Even though every retailer did their best this morning to service everyone they could, getting a PS5 in Australia is still a lottery. And it’s not helped by the fact that a good amount of people who just got fresh PS5 consoles are immediately reselling them at higher prices.
Australia has finally gotten a ton of new stock of PS5s over the last week. JB Hi-Fi has started texting customers letting them know their PS5s are available for pick-up, The Gamesmen has had little drops all throughout this week, and Amazon, Harvey Norman and Big W all fired off this morning.
The delivery times are pretty prompt too, which is excellent. But you know the bad news of everyone finally getting their PS5’s paid for and delivered/picked up so quickly?
People are immediately reselling them for more. Here’s one listing just showing off the purchase on Amazon.
Here’s another with their Harvey Norman order confirmation date from this morning. The console’s going for $1000, a $250 markup from the RRP.
“I have 2 for next week, from Harvey Norman and Big W,” the listing says.
Fantastic.
And here’s another one immediately flipping their purchase for $350 profit.
eBay is similarly stacked. A lot of listings are on both platforms — I’ve seen a couple where the photos look the same — although there are some prices on eBay that are hitting the $1500 mark. There’s about 20 consoles here listed in the last couple of hours. That’s not a huge amount in the grand scheme of things, but seeing listings going live literally minutes after fresh stock started dropping this morning is infuriating for those who want to buy a console to, y’know, actually play it.
Still, there’s really not a lot that can be done. As I wrote last year, consumer tech has attracted the eye of groups that have been operating online for years. Add the impact of COVID into the equation, and you have a recipe for a nightmare that can only be rectified with a mass improvement in supply.
Put another way, there’s absolutely nothing stopping groups like this Australian cooking group (which charges a $60 member entry fee to boot) from advertising an “easy $300-400 profit”.
The only real solution? Sony — and Microsoft — get enough supply of the consoles so that reselling becomes worthless. Artificially inflating prices doesn’t work when retailers can guarantee you a console at RRP.
Also, it doesn’t work if people don’t buy from resellers in the first place. I get why people do — there’s FOMO and all — but this is just how life for consumer tech will be. Please don’t feed into it.
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