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iPhones are a hot commodity, I wonder why I never have to play "beat the scalper" when I want to buy one? I don't wonder at all, of course, because when I order

• anothernewdude 4y ago
  I just buy whatever is available. I've never noticed the difference between Samsung AXX and Samsung SYY. It takes calls, pictures, emails and texts, can auth, slack and alert me for meetings. Who cares about everything else?
• jandrese 4y ago
  So the solution is to have Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo sell directly to the consumer? Apple can do this because they don't have to keep third party retailers happy, they own the distribution chain from top to bottom.
  • D13Fd 4y ago
    Is that so crazy? Direct to consumer seems like an obvious solution to the problem. What are all of the middlemen adding, anyway?
    • lordnacho 4y ago
      The economy is full of all sorts of middlemen. They know local markets, and it's easier to deal with a few of them than all the consumers. For a heck of a lot of businesses. Apple is pretty special in that they've got the whole consumer end themselves.
    • chupchap 4y ago
      Adding middlemen spreads money across geographies as opposed to the money flowing directly to the HQ. To use a car analogy a local dealership creates jobs and ensures some of the money spent by people in an area is recirculated in the area.
      • D13Fd 4y ago
        This doesn’t make sense. First, the middlemen we’re talking about are other online companies 99% of the time. Second, cutting out the middlemen reduces price pressure for both the manufacturer and the consumer.
        • chupchap 4y ago
          From what I recall that was one of the justifications behind Automobile Dealer Franchise Act of 1956. I remember reading about it a while back, but I cannot find the exact reference now; just articles about the law in general.
  • Mikeb85 4y ago
    Why not? Most game purchases are downloads now. They don't need 3rd party retailers.
  • endisneigh 4y ago
    Even with third parties why wouldn't you have a queue?
    • brewdad 4y ago
      Because the third parties don't really care enough. They just want to make the sale and get paid. Where is the incentive to setup and manage a queue for someone like Target?
      • seattle_spring 4y ago
        If they had a queue, I'd add myself and they'd get a guaranteed sale from me. Since there's no queue, I just have to wait until they're in stock somewhere. Might be Target, but it'll more likely be somewhere else.
        • hatefulmoron 4y ago
          Why would they care about selling to you, in particular? It's not like they have any spare..
          • jazzyjackson 4y ago
            it works as a market differentiator - if target is the only one that implements a purchase-before-restock queue, they get guaranteed purchases from people who are price sensitive and not time sensitive that no one is doing this... maybe it has something to do with the fact that it would show up as a liability in accounting until they deliver the product
      • endisneigh 4y ago
        Back ordering is a pretty established concept. Surely it’s trivial for a major retailer?
        • brewdad 4y ago
          Backordering, when the supplier can't/won't give you a reliable restock date is a recipe for burning customer goodwill.
  • jiqiren 4y ago
    Huh? I can buy Apple products at Best Buy, Costco, Target, Walmart, AT&T, T-mobile, Verizon, Kohl's, etc etc. There are plenty of retail outlets that are more than happy to sell Apple products while Apple also sells...
  • mikestaszel 4y ago
    There is a Microsoft store online, why not?
  • babypuncher 4y ago
    Both Sony and Microsoft do sell hardware direct to consumers on their websites, in addition to selling through third party retailers.
    • dvlsg 4y ago
      This is how I got my most recent Playstation. It wasn't just a queue, though. It was a time limited shuffle of the pool of people who saw a notification with enough time to join the lottery. It still took me months of attempts.
• havblue 4y ago
  The steam deck has a queue system as well of course. While there's a risk that the buyer doesn't see the notification email that it's ready, the fact that you generally know that you'll get one within a year is very nice.
• abofh 4y ago
  iPhones are profitable the minute they walk out the door - you buying music or apps or whatever is just gravy. Add to that the day-one markups (earbuds, charging cables, apple care), they have every incentive to put you in the hands of a caring, dedicated salesperson who can upsell you up to your capacity. Your playstation, on the other hand, requires you to buy two or three games, and if the games aren't there yet for mass market appeal or sufficient genres, well, the console will still be there in four years when the games catch up, and your iphone will be out of date in six months. In both the manufacturers and scalpers minds, nobody would bother scalping an iPhone - the margin was already sucked out of it and it has a shorter shelf life; In the case of a console, the margin won't be had for a few years, but none of it flows to the casual scalper, so it's a lot of work for 100$ - they'll do it, but it's a grind. But either way, people are happy to wait in line for the latest fondleslab, and they get it when it's their turn
  • eropple 4y ago
    > Your playstation, on the other hand, requires you to buy two or three games Source? This has not, to the best of my knowledge, been true in console production for a very long time.
    • colinmhayes 4y ago
      PS5 is $400. It's got a ryzen 3700 and 2070 equivalent GPU. There's no chance they're getting those two parts for less than $300 given the chip shortage, and the remaining parts cost at least $100, plus manufacturing.
      • eropple 4y ago
        I think those are assertions without evidence, given that they built that BOM before the chip shortage and generally one has to buy slots significantly in advance. To me a more persuasive argument, with the lack of evidence, might be that part of the supply crunch is being unwilling/unable to raise the price and so being less able to ship units than if they could be more price flexible.
      • 4y ago
• layer8 4y ago
  Some would argue that Apple is the scalper ;), and you beat them by buying from other retailers a couple of months down the line for 10% off.
• pxeboot 4y ago
  Before iPhone's were as widely available as today, there were similar problems with scalpers buying them all. Apple even banned buying them with cash [1] so they could limit purchases per customer. [1] https://www.wired.com/2007/10/the-iphone-cash/ https://www.wired.com/2007/10/the-iphone-cash/
  • ebrenes 4y ago
    So, you're reinforcing their point that the producers can take actions to attempt to address the problem. Actions which Sony has not undertaken in this instance.
    • mwint 4y ago
      In Sony’s defense, they have much less of a direct-to-customer channel than Apple does. They’re at the mercy of their retail partners (which they don’t directly control) to fix this problem.
      • GeekyBear 4y ago
        Sony already has an online store.
      • criddell 4y ago
        They have their own store where they could implement a queue. I would have been happy to place an order and then wait a year. Instead I did the follow a guy on twitter to find out when consoles are available and then use Firefox containers to make a bunch of simultaneous orders. It worked, but I’d rather just pay some money and sit in a queue.
        • theklr 4y ago
          They do this already. Like others mentioned, they have retail partners that they have to play nice with.
          • 4y ago
• klintcho 4y ago
  A simple "pre-ordering"-queue seems it would decrease scalper interest as well (?) as it would be much more risky to order a bunch, hope you get early in the queue and sell to people who might get their machine just little time later. Let people put up a small deposit as well for getting a place in the queue, and it'll be deducted whenever you buy the machine. Keep the deposit if you cancel your place in line. Would incentivize less manipulation as well. I've been trying to get a PS5 for 2 years now, and I refuse to pay some scalper 200USD more than market price, out of principle. (But I guess that is also why I still don't have one :) )
  • grepfru_it 4y ago
    I wrote a quick bash/jq script that would query target's redsky API to find out when an xbox series was available at my local target. I dropped this script into Rundeck and set it to notify me on success (success being an available xbox). One random Tuesday I got an alert but it was also dinner time. I saw ~230 available and thought enough time for me to eat dinner and place an order. Well 15 minutes later it was sold out. Fast forward two weeks later, i'm hanging out on a Saturday and get another alert. ~300 available this time. I spent 5 minutes trying to download the target app and then realized i had to make an account and by that time the available count dropped to ~180. I grabbed my wife's phone (she lives at target) and immediately placed a pickup order for the Xbox. I picked it up one hour later. Don't pay scalpers, just use technology as your friend :) An old coworker did something similar but he wrote a chrome extension to do the same. I'm sorry if someone uses this knowledge to scalp nextgen systems.
  • charcircuit 4y ago
    >I've been trying to get a PS5 for 2 years now, and I refuse to pay some scalper 200USD more than market price If it's been 2 years I think you have been underestimating the market price of a ps5.
  • orangecat 4y ago
    I've been trying to get a PS5 for 2 years now, and I refuse to pay some scalper 200USD more than market price Assuming the scalpers are able to sell their supply, what they're charging is the market price. (But I guess that is also why I still don't have one :) ) Yup.
• kmeisthax 4y ago
  Apple is able to have a queue for iPhones because they control the iPhone supply - both in the sense that they are the OEM for the device and in the sense that they have very strong control over their own suppliers. Vendors are not going to treat everyone equally when Apple is a big fish that can wreck your business if you don't play ball. Retailers do not have this kind of power. If Best Buy pre-sells more iPhones than they have inventory for, there's nothing obligating Apple to actually sell those iPhones to those customers through Best Buy. Apple could decide tomorrow to cut Best Buy's allocation because AT&T needs them for a big customer promo. Compounding this is the fact that almost all retail businesses are cash-flow limited. Their job isn't to buy things and sell them at 1% markup, it's to predict the future three months ahead of time so that products arrive on shelves exactly when they will be purchased. In other words, they're futures traders that take physical delivery. So every dollar they get needs to be spent on more inventory, or they run out of things to sell. This means that, in the event of an iPhone shortage, Best Buy has two terrible options and one good one: * Treat those iPhone orders as ordinary revenue and use it to order more stock of other products. If Apple cuts your allocation, then you have to refund your customers money that you don't have, meaning that you have to take out a loan on future revenue to pay back existing orders. * Tie up your cashflow by holding that iPhone money in escrow until those orders are fulfilled. You don't take on the risk of not being able to refund orders, but now you are paying the opportunity cost of not being able to buy as much inventory three months down the line. * Don't sell unallocated iPhones. Your customers will buy something else instead. Now, could Apple extend their queue system beyond their own online store? Perhaps - but that requires a lot of coordination from other retailers who would rather just be able to move product quickly. The flip side of the cash flow problem I mentioned above is that, if a product doesn't move quickly, retailers want to get rid of it quickly to cut their losses and take a chance on something else. A good example of this would be the iPhone SE 3rd gen, which sold like garbage. Under the current arrangement of retailers getting allocation and buying inventory, Best Buy can at worst fire-sale iPhones nobody wanted. But with a queue system, they're either... * Just drop-shipping iPhones from Apple to customers, which means they can't have in-store inventory * Holding inventory they can't sell unless Apple lets them, which means they're letting iPhones live rent-free in their warehouse tying up cash flow. The "just let me queue up" model is something that works out great for customers, but makes the rest of the business a lot harder, because modern supply chains are not designed for shortages.
• orangecat 4y ago
  It might be three months before I get a phone So without scalpers you have to wait until supply catches up, while with scalpers you can either wait until supply catches up or you can pay extra if you really want it now. How is the first scenario better?
  • deleted 4y ago
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  • jazzyjackson 4y ago
    because i can make my choice now and just wait for it to come in the mail as is, Sony has been doing a "sign up to be notified" thing where by the time I see the notification they're sold out again. Just let me put in my order and get it to me when you can. if enough people take that deal, scalpers have a smaller and smaller market
• etempleton 4y ago
  I am baffled why this is not being implemented across the board. It is a solved problem. It leads me to believe these companies do not really care enough to implement the systems to fix this or that they actually like the artificial scarcity as it fuels additional demand. The fact that they can figure out how to implement live lottery systems, sadly, makes me conclude it is the latter. I personally flatly refuse to pay over retail price or lineup outside of a store for the “opportunity” to buy something. Nothing is going to change if people keep paying a premium for products be it an SUV or a PS5.