdin and messaged him.  We'll see if I ever get a response.