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iPad Pro How do you feel about people reselling things you can't find in store?
- Thread starter Ghost31
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If someone is willing to pay $550 for an accessory that goes for $169 at retail, what business is it of yours?
It's their money and their decision. If they choose to do so, I have no issue with it. Would I pay that kind of premium to get something that is not easily available elsewhere or for less? Not sure - it would depend on the situation and how badly I needed/wanted the accessory, and how much paying the premium would affect my financial situation.
With many things in life, you have to pay - either with cash or with time. How much time are you willing to invest in finding the accessories at retail price?
It's scalping, and I hate scalping more than just about anything. Just because you were lucky enough to find something others are looking for doesn't give you the right to make money off of your luck.
Doesn't really matter in this case, but for me these kind of thing are case by case. Live saving drug? We have ourselves some issues here. My personal view has always been, you can see them for as much as you want. Hell if you can put it up for $1Million for all I care, either no body will buy it or someone will buy it at your asking price. No body is forcing you to buy it.
I'm also not really bother by the lack of product because of these scaplers, just wait a couple of weeks and they will make more. It's no really a big deal to me, this is not something I cannot live without.
I'm also not really bother by the lack of product because of these scaplers, just wait a couple of weeks and they will make more. It's no really a big deal to me, this is not something I cannot live without.
You know, the second part of the your statement reminded me of some of the rich people that we respect that "made it on their own (luck)". "See my company, I had NOTHING, NOTHING, I was able to start all this with nothing but a little $1Million support from my father....."
Didn't mean anything, but the second part of that sentence just strike a nerve...haha
Yeah, because it's all about "luck".
The dislike for flipping or scalping is rooted in nothing more than an inflated sense of entitlement.
The value of a thing
Is what that thing will bring.
In the case of tickets to a sporting event or concert, there is a limited supply. In the case of Apple tech, the limitation is only one of time. Within a few weeks, there are usually enough of a product for Apple to ship it to you or for you to be able to walk into a store and buy it. There's not really much advantage for getting any Apple product the day it goes on sale.
But it takes two people to make a market. If there were no people foolish enough to buy from scalpers, there would be no scalpers.
Is what that thing will bring.
In the case of tickets to a sporting event or concert, there is a limited supply. In the case of Apple tech, the limitation is only one of time. Within a few weeks, there are usually enough of a product for Apple to ship it to you or for you to be able to walk into a store and buy it. There's not really much advantage for getting any Apple product the day it goes on sale.
But it takes two people to make a market. If there were no people foolish enough to buy from scalpers, there would be no scalpers.
Meh. I don't feel too strongly about all this. But one has to admit that scalpers are parasites.
In the supply chain, everyone has something to contribute--the design, the manufacturing, the distribution, the retail. Every step has value added.
Except for the scalper, who takes a disproportionately large piece of the pie, and adds absolutely nothing of value.
Of course these are not life saving drugs or staple crops, so who cares. No one really needs an Apple Pencil to live.
In the supply chain, everyone has something to contribute--the design, the manufacturing, the distribution, the retail. Every step has value added.
Except for the scalper, who takes a disproportionately large piece of the pie, and adds absolutely nothing of value.
Of course these are not life saving drugs or staple crops, so who cares. No one really needs an Apple Pencil to live.
If this (bolded) were the case, then why does anyone buy scalped goods? In a free economy, I only buy something if I feel like it's better than my alternatives; that is, if buying that particular item makes me better off than any other option I'm aware of. The calculus is the same for sellers of a good. Indeed, the only way a trade ever takes place is if the well-being of everyone involved is improved. That's value created.
What the scalper does -- the target of a lot of ill-informed hate -- is equalize supply and demand, reallocating, say, baseball game tickets from low-valued uses to higher-valued uses. You may be willing to pay a $20 premium to watch your favorite team play, but there is a lot more value created if the person, only in town for one night and willing to pay a $500 premium, would get a ticket.
The scalper's operation can only be profitable if the current ticket price isn't sustainable -- that is, if there are far more people willing to buy tickets at the stated price than there are tickets to sell. The existence of scalpers isn't the problem. The problem is that the tickets aren't being priced appropriately to begin with.
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Fair enough. I suppose that on some level it's built into the economy of ticket sales by now. But that doesn't mean I can't feel a bit mean about the fact that there are factory workers making these things for some unthinkably low wage while large profits are going to scalpers who are creating added value only by manufacturing scarcity.
Like I said, I don't really have a horse in the race, I'd be unlikely to buy a scalped Apple product.
That's been my take on this for a while.
That said, I'm starting to have second thoughts.
The whole point of the free market is to provide price competition leading to ultimate cost reductions for the customer. That obviously isn't happening because the resellers are simply inserting their organizational inefficiencies (and markups) into what is already a very efficient supply chain (i.e., Apple's own)
My opinion is and will probably always be that: people can do whatever they want. I'm not suggesting otherwise. But I also have the right to think its kinda douchey when people buy up stock of things that are hard to find for the sole purpose of reselling it to me at a higher price.
I vaguely remember a case where apple was low on stock with something....can't remember what it was. Maybe a new iPhone? Anyway. They were super low. These guys came in and bought like a dozen iPhones between them. Then people came in after all disappointed because there were literally zero phones left in stock with a long back order now. The resellers see this and as the customers leave the store offer to sell them a brand new iPhone at 3x the price. Now tell me...
What did the resellers do to earn ANY extra money? They took stock that could've been sold to someone else and put someone in a position where their only option was to either pay insane price to them or wait. When they wouldn't have had to wait otherwise. There was a bunch of phones in stock right before they walked in. You could say "well they can be patient and just wait" but why should they have had to when there were some product in stock?
How would you feel if you made a product to sell to customers but before a real customer could buy them, someone came in and bought your product from you and offered your customers that same product at a higher price?
I'm gonna say not illegal...but very douchey
I vaguely remember a case where apple was low on stock with something....can't remember what it was. Maybe a new iPhone? Anyway. They were super low. These guys came in and bought like a dozen iPhones between them. Then people came in after all disappointed because there were literally zero phones left in stock with a long back order now. The resellers see this and as the customers leave the store offer to sell them a brand new iPhone at 3x the price. Now tell me...
What did the resellers do to earn ANY extra money? They took stock that could've been sold to someone else and put someone in a position where their only option was to either pay insane price to them or wait. When they wouldn't have had to wait otherwise. There was a bunch of phones in stock right before they walked in. You could say "well they can be patient and just wait" but why should they have had to when there were some product in stock?
How would you feel if you made a product to sell to customers but before a real customer could buy them, someone came in and bought your product from you and offered your customers that same product at a higher price?
I'm gonna say not illegal...but very douchey
What did the resellers do to earn any money? They took a product that was available to (almost) no one and made it available to everyone! Imagine a world where scalping is highly illegal, and say the punishment is so severe (execution, entire family killed) that no one ever does it. Apple, in the interest of marketability, has to set prices far in advance. So, faced with the recent supply issues we are very aware of, who gets the $100 Pencil? They can't be resold, so the lucky few that get them are the first, say, 15 people that show up to the Apple Store on the first day. This is not ideal, as there are a lot more people than these 15 that would buy a Pencil for $100 on the first day -- to the extent that we can't even reasonably expect these first 15 people to be the specific 15 people that valued having a Pencil the most (graphic designers, note takers, etc.). To make matters worse, the people that actually want a Pencil badly can't even buy one through the lucky 15 that happened to get one on the first day!
How is this a better state of affairs than being able to resell the Pencil, faced with severe shortages in the first month? It's not even a case of "legal, but douchey." It's unconscionable to even suggest that there's something wrong with scalping.
P.S. To answer your other question -- as a supplier, how would I feel if someone took my product and sold it at my door for more: why would I care? If I tried selling Crunch Bars for $100 a pop outside the Nestle factory, how well would that work for me? How does my story differ from the reality of the Pencil/ASK situation?
I could care less. If people are willing to over pay for something, then that is their business. A fool and his money are soon parted is how the saying goes I believe. Personally, age has taught me how to be patient and wait for supply to catch up with demand, as well to be wise with my money.
Frankly there's not much point debating the morality of this. I simply blame Apple, for having a completely inadequate supply chain to match demand....
That situation is quite "funny". Indeed, I've received my IPP along with Smart Keyboard and Pencil a few days ago. I've ordered all those items from Best Buy Canada and got them delivered within two days. As I've just checked a few minutes ago, they are all sold out, but as far as I'm concerned, I've got all three guys available online and delivered in a timely manner. Now, I live in a "third world country" (Canada). I just don't get it how people from US could not get hold of any Smart Keyboard or Pencil. I'm confused...
Right, what's being discussed here is scalping. This isn't about buying something, deciding you don't like it, and then reselling it for a profit. This is about buying up a bunch of something, creating scarcity, and then selling it for a marked up price.
It's not just "douchey," it's malignant. Even if you ignore the fact that these people are profiting off of doing nothing and forcing everyone else to either pay a higher price or wait longer, they have nothing to lose. We had a guy on these forums asking if we all thought it was a good idea for him to get into scalping when a new iPad was going to be released. His plan, if he couldn't get the price that he wanted? Return them to the Apple store. That would waste some of Apple's resources and possibly force them to sell the device as "refurbished," at a reduced cost.
If you say "yeah, but Apple is rich enough" then you're missing the point. And this isn't about a free market. This is market manipulation, and inserting yourself into the loop. It's parasitic. I don't know that there's a way to make it illegal, but I applaud companies that try to make these types of practices more difficult.
They're upselling to people who cannot wait to buy it. If you wait, you can buy it from apple. So again, its not really a huge deal, unless you're willing to spend 10x the purchase price to be one of the first to own a given apple product.
What's the big deal? You get it now for more money if you really want it. You'd have it by now if you ordered your accessories the first 48 hours. For clothes, you can pay the "crazy" full markups when they're released or get them a couple months later at 70-80% off on the clearance racks. What do you want? Now or later and how much? Yeah it sucks to have to wait, but the more you complain like everyone here and NOT put in an order, it's just wasting time. I complained after I placed my order and wound up getting my gear a few weeks ago!
So you are deciding what are noble reasons for purchasing a product and which reasons are not? Do tell.
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First of all, a guy buying up 4 or 5 Apple Pencils can hardly be accused of "creating scarcity" or "manupulating the market". Out of the millions of items produced, "buying up a bunch" (if 4 or 5 could ever be considered a bunch) will not make a dent in the grand scheme of things.
Further, one could see the action of purchasing up a handful of a temporarily hard to find item as actually providing a service. As I have already posted, you pay for everything with either cash, time or effort.
Personally, if a someone is desperate and willing to pay more instead of being patient, then inflation of price is going to happen. People will try to make a profit, others will take a loss. Supply and demand, retailers markup too, so it's really on the value the buyer puts on the product.