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How 'Grinch Bots' Are Ruining Online Christmas Shopping (nypost.com)
Yes, U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer actually called them "Grinch bots." From the New York Post:
The senator said as soon as a retailer puts a hard-to-get toy -- like Barbie's Dreamhouse or Nintendo game systems -- for sale on a website, a bot can snatch it up even before a kid's parents finish entering their credit card information... "Bots come in and buy up all the toys and then charge ludicrous prices amidst the holiday shopping bustle," the New York Democrat said on Sunday... For example, Schumer said, the popular Fingerlings -- a set of interactive baby monkey figurines that usually sell for around $15 -- are being snagged by the scalping software and resold on secondary websites for as much as $1,000 a pop...
In December 2016, Congress passed the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, which Schumer sponsored, to crack down on their use to buy concert tickets, but the measure doesn't apply to other consumer products. He wants that law expanded but knows that won't happen in time for this holiday season. In the meantime, Schumer wants the National Retail Federation and the Retail Industry Leaders Association to block the bots and lead the effort to stop them from buying toys at fair retail prices and then reselling them at outrageous markups.
In December 2016, Congress passed the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, which Schumer sponsored, to crack down on their use to buy concert tickets, but the measure doesn't apply to other consumer products. He wants that law expanded but knows that won't happen in time for this holiday season. In the meantime, Schumer wants the National Retail Federation and the Retail Industry Leaders Association to block the bots and lead the effort to stop them from buying toys at fair retail prices and then reselling them at outrageous markups.
The shoppers are idiots, and they largely get what they deserve - anyone paying more than retail is exacerbating the problem, but god forbid your child doesn't get the latest gadget for Christmas. Anyone who has paid more than retail for a gaming system, or anything else that will eventually be available for the retail cost, is NOT A VICTIM, they are the PROBLEM.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
This is capitalism. If I did this as an individual, I'd be heralded as an entrepreneur. If I made a company to do this, I'd be a wonderful speculator. Hell, if I did it with concert tickets, I'd be TicketMaster, and if I did it with drugs I'd be GSK.
Why if I automate the system from my bedroom for buying toys, luxury items not essentials like life saving drugs, am I somehow a villain?
It's a time worn cliche, but hate the game. This kind of crap is just fluff to pretend that someone cares without fixing the underlying issue.
and then reselling them at outrageous markups.
If all of the resold toys are bought at the outrageous markup, then that's what they should have been priced in the first place.
Instead, Schumer should be bitching and complaining about idiot parents who pay that much for Fingerlings. I say that acts like this make people unfit to be parents. and that there's a strong case that their children should be taken away.
(Where these kids should be placed is left as an exercise for the reader.)
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
No toy commercials and a quicker hatred of government so we can bitch about it together.
This kind of arbitrage is only possible if the original price was far too low compared to the supply/demand. If there is demand at $1000/ea, and you are selling at $15/ea, then something will fill that void. If not bots, then just people buying and immediately reselling.
I have no idea what a "Barbie Dreamhouse" is or why it could possibly be worth $1000 to somebody, but if that's where the market values it, you can either (a) produce more to drive the supply/demand intersection point down closer to what you feel it should be, or (b) sell closer to the current intersection point, which takes the wind out of arbitrage, which also becomes very risky.
These things are matters of basic economics, and have simple solutions.
I have to wonder who wrote Schumer's BOTS act. cuz you know damned well neither he nor his staff don't understand the issue, let alone legislate it. It was written by lobbyists who paid the most the Chucky's attention.
This was literally the last arc in it.
Come up with a fucking stupid retarded toy that everybody wants. Produce just enough of them to cover market demand. Hype them up online/in the media, then them up with shill bidders to drive the costs up. While everybody is clamoring to get them, ride the hype train to sell the company. Mass profit, move on to next idea.
It's true what they say: Every profitable bad idea has already been publish in porn :)
Schumer's just mad he probably won't see a dime of the taxes on those inflated resales.
Screw that.... ANOTHER attempt by government to manipulate the free market economy, with the flawed idea it will improve anything.
You can blame these scripts/bots all you like for product shortages, but I guarantee they'll continue to happen even if all of them are somehow magically prevented from running.
The companies actually building the products are known to limit how many are produced after doing the marketing, knowing full well that shortages drum up more interest and free publicity than making sure there's plenty of supply. (When supply is plentiful, a lot of people decide to buy some other product instead that they feel is going to be harder to obtain as a gift. They figure, "Eh... I can easily get one of THOSE things any time, and judging by how many are on shelves? It'll probably go on sale by then too.")
Doesn't the good Senator from New York have more pressing issues demanding his attention these days?
Beware of the Leopard.
Let's try something novel - if you can't find it in stores, just don't buy it.
Trust me, your little darlings aren't going to be scarred for life.
And even better, the so-called Grinch-bots will then be left holding the toys when noone is willing to pay $1K price tags for a $15 toy....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
And reaping the greediness that retailers have shown over the last 10+ years of making black Friday a bigger thing each year to the point that Walmart basically closes only for a few hours before opening on Thanksgiving Day.
I had to laugh that a Walmart in Indiana, PA had everything bought by one person who shows up at the Walmart with a U-Haul in front of all the shoppers who had been waiting inline for hours. I hoped an employee just told the crowd, "That's Capitalism!" right before they tore him to shreds.
Better, make the toy scalpers watch the crying kids belonging to the more practical parents until they calm back down. No ear plugs allowed.
Retailers/Manufactures love getting their customers spun up. Hey let's not mark up something to a realistic price so that demand is strong but not insane. They mark it down to say 1/10 of what the "gotta have my precious NOW!" are willing to pay (initial launch 3 weeks out from Christmas), and watch the customers eat each other, while knowing they won't be able to satisfy initial demand for the item for another 6 months into next year.
Its kind of evil if you ask me.
This is free markets. Duh? What did you expect? People not to take advantage of other people to make a buck?
It's sad he won't get the Fingerlings he wanted for Christmas - but does he really need to pass a law about it?
A few lessons to be learned here, 1-Senators only get upset when something affects them. 2-Senators are really bad at online shopping.
Seems to me like we need more senators who need things like epi-pens and insulin. Online shopping for the newest toys are not the big issue of the era.
They want to take our freedom away. Next thing you know they will be trying to say our president can't take orders from Russia or that electing a pedobear is wrong on some moral grounds. Well if a good Christian can't get on his knees to take Putin in the mouth or chase underage kids, well I don't know about freedom and white power mean anymore.
Government price controls have never worked in favor of the population. Schumer needs to reexamine his Marxist views as they inevitably lead to war.
Schumer is an idiot, Why do people listen to this fool anyway? News at 11: Schumer wants more government intervention to keep the proles enslaved.
This has been happening forever.. well it seems so. Promoters research what parents will pay for their children's' entertainment.. and they determine if they can make their kids wishes come true or it will have to wait. Then they set a price that they think meets in the middle ground.
What we see here is profiteering from children's wishes.. and the opportunity to exploit the parents as they try to make their kids dreams come true. This isn't new.. its just disgusting. Example from almost 10 years ago....
https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/11/hannah-montana-vs-the-ticket-scalping-bots/
It's nothing new... Christmas toys... =P
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingle_All_the_Way
Considering that we're about to add $1.5 tn in deficit spending to make the ultra-wealthy just that much more wealthy on the poor's dime, I think that the people paying those markups probably don't feel bad about screwing the poorer out of buying them for what the manufacturer and retailers are asking.
We live in a winner take all society where the rich are so completely oblivious that it's going to take literal lynch mobs of villagers carrying torches and pitchforks to get them to see that being greedy bastards has consequences.
And thus we learned that the true meaning of Christmas is not in buying whatever mass-produced junk is trendy at the moment, but in joining together in anger on the internet.
watch the crying kids belonging to the more practical parents
The flaw in your counter-argument is that the same quality that makes practical parents not pay outrageous prices on fad pieces of shit makes them have trained their children to not be spoiled, whiny brats.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
This senator (and the government as a whole) has more important issues (energy, budget, waste, etc) they should be focusing on. As far as this issue retailers could solve this issue pretty easily if they wanted to, simply put limits on in store/online purchases for popular items sent to specific addresses. It wouldn't completely prevent it, but it would limit it significantly. And whatever remainder of an issue there is could be solved by consumers simply refusing to do business with these useless sacks of garbage.
Hey I've got an idea for Nintendo et al. If the thing you are making keeps selling out so people will pay more for it, why not make more of that thing and/or charge more for that thing, either way you get to make more money and the scalpers don't! It's so easy it's almost as if it's a basic principle of economics anyone in business should've learned before they even held a job.
Why do kids need the latest plastic toy fad made by $1/hr workers in some sweatshop? Buy them toys that make them THINK creatively and allow them to build. Paints and a canvas, electronics set, chemistry set, Legos, Erector sets, Capsela (yep, re-released), electric trains. Those kinds of things seldom go through fads, so bots are unlikely to be a problem. And you can buy them in brick 'n mortar shops.
Try telling 5 year olds that the grump sitting in the corner is exactly why Santa can't bring them what they most wanted for Christmas and see what happens. And pass me the popcorn.
Get them something that they can build or make a mess with (painting set, Legos, Erector set, etc) and they'll quickly forget their sadness.
I walk in to Toys-R-Us, purchase a Tickle Me Elmo for $19.95, and a month later they were selling for $1000 or more on ebay because there were none left in the stores. Did I sell it for profit? Fuck no. My daughter loved it for Christmas. Do your Christmas shopping in October.
Tell them that Santa was fired by his employers (Coca-Cola) because there were accusations of him sexually harassing the female elves Apparently he would get them to sit on his lap while telling them what he wanted for Christmas.
To see if you can spot that spinning Earth!
Space is fake, the Earth is flat. The eclipses prove it.
If another firms want to buy all the product at retail and take the risk in reselling it, then that is not necessarily a problem. It will create demand, so the next product I release is likely to sell well. The issue might be if I am trying to establish the product and I get negative press, or if there is some sort of grey market where I am leverage the arbitrage. This occurs in high end bags in which they are imported to the US from Europe, then Europeans will fly to NY, but the bags, and resell them in Europe.
The parents and collectors who pay $1000 for a $15 toys are doing so specifically because they can. Their child is the one with the toy, while other children are of lesser value because they do not have the toy. We see this with parents taking their kids to Disney World instead of local park simply because it costs more.
This is true in all markets. All tickets for entertainment activities are subject to resellers because people want to show they have expendable income, even if they do not.
Here are two things we forget. First, no one, not child, no adult, is entitled to any product. No one is entitled to a big house, no one is entitled to see Beyonce, no one is entitled to a Barbie doll. As we say on /., it is not going to make your breasts larger or your dick bigger just because you can buy your kid whatever random toy is deemed the 'it toy.' Second, people have free will to spend their money as they wish. If they want to spend $5 for a cup of starbucks llama regurgitation, or $500 to see some band streamed through a computer autotuner, that is their choice. Some people are going to focus on showing they have more than anyone else. We can't legislate greed.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Don't you have anything better to do than post that garbage?
The flaw in your argument is "credit cards", which allows any wahoo with sufficient credit limit
But the flaw there is that you are defining people who have a lot of credit as "not rich" when access to that much credit is in fact very much a form of being rich.
In the end if they declare bankruptcy that does not mean they did not literally live like a king for a while.
Rich people lose money too (just look at actors) it doesn't mean they were not once rich, just foolish.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
All due respect, maybe I don't understand. My faith doesn't have a "Christmas".
Isn't this holiday about the birth of a messiah? A Savior? What does getting a good price on "Barbie's Dream House" have to do with ruining the holiday? And why are lawmakers getting involved with a religious practice?
I sympathize with many of you who are concerned about free market manipulation and the relative unimportant nature of toy sales. Your not wrong. When it comes to toys for children, we can solve this "problem" with a little wisdom and self control.
However, let's look at this like technology people (slashdot, right?). Toys today could be something else tomorrow?
Those mandatory for school TI calculators?
Chemicals necessary to produce certain kinds of 3D print material used in every household?
Important drugs that are hard to produce?
Preparation H?!? (Hey,when you need it and it is not there, then you will understand)
I'm not sure if this is possible today, but when I think about how the market has changed over the past 10 or 20 years and imagine how it might change over the next 10 or 20, I'm not sure this "abuse" is going to be limited to rich people and their spoiled children's toy fetishes. When I combine a little imagination with the history of technology and its evolution, this practice makes me a little nervous.
I don't know if Schumer has thought about this or even cares, but shouldn't we give it a little more thought before discounting this out of hand?
How could bots disrupt the free market and legitimately hurt people by limiting access to stuff?
The toy manufacturers are obviously mispricing their toys if the 'Grinch Bots' are a problem. Sort of like a company that sets it's IPO price at $20/share and sees it climb to $50 the first day and stay above $40 for months -- the company just left too much money on the table and investors took advantage of it.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Bitch about consumers ?? Hahaha. Then Schhumer would need to bitch about nibberbooz buying krak ... and ya don't want DemoRats pissing-off their main-lining krakheads ... er voters.
Try telling 5 year olds that the grump sitting in the corner is exactly why Santa can't bring them what they most wanted for Christmas and see what happens. And pass me the popcorn.
Funny, I have four kids, and most of the time they get what my wife and I want them to have; which only rarely coincides with what they had asked for. I can't say any of them have ever whined to me about not having something they asked for and didn't get. I must have simply gotten lucky.
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Four times
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I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
Isn't this a well known problem? I can't remember a time when bots weren't ruining eBay auctions. They've been ruining concerts and shows for years, driving up prices to multiple times what they cost direct from the issuer.
Ditto @geoskd, except we only have two kids.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
its just risk management about to be completely automized
You just don't hear stuff like this during a recession when nobody buys anything.
They had "fluidity" to the market ! Did you not know that ? At least that is what I learned with High speed trading ;).
If all of the resold toys are bought at the outrageous markup,
Straw-man assumption, you fail at the first hurdle. They are not all resold. They are bought in bulk by traders, which is why you'll always find a limited edition LEGO kit, unopened etc, on reseller sites for 10x original price.
Man, my kid asks for something, I beat dat ass with a 2x4 If they while again, I put a nail in it. They just sit there kinda glassy eyed now, never make a peep.
If they still want X in a year, fine, otherwise there's a life lesson about marketing, peer pressure, and temporality to be taught, which is far more valuable than a Cabbage Patch doll or Pet Rock.
On the other hand, this lesson comes at the price of being the only single kid who received it, and being ostracized by the rest of the school's kid for being weird by not following the same trends as every body else "normal", by not having the same outfit, the same popular toys, etc.
Basically, by making the kid more aware and more immune of the above marketing/peer pressure/etc. problems, you're also pushing them into becoming social outcasts and being percieved as "that weird kid".
There's a sweet spot of weirdness were the kid actually doesn't even give a damn about not fitting in the group, is creative enough to find their own interests in life (without needing group approval) while still being a tiny bit social enough to have a very interesting clique of other non-conforming friends.
(And, personal experience, it also helps a lot when the kid happens to be quite a bit taller then any potential bully...)
But that might not be the case of everyone. Some kids might be actively trying to resist your lessons about not needing to fit in because of sheer fear of rejection by the others.
The part of the lesson about "peer pressure" actually goes much deeper than just "you'll see, in a couple of months you won't even want the toy anymore".
It is a very valuable lesson, but it take quite some work to get there depending on the kid.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Better, make the toy scalpers watch the crying kids... No ear plugs allowed.
Why would they plug their ears? Crying sounds like very high demand for the toys to the scalpers. So it's like music to their ears... (cha ching)
"Selling on secondary websites for $1000 a pop" is pretty misleading.
A lot of those bot-sellers are automated, and look at similar items on various websites for pricing.
So one bot sees another bot selling a $15 item for $20, and ups the price by 10% to $22. Which triggers Bot #3 to sell for $24. They get into high-speed feedback loops that push the prices up until they hit arbitrary caps (in this case, $1000). You see this with low-end electronics on Amazon from time to time: a no-name, nothing fancy cable that lists for hundreds of dollars, along with a few others that list for slightly lower prices, all because nobody from the companies involved actually looked at their active list prices.
The item doesn't actually "sell" at this price, of course... the current going rate for Fingerlings seems to be about $50. Which is the price the manufacturer charges on Amazon.
If all of the resold toys are bought at the outrageous markup, then that's what they should have been priced in the first place.
Which makes you wonder, why *aren't* they being priced that way? Surely these toy makers want to make the most money right?
I wonder if people are willing pay more to the online scalper than they would otherwise be prepared to pay in a Big Box Store for some reason. Is it because thrifty families have a chance to buy the toy earlier and rich families can't bare the thought of some poor kids having something that their kids don't? Is it simply that a toy becomes more desirable the more unavailable it is? Certainly it seems like there's more to it than simple supply and demand, because otherwise makers would see the presence of scalpers as a signal that they can increase prices without altering demand.
Tried, but the Lego Store ran out of the specific set they wanted, so I had to explain that some hairy manchild in Chicago stole the entire stock.
A good use case for those. Won't stop farming with real people though.
The scalping issue has a lot in common with the Prisoner's Dilemma. In real life, a fair percentage of prisoners will flip. That's just with 2-3 people involved. Change that to 2-3 million people and its guaranteed that people are going to 'flip' by purchasing inflated, scalped goods.
If people don't want bots and scalpers to buy up all the stuff and sell it at an exorbitant rate, don't fucking buy it at an exorbitant rate. Buy your kids other shit and tell them that terrorists took over the North Pole/toy stores. The only reason why these bots (and scalpers in general) exist is because people are fucking stupid enough to buy the crap at the ripoff rates.
Easy to say in hindsight, but these things are usually impossible to predict and tend to be very short-lived. Setting the price higher can prevent the popularity that makes scalping practical in the first place, which doesn't really work out better for anyone. Even if the product proves popular initially, long-term success may only be possible at a lower price. Once retailers get a taste of high profits though, they'll rather ride that high price straight to the manufacturer's bankruptcy (and, later, their own) than cut the price (and their profit margin). Not much about this industry makes much sense.
Let me tell you a story about a toy that fueled scalpers and doomed the product line with its popularity. The year was 2002. The Transformers franchise was beginning a resurgence in the US after regaining popularity in Japan. A new cartoon series was generating new fans and Japanese reissues of the '80s toys were bringing back adult fans. They were a bit expensive at about $30-35 shipped to the US for the smaller ones and $40-80 for the larger ones, but there was plenty of demand. So of course it made sense to develop a line of reissues for the US market.
Toys R Us was given this line as an exclusive. The first wave consisted of three figures: Optimus Prime and Ultra Magnus priced at $39.99 each and Rodimus Major (Hot Rod) priced at $17.99. None of these had current Japanese reissues. Ultra Magnus and Rodimus Major would eventually sell through in a few months, but Optimus Prime, as you might expect, was the top seller. Stores quickly sold out and prices reached $80 on eBay. Hasbro, in a rare move, ordered a second production run. These, too, sold almost immediately, though the resale price was falling to about $60. Ultra Magnus, a similar figure offered at the same price, was still widely available.
Toys R Us followed the line of thinking that the scalper price meant that they should have priced them higher. They learned from this and raised the price of the figures in the following waves from the expected $20 and up to $30 and up, matching the cost to import the Japanese versions. They even changed the box format from the vintage-style boxes to book-style boxes like the Japanese reissue line used. Most of what Toys R Us eventually stocked was or would soon be available in the Japanese line. On top of that, US safety regulations required modifications to many of the figures that were not made to their Japanese counterparts. Missiles needed to be made non-firing or 3 inches long and pointy parts (like Optimus Prime's smokestacks) needed to be shortened. Toys R Us was left with an inferior product priced the same as imports; their only "advantage" was availability in physical stores, which was turning into a liability in the age on online shopping.
You can probably guess what happened next. The spike in demand was only for the Optimus Prime figure and didn't carry over to the rest of the line. This should have been obvious from sales of Ultra Magnus. Collectors saw no reason to buy the US versions over the Japanese versions and the appeal never really spread beyond the adult collector market. After spending years gathering dust, the last remnants were clearanced out in 2006 for as little as $2.49. Other than a pair released in 2009, the final new figure went to TRU's doomed rival Kay Bee Toys, offered for a more reasonable $14.99. Another reissue line was started in Japan two years later. There was no US counterpart.
Now, the point can be made that trying to target the adult collectible market is just asking for trouble. Or that Toys R Us makes a habit of overpricing everything and wastes tons of shelf space on products that will never sell at the listed price. But these "must-have" toy fads with 1000% scalper markups usually share the same fate. Long-term success just isn't in the cards when popularity peaks at the start.
From the top buying toys at high prices.
Could fall for this "I have to have now" pseudo marketing for idiots with ADD. All of those toys are 2$ in china...
Chuck Schumer hasn't seen the Grinch or he skipped the part when the Grinch realizes that Christmas doesn't come from a store.
I wonder how smart the bots are. If you could target the IP's or characteristics specific to the bot networks, then perhaps it might be possible to jack up the prices and limit stock just for them. It would be a win-in, as the seller gets a boatload of money for the bots, and the "regular" stock is still available to the direct customers.
Funny how the chest-thumpers of modern capitalism sob into their hands when the free market does something they *don't* like...
He's a cancer upon American politics. Nothing he has to say is useful. He's a bought and sold shill and should be thrown off a bridge.
If these toys are worth this exorbitant price than the retailer is entirely missing the market. Don't blame it on Bots or scalpers, blame it on the retailers of the product not pricing their product for demand.
One, if not two, of your kids will grow up to be serial killers. Because their parents were complete narcissist assholes who bought themselves nice toys but said fuck the kids, cuz I gots minezZ.
Important pro tip: use vaseline instead of Preparation H!!! It costs almost nothing and does the exact same thing.
Same. In fact, they are usually really happy for what they get.
I ask them what they want for Christmas as an idea of the type of things I can get them - because honestly, the older they get, the harder it is to figure out what they want.
My 4 year old is just as excited (and more sometimes) on the present I get her from Goodwill as she is by the present I bought her retail. My 19 year old is less excited but is always touched as she understands how money works now.
To buy them stuff just so they don't cry is bad parenting. You raise kids like that and they end up growing up and thinking that the government should pass laws to force toy availability.
The step daughter got upset last year when she had worked herself up into thinking she was getting a phone, but got a tablet instead.
She unfortunately is getting a phone this year, I wanted to push it off further but its at the point now where it will be more convenient for me to get a hold of her.
High Frequency Trading is fine, bots buying consumer products is an issue.
Interesting.
You can get a giant box of assorted Legos Techic parts online for $35. Let them be creative. I never followed the build instructions, frankly, always went rogue and built what I wanted.
I agree, I hate it, but this is a natural evolution of a practice that has been going on for a very long time.
Find something popular, buy it up cheap and sell it for a profit. And things are only going to get worse.
But government regulation isn't the answer (it's an answer, but should be a last resort), this is a problem retailers should be responsible for resolving.
After all, their business depends on their customers, if this practice becomes ubiquitous, then customers will move to retail sites that help protect them from such actions. It would be very easy for a retailer, like Amazon to limit the sale of much anticipated popular products to one per account/cc/household/whatever.
So the questions should be, why don't they do this?
Is there some incentive to allow this behavior - are they getting a percentage of the sellers price when a sale is made?
Brick and mortar stores already have measures to combat this kind of scalping, it's time the digital stores did the same.
Buy toys from an actual physical store. If it's not there - buy something else. I never got *everything* I wanted for Christmas. There's nothing wrong with waiting or buying it for yourself when you can afford it. (I finally got Mousetrap a few years ago! I had to buy it for myself as an adult - but I got it!)
Mod me away if you want. That's why I don't bother logging in any more. But I've said my piece.