Anti Scalper Policies When?

[seancuthbertca]

I'm curious what kind of inside track to the stores that the scalpers have to find out when things are on the shelves before everyone else?

[Soundwaves]

Easy as a friend , gf or family member who works at any given store.

[steamwhistle]

There may be more to this than meets the eye.

Are policies in place to prevent resellers from buying stock in mass quantities and at times at a discount? Or are they there just so the retailer can point to it when people complain about lack of stock?

“Oh, we have policies in place to prevent that. If it happened, then someone didn’t follow the policy.”. But there is no stock now and there is nothing can be done so...

I doubt the retailer cares. Stock is sold and they make their money. Store managers probably don’t want the added work of having to assess and guess as which items might be a commodity. They probably get bonuses based on sales, moreso than customer comment cards. Why take the risk?

Do you think a cashier will care about such a policy. “Sorry Mx, you can’t spend $500 to buy 15 of these, because I suspect you are a reseller.”. How does one accuse a customer without proof? Why would someone, likely making (near) minimum wage, risk their job over this?

Would a large store manager support a cashier in such a situation? I’d be surprised. Especially over toys.

The best they could do is limit a quantity per transaction, as they frequently do for other products. But it’s easy enough to hide stock and do laps and/or recruits others to make purchases.

Online stock is often limited in such a manner, but then there are to so-called GrinchBots... Did anyone get a PS5?

Policies are good, but enforcement would be the real issue.

It would be be nice if Hasbro would do a direct pre-order for all items... maybe even arrange for bi-monthly shipping of one’s virtual shopping cart...

[seancuthbertca]

Originally Posted by steamwhistle

There may be more to this than meets the eye.

Are policies in place to prevent resellers from buying stock in mass quantities and at times at a discount? Or are they there just so the retailer can point to it when people complain about lack of stock?

I doubt the retailer cares. Stock is sold and they make their money. Store managers probably don’t want the added work of having to assess and guess as which items might be a commodity. They probably get bonuses based on sales, moreso than customer comment cards. Why take the risk?

Do you think a cashier will care about such a policy. “Sorry Mx, you can’t spend $500 to buy 15 of these, because I suspect you are a reseller.”. How does one accuse a customer without proof? Why would someone, likely making (near) minimum wage, risk their job over this?

I agree, policies like this are in place so the store has no liability for not having stock of in-demand items. It's not as a consumer protection. To Walmart or Target or TRU, a sale is a sale.


When I was finally able to get the G1 reissues of Soundwave's cassettes. It had just been updated that there was a restock at a Walmart. I raced there, there was 1 set of each left. Which was fine for me. But they had just restocked. Turns out, I happened to go to the same cashier as the scalper. The cashier said there was someone there like 10 minutes before me that paid hundreds for 10 of them (5 of each). I told her about the scalpers for certain collectible toys, the same kind of thing like the video game and game console scalpers that empty stores and sell there for double, triple or more online. When I explained it that way she understood the frustration collectors feel.

[neevnav]

This also does nothing to prevent online scalpers from buying up stock using bots.

[seancuthbertca]

Originally Posted by neevnav

This also does nothing to prevent online scalpers from buying up stock using bots.

One can hope that's part of the reason Walmart doesn't put the high demand Transformers up on the website when it starts trickling into stores. But most likely, it's their horrible inventory control processes.

[Pascal]

Originally Posted by Goaliebot

One of the top 5 most popular Transformers of all time, in his most accurate non-MP release ever

Music Label was smaller but way better as a post-G1-esque Soundwave. Should have been sold by Hasbro! I got the ER version this week, the cassette player mode is half-assed, especially from the back... ML was super clean, as it should be.

[Goaliebot]

Originally Posted by neevnav

This also does nothing to prevent online scalpers from buying up stock using bots.

I wonder if they could throttle the bots by limiting online orders to 1 or 2 total per credit card... eg high demand items can only be bought on a given credit card once every x days.

[steamwhistle]

Originally Posted by Goaliebot

I wonder if they could throttle the bots by limiting online orders to 1 or 2 total per credit card... eg high demand items can only be bought on a given credit card once every x days.

Throttle the bots

[delrue]

Places like Target do care about this but only in the sense that when a handful of people buy all the stock of a product that is less people in the store buying other things while getting their Transformers.


Same reason so many of EB's policies involve you having to go in store. They want your butt in the store so you impulse buy something.