Question Fighting the bots on buying up all the GPU's. Is this legal? Good idea?

[HomerJS]

Found this on Ebay. Wonder if it is legal. Posting does say I'm fighting the bots.

Pardon Our Interruption...

 

[HomerJS]

The listing is marked as sold. DM to seller said someone actually bought it. I'm going to follow up with this because it could lead to some changes in bot buying. I might try it myself

 

[Mopetar]

This type of thing has been going on for ages. I can recall people selling Xbox 360 boxes on eBay a decade ago. A lot of other people have claimed to be doing it to fight the bots, but I'm not sure how much it helps. All it really needs to get around it a human to verify the auction is for a legitimate product and someone can turn a bot loose on it. If someone just checks afterwards they can always elect not to pay for it as well and it isn't as though eBay is going to punish anyone who can claim that they didn't realize they were bidding on some fraudulent listing right away.

If there are still bots on eBay I think it's safe to conclude this doesn't work.

 

[Leeea]

A great way to murder your ebay account.


This does not harm scalpers at all. They are not trying to buy, just sell.

This does not effect bots buying GPUs from amd/nvidia/etc at all. The bots people hate are used to buy direct from the supplier, not ebay.

This just annoys buyers. It does not reduce the demand. It does not effect the price.


I find it quite annoying. I check ebay from time to time to get an idea of the real value of these cards. Never bought one off of ebay, but I am totally ok with imprisoning the idiots who are posting fake auctions. Putting digital edition in the description contradicts the title, and is misleading. As I get older my tolerance for annoyances/fraud simply has disappeared.

If you think about it, this is intentionally attempting to trick someone about the nature of the product they are buying. Yes, they might be to excited to read it closely. Fraud is defined as "wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain". If Ebay became grouchy some day, they could complain to an attorney general and a whole lot of people are looking at prison as their next stop.

In the unlikely event I am unable to avoid jury duty, they are going down for all counts with a recommendation to the judge for the max sentence.

 

[7beauties]

Found this on Ebay. Wonder if it is legal. Posting does say I'm fighting the bots.

Pardon Our Interruption...

Dear Friend, I've mined eBay for the Geforce 3080 and found sellers asking for as much as $2500 for a part whose original MSRP was $700. I'm hoping to buy the new RTX 3080 Ti from B&H Photo tomorrow, but I won't be stupid about it like staying up till midnight or ordering it as soon as they open, and I won't spend $2500 for it. I'll be patient and wait for stock to replenish, but I won't pay an arm and a leg for it. I don't have much faith in Raja Koduri because he was behind the disappointing Radeon Vega cards when he worked for AMD. Read reviews from several sources and if the reviews are good, be patient.

 

[Shmee]

Some of the Vega cards were really pretty good though. Particularly the Vega 64 Nitro+, and the Radeon VII. As for the ebay bots, I don't think this really helps to stop them. And IMO it is just annoying, making it harder to find legit deals.

I think the best way to stop bots would be for the etailers themselves to try to block them.

 

[mikeymikec]

The amount of talk there's been here about dodgy ebay buyers taking advantage of sellers, if one were so inclined, why not rip off these scalpers in similar ways?

 

[Foamhead]

The easiest way to combat scalping is for people to stop buying from them.

 

[dank69]

The easiest way to combat scalping is for people to stop buying from them.

The easiest way for me to combat scalping is to mind control everyone else?

 

[Foamhead]

The easiest way for me to combat scalping is to mind control everyone else?

That's quite a unique extrapolation of what I said, isn't it?

 

[dank69]

That's quite a unique extrapolation of what I said, isn't it?

But it is a valid extrapolation. What can I do to combat scalping? Nothing that I'm not already doing.

 

[Foamhead]

But it is a valid extrapolation. What can I do to combat scalping? Nothing that I'm not already doing.

It is only a valid extrapolation if you've just finished painting your room without opening any windows. Scalping exists because people who just can't wait pay them. If people stop buying from them the practice will stop because it's no longer profitable. I especially don't understand why people have such a boner for buying all this tech.... 3080/90 cards, ps5s and so on when there is virtually no software that even makes use of those platforms anyway.

 

[dank69]

It is only a valid extrapolation if you've just finished painting your room without opening any windows. Scalping exists because people who just can't wait pay them. If people stop buying from them the practice will stop because it's no longer profitable. I especially don't understand why people have such a boner for buying all this tech.... 3080/90 cards, ps5s and so on when there is virtually no software that even makes use of those platforms anyway.

I don't really want to get into a whole thing here, but if your "solution" relies on the kindness and intelligence of every other human on the planet then it isn't really a solution. It's just fluff.

 

[simas]

It is only a valid extrapolation if you've just finished painting your room without opening any windows. Scalping exists because people who just can't wait pay them. If people stop buying from them the practice will stop because it's no longer profitable. I especially don't understand why people have such a boner for buying all this tech.... 3080/90 cards, ps5s and so on when there is virtually no software that even makes use of those platforms anyway.

that is not the only reason or the primary reason why scalping exists for video cards. more important is that with the crypto boom , the luxury consumption goods (GPUs) became "means of production" where people buy it to make money with them . If people on this forum boast of having hash rates in many hundreds (which could be dozens of cards) then 'miners' is a major reason behind increasing the scarcity of the product.

if you were able to make 10-15 dollar a day per video card , day in and day out -> people were buying any video cards that they could mine with regardless of "being sold at MSRP" because it was still profitable to them...