The description and title of the lot honestly indicate that the picture is being sold, not the real product. But still there are buyers, and they are not people.
The term "scalpers" as applied to eBay users refers to speculators who, when rare goods appear, buy all of them and then sell them at exorbitant prices. For example, on November 5, sales of Ryzen 5000 processors started. They were sold out almost immediately in most countries, and then put up for sale for the second time at a double or even triple price tag. The same thing happened with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 30 graphics cards we recently wrote about . As if nothing illegal, but the average buyer suffers.
It is not necessary to explain who scammers are on Habré. But there is a special type of such scammers - those who, instead of a real product on eBay, display its images. As a rule, for this, a good account with a large number of reviews is bought, or a zero account is pumped through purchases of $ 1. Further - a matter of technology. EBay's security mechanisms help detect fraud, but not all, and not always. Now scammers have focused their efforts on deceiving scalpers, and not without success: many manage to sell a photo of a top-end video card for hundreds of dollars. And here "everything is without cheating", the description honestly indicates that the picture is for sale. How and why does it work? We tear off the covers.
Scalpers, bots and the scarcity of video cards and processors in 2020
As we already wrote, because of quarantine, tens of millions of people are forced to while away their days in self-isolation. When all the series have been watched, and the refrigerators are empty, the turn of the games begins. The demand for gaming PCs and laptops has grown significantly. And if so far everything is fine with the latter, then the suppliers cannot meet the growth in demand for PCs by 300-400%. Gaming system builders complain about the lack of latest generation graphics cards and processors.
This is partly to blame for manufacturers, who were unable to foresee the spike in demand. But scalpers are also responsible for what happened, because they are the ones who buy out tens of thousands of video cards and processors when the latter appear on sale, and then set a horse price tag on eBay and other marketplaces.
It is clear that all these people are not sitting in front of the screens, trying to catch the moment of the release of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 30 card or the Ryzen 5000 processor. Not at all, instead of people there are bots, scripts that search for lots by keywords and a certain price. When a suitable lot is found, it is immediately redeemed. Scalpers have always worked like this, but now there are a lot of them. But an equally ingenious trick was found for their cunning.
Photos for the price of a cast iron bridge and buying bots
Scammers who display product photos instead of the product itself have always been on eBay. As mentioned above, they upgrade new accounts or buy old and reputable ones and use them to turn their dark deeds.
Few can be fooled in this way, and eBay also protects its buyers so that most of the time they get a refund. But nevertheless, a certain number of fraudulent operations can be cranked out, and the margin is sufficient for a contented fraudster to continue to deceive people.
Sometimes they sell not only photographs, but also empty boxes from under the goods. This works even better because the box can be removed from a variety of angles, including where the content's characteristics are described.
In general, now there are scammers who form a description of their lots based on the interests of scalpers. The latter launch bots to work, and they buy goods that meet the specified characteristics. The problem is that the bot does not analyze the description or title, it is guided in the search solely by keywords and price.
As a result, something like the lot below takes a few hours.
It is clear that then the deception is revealed, but nothing can be done: everywhere it is honestly stated that the lot is not a product, but a photograph. Often in the description something similar is written: "The buyer will receive a PRINTED PHOTO of the product, rtx 3060. This post is made for bots, people, do not buy this product!" Examples of lots - the first and second .
Often at the end of the description there is a postscript "All sales are for non-refundable basis, money is not refundable! ".
Why all this?
A somewhat strange question, isn't it? It is clear that in most cases people are interested in money. But sometimes the scammers who deceive scalpers are ideological people. So, representatives of Tom's hardware managed to contact several sellers of photographs.
One of them turned out to be quite talkative. This man even gave his name and said that he is an information security specialist. He spent several months studying the impact of scalpers on the processor and video card market and realized that speculators have an extremely powerful negative influence. Because of them, prices rise, the deficit increases, ordinary buyers suffer.
In this somewhat strange way, this person is trying to worsen the working conditions for scalpers.
But, of course, in most cases, scammers want to make money. Another user replied that he accidentally noticed the work of bots and revealed that they buy a lot, and in some cases the price tag is 2X of the normal price, if the product is really rare. Therefore, I decided to make money and began to place lots like those mentioned above. And he does not feel any remorse, since he deals with the unethical behavior of scalpers.
Some scammers even offer video card odes for sale. And it happens , yes.
What about eBay? How does the service relate to this "business"?
Bad, because lots where photos of goods are sold, and not goods, directly contradict the rules of the online auction. Now the company is fighting scammers by removing such lots and punishing sellers. Someone is blocked, someone has their account status lowered.
In any case, eBay is not able to track absolutely all lots of this kind - neither with the help of bots, nor with support staff. So we can expect a continuation of the wars between scalpers and scammers.
Regular users can be advised to be very careful when buying from eBay or other auctions. Not all scammers return money to people if they find out that the purchase was not made by a bot. It is clear that “the forest is being cut down - the chips are flying,” but nobody wants to be such a chip, right?
