RTX-30xxx - price gouging in the UK - I thought it was illegal?

[Saracen999]

Oh, and I agree about corporates and taxes, too, Cat. I just rather blame politicians and government lawyers, for writing the laws.

It's not just taxes, though. Nor is price the only factor. There are companies I won't buy from regardless of price, and others I prefer because of customer service, even if I have to pay extra. There are other reasons I won't buy from certain suppliers, but no doubt, others happily would.

[Ttaskmaster]

Sounds like you need a blocker if the problem is them falling off where you don't want them to!

That's what I've been saying Cat needs to do, rather than blaming the cliff they're jumping off.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I'm certainly not in the "feel sorry for the poor big corporate" group. Hell, no.

I also utterly agree about finding a middle ground. Or rather, trying to.

But that's the point.

There isn't always a middle ground. Again, basic supply and demand. If the company knows, or even just believes, they can sell current stock at £x, why would they accept £x less y% because some consumers either won't or can't pay £x? Or, can and will, but have the hump about it.

If the seller won't drop the price beyond a certain point, and buyer A won't pay it, buyers B through Z will. Buyer A has to decide if they want it enough to pay the seller's price. Or, go without. Or at least, wait for the initial demand to be satisfied. It is wholly unrealistic to expect the seller to drop the price unless they are wrong about sufficient buyers be NG willing to pay it.

However, the only power each consumer has is to decide that he or she isn't willing. As a group, consumers have the power to force corporates to their knees provided they all agree. If that happens, sellers will have to cut prices or not sell their stuff. The problem, when what limited stock there is is selling out is that enough consumers will and are paying the asking price. Which comes right back to "if demand > supply, price goes up". Not down.

I'm selling something right now. As it happens, a house. Well, bungalow. In that area, they're not common and highly sought. Our price is set towards the top of what's achievable, and because several buyers want one item, it's not likely to come down, certainly not by much, just because several other buyers want it, but not at that price. We only need one, able and willing, and there are. One is very keen.

I have no view on other forums "defending" corporates, but all those corporates are doing is what virtually all of us do, on a smaller scale, day in, day out.

The issue this defence of jacking up prices as being OK,is being defended by gamers and hardware enthusiasts even in scenarios where there is no restriction of stock. An example is in games with microtransactions. Or companies basically doing stuff which has nothing to do with price,but is severely anti-consumer. Simple things such as underengineering of products which leads to reliability problems. Yet,you have a bands of people on social media,forums,etc who defend this.

I think this is the point I am not making clear - its an argument I have seen by tech enthusiasts and gamers on social media and forums increasingly over the last few years,and look back to the quotes from Rollo 11 years ago earlier in this thread. This is the whole issue here with the "feel sorry for the poor big corporate" because it wouldn't sound out of the ordinary compared to some people justifying an addiction or even people giving away all their money to some cult.

You had this years ago,when Nvidia started jacking up prices and there was zero issues with stock or supply. Yet you had a significant number of people defending it and saying "think of the poor company". The same goes with Intel and some of its tierisation moves,such as locking down overclocking,remove feature support - people defending that. Games being tierised with bits being left out and resold as microtransactions - people defending that and attacking commentators. Games having severe bugs and problems,and devs screwing over their workers - commentators highlighting the problems,and being attacked by legions of defenders. Many of these are multi billion dollar enterprise not some struggling local firm and get all sorts of public funded financial support. They don't need pity money as they already get pity money from taxpayers.

Why are these people even defending poor QC/QA and generally poor service?? Think back to Apple and its faulty iPhones. Instead of berating Apple for cost-cutting and poor QA/QC,they blamed themselves "for not holding the phone right".
It's almost some Stockholm Syndrome,and reminds more of some other things where similar behaviour has been observed. But religion relies on a supernatural deity which can apparent perform miracles for the devoted few,but WTF is a tech company got to do with that? Why the leap of faith?? Is your iphone/RTRX20000 GPU,I20RZYEN 50000 CPU,etc going to perform some lifechanging miracle for you? Is the ghost of Steve Jobs going to absolve them of their sins?? Is Lisa Su/JHH going to give them annointed blessings,conveying eternal success to them??

Its not even a point of them buying,its about them justifying any and very action these companies are doing,irrespective of whether it actually benefits the consumer. This is why I put those quotes from Rollo - they are basically being parrot repeated by these people,and Rollo was a person who was part of a Nvidia marketing campaign.

The closest analogies I can come to is,cultists who get indoctrinated by a guru,who proceed to give up everything to such scam artists,and then defend being scammed and attack people trying to point out the stupidity of the scenario. Its one thing preferring a company but its another thing defending every thing it does mindlessly. These companies couldn't give two hoots about them as people,so defending them when they do crap things isn't going to suddenly make a company who only cares about its financial reports,care any more for them let alone even their own workers. All they do is make things worse for the rest of us,because market research will identify these pools of people.

Also going back to house analogies - imagine if someone is shopping for a new abode,and all of a sudden they had a lot of tools who had no connection to either the buyer or seller,then going on telling the house seller ,they were charging too little,and telling the buyer that they are not a charity and must pay more?? Think of their situation,etc. Then the seller decides they should jack the price up by 20% and so on?? Yet none of the busy bodies were actually getting anything out of doing this and were acting like dogs in a manger. Wouldn't that being slighting annoying?


Or maybe Ttaskmaster has a point:

In summary - Most people are idiots. More powerful people (and companies) take advantage of idiots. You're simply stuck in the middle.

Perhaps Idiocracy was prophetic after all!

Oh, and I agree about corporates and taxes, too, Cat. I just rather blame politicians and government lawyers, for writing the laws.

The problem of lobbying is a whole other discussion,and the issue of politicians and vested interests which is a worldwide problem,which affects all ends of the spectrum. The laws which could solve this are not enacted because too many of them have vested interests in the status quo.

It's not just taxes, though. Nor is price the only factor. There are companies I won't buy from regardless of price, and others I prefer because of customer service, even if I have to pay extra. There are other reasons I won't buy from certain suppliers, but no doubt, others happily would.

See I don't disagree with that - at least that is some real reason,not pity money reasons,when its clear they don't need anyones pity after millions or billions of USD in tax breaks and other assistance(and CS is an inconvenience).Many smaller and medium businesses never will get that level of support. Not only customer service,even convenience,choice,etc.

Anyway,as the OP has posted for a week in this thread,its probably run its course for them anyway!!

[Richyhx1]

Scottish ministers are tabling a new law against the reselling of high end pc parts and new consoles above MSRP I read the just yesterday.

So that will be nice if it gets anywhere. Last I read they had some independent signatures and a few labour signatures but no Torey's had signed for it at that point

[EasterEEL]

Blimey I can't believe that two months later not one of my alerts has notified me of stock. Just checked again and absolutely no stock of 3060 ti, 3070 or 3080 anywhere in the UK it seems. Just some gougers/scrapers on that ebay rat's nest.

Ideally I would like to buy the 3070 fe one day and gather Scan manage these cards for nvidia in the UK. Are they even likely to be sold at any time in the future now, did any ever get sold in the UK ?

[atemporal]

If you're not already on a list then from what I can tell good luck getting an FE unless you're willing to be scalped. I guess if you're considering becoming a monk anyway then maybe that won't matter to you, but when you take the orders you'll have to forfeit your possessions so someone else will end up with it. Not a great time to be shopping. I can't find any either.

[QQmoo]

with the manufacturers making annoucement that the prices of MB and GPU likely to go up in prices, the PC retail scene here in the UK is only going to get worse. atm just can't really tell the price gourging is due to business greed or more likely the mess caused by brexit and the pandemic.

[iEimis]

with the manufacturers making annoucement that the prices of MB and GPU likely to go up in prices, the PC retail scene here in the UK is only going to get worse. atm just can't really tell the price gourging is due to business greed or more likely the mess caused by brexit and the pandemic.

100% March will be extremely rough with factories closed for a chunk of February due to Chinese New Year as well, I'd say at this point if you haven't got one yet it's gonna get worse

[atemporal]

Does anyone know how to get one atm that isn't on ebay and going for a body part? edit: The only answer is discord it seems.

[ShakiraLaw]

Join one of those stock alert discords/telegram channels, and then be prepared to have the quickest clicks in the west

[atemporal]

Join one of those stock alert discords/telegram channels, and then be prepared to have the quickest clicks in the west

I've signed up to stock alerts. I think, it's a bit confusing but think I've got there in the end.

[QQmoo]

I've signed up to stock alerts. I think, it's a bit confusing but think I've got there in the end.

the prices from some of the UK retailers aren't much different from the scalper prices on ebay, e.g. one of the retailer in the UK was selling MSI 3070 Gaming Trio for £720 (today) where on FB market place you could get one for around 750 (used-like new).

From my observation the GPU prices are slowly creeping up so the earlier you get one the sooner you can start working/playing on your PC. There are just too many external factors that in short term would not impove to bring down the GPU prices, unless you are very patient in the waiting game.

[ik9000]

anyone wanting the one i cancelled it's just gone online: https://www.ebuyer.com/1128755-gigab...070aorus-m-8gd

[ShakiraLaw]

Does ebuyer manually check its preorders? Not having captcha or anything to deter bots is just major yikes at this moment

[ik9000]

Does ebuyer manually check its preorders? Not having captcha or anything to deter bots is just major yikes at this moment

ordered last monday, got shipping notification Friday (promptly cancelled as found another elsewhere for cheaper). It's legit. I do have buying history with them though so if vetting then I would have passed I imagine.

[Scorpii]

Does ebuyer manually check its preorders? Not having captcha or anything to deter bots is just major yikes at this moment

Likely not.. they're still making the sale, and the reputation I'm guessing isn't worth it to them..