Won't somebody think of the poor scalpers? Argues scalper service provider

Hacker
(Image credit: Thianchai Sitthikongsak/Getty)

The current ongoing chip shortage is affecting tech from all walks of life. Electronics all over the world have become a bit harder to get, with gaming hardware hit especially hard when coupled with crypto mining demand. Getting a shiny new graphics card or console, or in some cases even RAM is already a heroic level challenge without adding scalpers into the mix.

Sky News talked to Jack Bayliss (via TechSpot) who runs a sort of aggregate service for people looking to make others pay too much for things like tech and shoes. The interview is around the idea of legislation to prevent scalpers and bots' mass buying of products. Bayliss makes some pretty inflammatory comments on the subject that seem designed to generate attention so I’ve decided not to list the name of his service. 

As for what it does, users can sign up for £30 a month to be notified when retailers have stock of hot products, which of course is a great tool for local scalpers. According to Bayliss, he makes $61,000 USD from those who’ve signed up, many of whom he describes as very young, so it’s no surprise he’s keen to defend the practice. 

"To me, owning the PS5 or an Xbox isn't a necessity, it's a luxury, okay? If you can afford to spend £450, spending the extra £100 should be pretty marginal, if you've got cash ready to splash on that." said Bayliss.

Tips and advice

The Nvidia RTX 3070 and AMD RX 6700 XT side by side on a colourful background

(Image credit: Future)

How to buy a graphics card: tips on buying a graphics card in the barren silicon landscape that is 2021

Bayliss argues that the benefit to the people involved in the scheme far outweighs the cost to those who are wanting to buy a new console. 

"Yes, some families are gonna have to pay another £100, but what you don’t think about is our members, they’ve got 30 consoles, they’re making £100 on each one. And then they’re making a good month’s salary in a couple of days."

He goes on to talk about how those participating in his scalping program are thriving on the profits, including people who are young or weren’t doing so well before, justifying the process. 

"What they're doing is they're being entrepreneurs, they're going out, creating a side income, and they're doing something that 90% of the population can't be bothered to do," said Bayliss.

Bayliss also goes on to compare his service to the stock market. Simply buying up a popular stock that seems profitable and selling it to make money. Then to the manufacturing process, just another overhead for a new line of retailers. The 24-year old also stated he was "very in tune with my moral compass, as a person."

It’s impossible to not be frustrated by such cherry picked arguments. It’s easy to see that it’s still artificially inflating the price of an item for personal gain. Putting something out of reach of others just because you can afford it. It’s also likely that this is all just another play in the self proclaimed entrepreneurs’ efforts to get more subscriptions. Much like many NFT and crypto schemes going around, Bayliss relies on others buying into his service to turn a profit.

These kinds of schemes out there in the world where people who claim to be young entrepreneurs, but are really just adding an unnecessary step to a real service are fairly common. Like this service which calls the IRS and then charges you for their spot in line, artificially inflating the queue in the process. There’s the mistake in seeing value there when you have an immediate need, but these services don’t ever provide value, instead they just make consumers pay more. Every time. 

If you can afford to spend thousands of dollars buying extra consoles in the hope that they sell to someone at a greatly inflated price, maybe you should just not do that and provide some actual service or value to the world. 

Hope Corrigan
Hardware Writer

Hope’s been writing about games for about a decade, starting out way back when on the Australian Nintendo fan site Vooks.net. Since then, she’s talked far too much about games and tech for publications such as Techlife, Byteside, IGN, and GameSpot. Of course there’s also here at PC Gamer, where she gets to indulge her inner hardware nerd with news and reviews. You can usually find Hope fawning over some art, tech, or likely a wonderful combination of them both and where relevant she’ll share them with you here. When she’s not writing about the amazing creations of others, she’s working on what she hopes will one day be her own. You can find her fictional chill out ambient far future sci-fi radio show/album/listening experience podcast right here. No, she’s not kidding. 

Read more
Nvidia RTX 5090 Founders Edition graphics card on different backgrounds
eBay users are getting back at graphics card scalping bots by listing pictures of the RTX 5090 for $2000, occasionally framed
Radeon RX 9070 XT cards all X'd out, out of stock
We all deserve better than this
MSI RTX 5070 Ti Gaming Trio OC Plus graphics card under a red light
The price gouging of Nvidia's RTX 5070 Ti is utterly grotesque
ebay RTX 5090
Scalpers are already trying to rip off gamers by flipping RTX 5090 graphics cards they don't actually have for up to $7,000
Zotac RTX 5090 graphics card
Zotac beats those dastardly GPU scalpers by selling RTX 50-series graphics cards to actual gamers courtesy of their Discord channel
RTX 4070 Super and RTX 5070 graphics card, with another graphics card in the foreground
After a run of RTX 50-series launches with seemingly little availability and mega price tags, I'm left wondering 'is that it?'
Latest in Graphics Cards
A Gigabyte RTX 5070 Ti Eagle OC Ice on a desk and installed in a gaming PC.
Gigabyte GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Eagle OC Ice SFF review
An MSI RTX 5080 in white installed in a gaming PC.
MSI GeForce RTX 5080 Ventus 3X OC White review
Nvidia App
Hmmm, upgrades: Nvidia App gets an optional AI assistant and custom DLSS resolution scaling
A close-up photo of an Nvidia RTX 4070, with its heatsink removed, showing the AD104 GPU die and the surrounding Micron GDDR6X VRAM chips
With Nvidia Ace taking up 1 GB of VRAM in Inzoi, Team Green will need to up its memory game if AI NPCs take off in PC gaming
A collage of Radeon RX 9000 series graphics cards, as shown in AMD's promotional video for the launch of RDNA 4 at CES 2025
AMD's CEO claims 9070 XT sales are 10x higher than all previous Radeon generations but that's just for the first week of availability
Colorful iGame RTX 5070 Ti Vulcan OC graphics card from various angles
The RTX 5060 and RTX 5060 Ti are rumoured to be mere weeks away, with board partners reportedly required to ensure at least one MSRP model at launch
Latest in News
Story of Seasons - A cahacter in a purple tuxedo stands outside in a town square talking to the player
Story of Seasons is doing another Harvest Moon remake and it might be the best the series has ever looked
Assassin's Creed Shadows change seasons - An upper-body shot of Yasuke looking cheerfully up into the distance.
Assassin's Creed Shadows puts up the 'second highest day-one sales revenue in Assassin's Creed franchise history'
A witch riding a broom sails past a Fish and Chips shop.
Cozy gamers rejoice: Witchbrook finally has a release window, and yes, you can fly around on a broom with your friends
starcraft 2 face
StarCraft fans taunted by the announcement of a new StarCraft... board game
kingdom come: deliverance 2 henry looks confused
'Medieval Batman' completes Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 pacifist playthrough with zero kills and 535 knockouts
SUQIAN, CHINA - OCTOBER 6, 2024 - Illustration Tencent's plan to buy Ubisoft, Suqian, Jiangsu province, China, October 6, 2024. (Photo credit should read CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
Ubisoft and Tencent are forming a new company that will take control of its most successful franchises: Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six