Sanity reigns at the online auction site
We all know what happened with the Xbox 360 launch. With the console in high demand and limited supply, several opportunists took advantage of the short supply to make a quick profit by auctioning off their consoles on eBay.
Reports came in of sellers buying consoles with no intention of ever playing them, just of making a quick profit. At its peak, Xbox 360s were selling for near on £1000, just for the unit and no games. There were even a few auctions of people selling their pre-ordered consoles, promising delivery once they had collected it from whatever store they had ordered from.
As it turned out, many sellers and even more buyers were left in the lurch with the limited supply seeing plenty of pre-release auction winners ending up with nothing… and gamers keen to buy direct from the usual retailers and e-tailers were turned away as canny profiteers walked off with Xbox 360s destined only for auction.
With the PS3 in reportedly short supply, we’ve heard reports of just 244,000 units ready for the US launch, the profiteers were again rubbing their hands, ready to cash in on the re-sale market. A quick hunt on eBay will find PS3s already fetching over £1500, nearly three times their value!
But this time eBay have stepped in to stop the profiteers and protect desperate gamers winning auctions on pre-ordered items that might take a month or two to even reach the seller.
In what has to be the most sensible move ever, eBay, according to Associated Press, have implemented a number of controls that will, hopefully, stop gamers getting ripped off and prevent the greedy from making money out of others’ desperation.
First and most importantly for us, UK based eBay sellers have been banned from selling PS3s until February 2007. So anyone who was nipping over to the US to nab a few and sell them back here is now, officially, buggered. Further, even when the February embargo lifts, you can only sell an EU bought machine and you’ll be limited to selling just one. Not two or three, one and only one. So that further scuppers attempts to sell Japanese or US bought machines. Good.
So that locks UK eBay sellers down to only dealing with EU machines and, to further ensure happy buyers, if you fancy selling on your pre-order, eBay have brought in a load of other restrictions. You can only list your PS3 pre-order for sale if you have at least 50 auctions under your belt and a feedback of 98% or higher. This will stop free-loaders signing up and ripping off buyers who, in their desperation and eagerness, might be less cautious than usual of a seller’s credentials.
Sellers who meet the above criteria have to guarantee a 30 day despatch date and show a photo of the pre-order receipt. This will stop the fakers who auction off pre-orders without ever having them and should go some way to proving that there is actually a PS3 on the way sometime soon after launch.
And finally, all PS3 sales must be listed as auctions and not buy it now sales, though this last one is a bit of a moot point as most profiteers will want the price to go as high as possible.
STOP PRESS
We’ve just had a report of Japanese PS3 fans sabotaging auctions over there to disrupt the profiteers. Apparently they’re bidding massive amounts, purely to force the seller to either cancel the auction or have to waste their time deleting the huge bids. You could argue that this is ruining a sellers’ opportunity to make some money and if people want to pay the asking price it’s up to them. But the other view, which is one I personally endorse, is that there’s no reasonable reason for you to be flogging your brand new PS3 other than to make a quick buck, capitalising on others’ needs… so yeah, I’m all behind sabotaging an auction that plainly sets out to do so.
