Entire store chain scalps Wii's on eBay.

[shrike4242]

Ran across this on ArsTechnica, about a local chain around my area (St. Louis, MO) that's scalping their entire Wii allocations on eBay:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071220-exclusive-retail-chain-scalping-wii-allotment-on-ebay.html

[Foo228]

:dunce: Damn businesses

[Staind204]

I've never heard of the store but thats pretty dumb. Hopefully Nintendo just completely stops sending them Wii consoles.

[lilboo]

This is getting really absurd now.

It was acceptable a year ago when it was still brand new..but c'mon now. Is there anything Nintendo can do? Like can Nintendo forbid eBay to sell Wii's? Is that even possible?

[SpazX]

Yeah hopefully Nintendo will stop sending to them and instead give that stock to a business that will sell them at MSRP.

[Liquid 2]

Good business sense, except for the part where they were selling them through their own store name and making it obvious what they were doing and risking losing future shipments.

[paddlefoot]

This is getting really absurd now.

It was acceptable a year ago when it was still brand new..but c'mon now. Is there anything Nintendo can do? Like can Nintendo forbid eBay to sell Wii's? Is that even possible?

Put a random human organ in the system?

Maybe a tiny amount of gun powder in the wii-mote?

[rodeojones903]

How is this any different than an individual doing it? When a person does it people cry capitalism, and when a business does it people cry shenanigans.

I think its wrong to do period, but this is no different than all of the other Wii's on ebay.

[onetrackmind]

i hate slackers... over priced shit

[Vinny]

Nintendo can stop/limit shipments to stores but they cannot stop people on eBay from selling them. Ultimately, I don't see them doing anything about it because... it's Nintendo. Scalpers are a huge problem with Wiis though.

I wish Nintendo would enforce a program in which one family cannot buy more than 1 Wii (or 1 per household). That would help greatly. And if they bitch about not being able to buy multiples, fuck them. It's not like there's a shortage of demand.

[SpazX]

How is this any different than an individual doing it? When a person does it people cry capitalism, and when a business does it people cry shenanigans.

It's only slightly different if a person actually gets a large amount. The businesses actually buy them directly from Nintendo for a lowered price with the purpose of selling them at MSRP. If a person buys a lot of them it's still selfish and what-not, but at least they paid full price and didn't take advantage of Nintendo.

[Magehart]

Quit your damn crying because you don't have a Wii. Just because you didn't have the initiative to find it before the rush doesn't give you the justification to bitch about it now.

Now lets play a game in psychology: If you had access to 20 Wii's would you ebay them for MSRP w/ buy it now or turn an easy $200 profit per?

I thought so, STFU.

[Koggit]

Now lets play a game in psychology: If you had access to 20 Wii's would you ebay them for MSRP w/ buy it now or turn an easy $200 profit per?

I'm pretty sure retailers have a contractual agreement with Nintendo not to sell Wiis above nor below MSRP. That's why you see $500 bundles instead of $500 Wiis -- retailers force bundles with high-margin accessories so that they make more profit per system, since they can't raise the retail price above MSRP.

So, to answer your question, I would honor the contract because doing anything else is illegal.

[shrike4242]

It's only slightly different if a person actually gets a large amount. The businesses actually buy them directly from Nintendo for a lowered price with the purpose of selling them at MSRP. If a person buys a lot of them it's still selfish and what-not, but at least they paid full price and didn't take advantage of Nintendo.That's the crux of most peoples' arguments about this.

The thing is, there's not much difference between MSRP and dealer price on a Wii, from what various places have said.

It's the store's choice on what to do with items they buy from a supplier, as the "S" is Suggested, though to do something that blatant is pretty foolish. Turned me off from shopping there ever again.

[jollydwarf]

How is this any different than an individual doing it? When a person does it people cry capitalism, and when a business does it people cry shenanigans.

It's a double-standard, no matter how people try to spin it. The crux of this is that gamers, particularly of the "cheapass" variety, are conditioned to reflexively hate businesses and corporations, but support their 'fellow gamer', i.e., the 'little guy' for doing the same things.

And on that note, I never understood how true "Cheapass Gamers" would support price gouging and hoarding. I guess it's how they finance their own habit*? Weak.

*--Gaming habit, that is. Mostly.

[Magehart]

I'm pretty sure retailers have a contractual agreement with Nintendo not to sell Wiis above nor below MSRP. That's why you see $500 bundles instead of $500 Wiis -- retailers force bundles with high-margin accessories so that they make more profit per system, since they can't raise the retail price above MSRP.

So, to answer your question, I would honor the contract because doing anything else is illegal.

That's on a case by case basis. I know that TRU can't sell below MSRP because of an agreement by NOA since Nintendo "gives" them the hardware and TRU gets a fixed amount on each sale. That's why dhey always bundle shit together so they can actually make a decent amount of $ on each sale. Marking up a product isn't a big deal. Marking them down is. But if a national chain like TRU marked up Wii's for xmas you'ld have hell to pay by the consumers. It would be a PR nightmare. This hole in the wall storefront doing it? How bad could their PR be. Everyone will forget in 1 weeks time.

[shrike4242]

Follow-up article, which is a "response" by a Slackers employee:

http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2007/12/21/slackers-employees-explain-wii-scalping-business

[Skelah]

Reminds me of the people that try selling planks of wood for 60 dollars a pop when a storm is coming...or 4 dollar a gallon gas .

Hope they go out of buisness from the negative name they have made for themselves.

[happy]

Better than gamestop taking preorders on normal shipments and making you pay full cost a month ahead of time (while advertising it as though it's unlimited).

If they advertised them as in stock then I would have an issue, but if nintendo wants to keep the demand artificially so high they need to know that stores will find ways to sell them for more.

[anomynous]

Now I like Slackers, but I'm not suprised

[davo1224]

Better than gamestop taking preorders on normal shipments and making you pay full cost a month ahead of time (while advertising it as though it's unlimited).

If they advertised them as in stock then I would have an issue, but if nintendo wants to keep the demand artificially so high they need to know that stores will find ways to sell them for more.

WHY would Nintendo want to artificially inflate demand by keeping supply low? The system is only a year old. It's not dying anytime soon and it's already leagues better in sales than Gamecube was in its first year. The only people benefitting off the scarcity are scalpers. Nintendo makes the same amount either way. On top of that, Nintendo doesn't need to keep people abuzz about its system because some of the heavy hitters are still yet to come within only year two. What they do after that remains to be seen as each console usually only gets one iteration of a franchise (sans Zelda and Metroid) but now is not the time for them to be worried about keeping the Wii alive.

[mykevermin]

I think people should randomly put up Wiis for sale on Craigslist with local purchaers only...then slap the dumbass in the face when you meet for the transaction. Don't take their money, just slap 'em in the face for enabling this kind of behavior.

That'll learn 'em.

[meesterjojo]

Quit your damn crying because you don't have a Wii. Just because you didn't have the initiative to find it before the rush doesn't give you the justification to bitch about it now.

Now lets play a game in psychology: If you had access to 20 Wii's would you ebay them for MSRP w/ buy it now or turn an easy $200 profit per?

I thought so, STFU.


Calm down little one: not everyone is as immoral as you. I sold my 360, which I had pre-paid, received on release day, and never opened, along with 3 games, and accessories for the receipt value. Not a penny more.

What this company is doing is abusing the trust Nintendo is placing in them, and their customers. Making a profit is fine, but taking advantage and hurting your customers, or potential customers, is wrong.

Slackers currently has no Wii's that I can find on eBay- so either they sold out, or took them off.

Hmmmm

[ArthurDigbySellers]

Nintendo can stop/limit shipments to stores but they cannot stop people on eBay from selling them. Ultimately, I don't see them doing anything about it because... it's Nintendo. Scalpers are a huge problem with Wiis though.

I wish Nintendo would enforce a program in which one family cannot buy more than 1 Wii (or 1 per household). That would help greatly. And if they bitch about not being able to buy multiples, fuck them. It's not like there's a shortage of demand.

I've actually seen this at Target and Wal-Mart lately. The local stores are putting up signs saying only one Wii per household. Now that won't stop people from working the system, but at least they are trying.

[Strell]

I think people should randomly put up Wiis for sale on Craigslist with local purchaers only...then slap the dumbass in the face when you meet for the transaction. Don't take their money, just slap 'em in the face for enabling this kind of behavior.

That'll learn 'em.

It's like when you meet someone on Craigslist for a date, and then they rape you. And murder you. Or are younger than they told you originally, so you go to jail.

This is a less extreme version. Maybe they just make you put on a sailor suit and have a tea party.

[Vinny]

I've actually seen this at Target and Wal-Mart lately. The local stores are putting up signs saying only one Wii per household. Now that won't stop people from working the system, but at least they are trying.

I've seen that too but that's not what I meant.

Take for example, my friends at Circuit City. I know 3 people there, all buddies from high school, and I see them all the time since I do a lot of shopping at CC (our BB is ass).

My cousin has wanted a Wii for a bit of time so I ask them when they expect to get more in (like on unadvertised days so there's no line waiting involved). They also tell me that it's usually the same 10 or so people every week that show up each week to flip them on eBay.

It doesn't really help if it's one per family per visit. I mean, one per family period (or at least until the shortage issue is resolved). Like they could require an ID of some kind and log the names/addresses of people who bought one and next time someone with the same last name tries to buy one, it better be a different address.

[UncleBob]

>"I'm pretty sure retailers have a contractual agreement with Nintendo not to sell Wiis above nor below MSRP."

Not quite... do some research on Price Fixing. This is why it's called a *Suggested* Retail Price.

Anywhoo, Does this Slackers chain even order their merchandise directly from Nintendo? If they go through a 3rd party distributer, it could make it difficult for Nintendo to do something. Granted, they could stop shipping to the distributer, but that might raise some legal eyebrows.

[mykevermin]

It's like when you meet someone on Craigslist for a date, and then they rape you. And murder you. Or are younger than they told you originally, so you go to jail.

This is a less extreme version. Maybe they just make you put on a sailor suit and have a tea party.

Again, in your particularly not funny (yet still clever) manner, avoiding the point I'm trying to make - simply that we can all cry foul that people are selling the Wii for $400+, but fail to similarly implicate those dumb sonsabitches who are *willing* to pay that much for the system.

I can put a 360 on eBay for $5000, but nobody's going to buy it. I'm doing the same thing as the Wii folk, except that I'm a fool for trying to corner a market for which there is absolutely zero interest (that is, overpriced 360s, not 360s themselves, so calm down y'all).

I don't think the scalpers are saints, but they're just one half of the equation - yet they tend to receive more than their fair share of the blame for the market problems.

[Steggy]

honestly, 399... thats hardly a markup considering what others go for. honestly, id do the same... Thats like a 100 dollar profit after tax/shipping/fees.

[MSUHitman]

Slacker's owner has put a statement up on the front page of their site:

www.slackers.com

[ctice44]

I also live in the St. Louis are, and yes they are asses for alot of crap they have pulled. Not only do they NOT sell the hard-to-find stuff to the general public (which has built the store into what it is) but they sell all of it on eBay. It's not just Wiis.. it's: Top Loader NES's, Sega Nomads, classic Final Fantasy games,.....whatever.... It has got me not interested in shopping there anymore.
Here is their auction site (It's really kinda suck- they are the Anti-CAG):
http://stores.ebay.com/Slackers-Music-Movies-Games

[hufferstl]

I also live in St. Louis, and I have to say that Slackers probably has to do things like this because of sites like CAG, ebay, and craigslist. I like Slackers for music and a rare videogame deal, and honestly I can't blame them for wanting to make something on the systems.

[MSUHitman]

I'm never shopping there again. They are charging wayyy over MSRP on the Rock Band bundles also. The Fenton location by me closed to make room for the Super Wal-Mart, and there are way too many other independent stores in the St. Louis area I can spend my money at.

Last thing I did there was trade DVD's for store credit when I cleaned out some of my collection and also upgraded some copies to high def. They gave like $1 each, so it's not like I'm missing out much. I didn't want to take the time to put them on EBay, but now I will.

I sent the info to the tech blog writer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch so we'll see if anything bigger comes out of this.

[spoo]

I would like to let CAG aware this bull shit happens more than we would like to admit.

I posted this on kotaku:
Gamers in Des Moines/Omaha does the same thing, that is why I stopped shopping there years ago for the same shit (buying rare games from their customer base to sale on ebay.)

http://video-games.search.ebay.com/_Systems_W0QQcatrefZC12QQfrppZ25QQsacatZ62054QQsas sZgogamerscom

I'm all for the mom & pa stores but not when they pull this shit.

If your local ma and pa store buys local games only to sale them on ebay don't buy from them. I understand if the games are dust collec

Don't support you FLGS if they pull this bullshit. I have boycotted "Gamers" for the last 6+ years because of this same sort of bs, don't support your local gaming store if they pull this shit. I know that you can't make much money from a gaming store but taking stock from your local community isn't a good way to make/keep customers. Vote with your wallets CAG!

[VipFREAK]

Don't blame em.. Might as well join in with the other idiot scalpers.

Speaking of going out of business how does a gas station go out of business? One did near me. xD

[Cao Cao]

Hmph. Honestly, as soon as I got to the part with the whole "wah wah wah were just a small wittle innocent wiitailer going up those big meanie big-box retailers," I realized that the owner sounds like a pretty big ratfink who's trying to score some sympathy just for being small-time. He may be a bigger ratfink than I thought if this post on Ars Technia is true:
just go to ebay and punch in the item number in the search bar, it'll pull the appropiate auction/listing. this shows how many people bought each item number. if a certain item didn't leave feedback from anyoneI can't pull it, since I searched in the slackersonline feedback page. however, if only one person left feedback on a multi-purchase transaction, I can see everyone that purchased.

item 350007604226 -- ended early (may be because of arstechnica bulletin, or perhaps item is indeed no longer for sale)
wandi1217
magnus999

item 35000430812 -- ended normally
6622davis
ckpuder

item 350005057724 -- ended normally
stanhill94
transactivity
cacuro

item 170167446025 -- ended with buy it now (1 qty)
breez39

item 170113248498 -- ended normally
bhunter502
weidga
jah4816
hectorracosta
crazybudlife

after this it's more than 90 days old and item info is not available. we can all say with certainty that there's been more hoarding of wiis. if he wasn't gouging (and $75 is a gouge, considering normal retailers make about $4 a wii), what was he doing?

this is in response to his public statement. "3 wiis sold on ebay, that's it". riiiight. lying to the public actually makes things worse, slackers. fitting name actually.

Yeah, only 5 Wiis. Unless some of the people were not paying their bill, then that's a mighty big lie to be telling.

[schuerm26]

God I hate Slackers (though not because of selling Wii's on ebay).

Only reason I go there is for the occasional PS1 game they have mispriced (I do truly mean occasional).

1 extreme example is the Romance of the Three Kingdoms series. The 2 that are on PS1 they charge $40 for each, nevermind the fact you can get them for about $5 on ebay. The PS2 ones you won't find below $35.

Horrible chain of stores. It actually though seems like they have gotten much worse with prices in the past couple years.

It doesn't seem like they really make any attempt to price games at what they are actually worth. Another example being the game Unison for the PS2. $3 at Gamestop, $25 at Slackers.

[62t]

It is no different than bigger stores selling force bundle online. They dont make any money from hardware sale, and it is possible that the people that buy a wii will turn around and resell it. But the lying part is lame though

[MSUHitman]

I put this up in the shopping discussion forum (not knowing it was already in this forum as I don't visit it because I don't have or want a Wii) and the opinions there are dramatically different. While it's 70/30 against Slacker's in this forum section, it's 90/10 in favor of Slacker's in the shopping discussion forum.

[dracula]

How is this any different than an individual doing it? When a person does it people cry capitalism, and when a business does it people cry shenanigans.

I think its wrong to do period, but this is no different than all of the other Wii's on ebay.

indeed, cheapasses do this all the time, everyday. I am a little surprised they are only doing this with Wii, and not with the PSP slim.

I said in the other thread, i assume the only people who buy these are europeans, because the USA currency is so ridiculously weak right now, the euros are essentially getting a system at a heavily discounted price from buying a Wii or psp slim off of ebay.

If someone is in the USA, they can go to any GS/EB and pre order a system by putting down $50 and then the store will call them when one comes in and they have 48 hours to pick it up. I would have thought that people who buy videogames have heard of gamestop or EB, so it sometimes surprises me that people dont try to buy a system there.

EDIT, i really dont understand why it is "wrong" for a store to try to make money. If they want to stay in business, they have to make money. It seems like more and more cheapasses seem to feel some sort of entitlement to buying. Someone was saying "OH NO, a store is selling all their rare games on ebay to make money!" well what is wrong with that? Would it be better if they charged ebay prices for these items in the brick and mortar store? If they did, would that be "wrong"? I imagine people would walk into the store and say "sheesh, $100 for suikoden 2, what a rip off!" but if they sell it on ebay, no one will bitch to them about the prices.

[dracula]

It's only slightly different if a person actually gets a large amount. The businesses actually buy them directly from Nintendo for a lowered price with the purpose of selling them at MSRP.

Wrong. Dead wrong. The retailers are not getting any sort of discount from nintendo for buying large amounts. None of them, not even gamestop or walmart.

and buy the way, MSRP sounds for manufacturers SUGGESTED retail price. They cant make any demands about what actual price the sell them at.

[SpazX]

Wrong. Dead wrong. The retailers are not getting any sort of discount from nintendo for buying large amounts. None of them, not even gamestop or walmart.

and buy the way, MSRP sounds for manufacturers SUGGESTED retail price. They cant make any demands about what actual price the sell them at.

Retailers buy things at a lower price than they sell them.

[defiance_17]

Retailers buy things at a lower price than they sell them.
I don't think that was ever in dispute.

[psunami]

and buy the way, MSRP sounds for manufacturers SUGGESTED retail price.

And therein lies the rub.

They buy an item to sell at retail. That's the problem with what they are doing. No matter how much people would like to believe it... Ebay is not a retail sale point.

If things were the way that some people are defending here, any store could just put any item that they buy(from the manufacturer) on the floor without a price tag.... and you would have to name the price that you would want to pay. That's not the way that the retail system works when you're dealing with buying from a manufacturer.

Also, your unintentional usage of "buy" is pretty funny to me.

[gunm]

Well, I'll leave these kinds of stores to the morons willing to pay the jacked up prices and stick to the deals I find on CAG. :p