This petition has been created with the purpose of making Wesfarmers (owner of Kmart and Target Australia) aware of the fact that their lack of action against the plague of auto-checkout bots has completely shut out real collectors and families from purchasing any stock from their online preorder allocation. 
 
Scalpers are using your websites to take advantage of financially struggling families – by forcing them to pay hyper-inflated prices for popular products that were never available for sale. 
  
This has been a continuously growing issue over the last 6-12 months – with everyday customers experiencing more issues at checkout now than ever before (when I say issues – I mean complete inability to even add the product to their cart before it’s sold out). Those that have tried will know exactly what we’re talking about – the constant refreshing of your page trying to get the add to cart button to work, and if it does, getting error after error in the checkout page due to the server timing out. 
  
This whole situation was amplified recently with the online release of the 30th Celebration Ultra Premium Collection – where thousands of units were loaded into the system for release, and across communities that host 30,000+ members who attempted manually, not a single one of them had any success with purchasing one. The day went on, the screenshots from the botting community surfaced, with one user reporting that they were successful in checking out nearly 360 units combined for both variants of the product. 
  
Now you’re probably thinking “this is just coming from adults being angry they can’t get access to a kids game” – but let’s put that into perspective by making you aware of the fact that there are parents across Australia, who have collected for a long time and want to create memories with their kids as they may have done with their parents, who are unable to even get their hands on anything from the most fun-to-rip set Pokémon has ever released. 
 
My Story – A Customer's Perspective 
 
Personally, I have 2 pre-teenage girls that both enjoy Pokemon, the youngest having her bed smothered in the stuffed plushies. As it is, I remember playing the card game when it first came out and have enjoyed the opportunity to be able to re-live my younger years and have a shared bond with both of my kids. With the release of the 30th Anniversary Collection, I saw it as a milestone opportunity to increase their interest in the game and have some more quality memories. 
 
Cue the release dates of 30th Anniversary products.  
 
Without bias I can say that both the K-Mart and Target websites were the most disorganised, hard to access disappointments that I have ever had through the shopping experience. Other stores, such as JB Hi-Fi and Big W, sold through vast quantities of stock, but their websites worked the majority of the time. With both the K-Mart and Target sites, almost as soon as stock became available, your websites froze, crashed, kicked you out requiring logging back in, which for extended periods was impossible, or just simply did not allow you to purchase product. If you were fortunate enough to manage to get an item in your cart or bag, which I did, the site would just prevent you from progressing any further.  
It was physically visible to watch the site slow down to a point where it was farcical. There was no physical way that an individual would have been able to successfully make a dozen transactions on these days, let alone hundreds. I considered myself fortunate that I was able to source 3 items in 1 purchase, for a total of 6 packets of cards, as I know there were many that weren’t even that lucky. 
 
Both of my daughters had seen the artwork of both the promos and the playmats within the UPC’s, as well as the cards from the other packs. To have to explain to them that I wasn’t able to get them any, “But why not? Didn’t they just go on sale today?”. Seeing their shoulders slump from disappointment is a hard thing to take. And no, before you ask, they are not entitled, I was planning for them to be a reward for hard work and a birthday present combined. 
 
I know the end result is that all the products sold, the stock moved, and sales targets were met. I can guarantee, however, that the reputation of both K-Mart and Target as a ‘good’ online retail store has been tarnished greatly, and it is not just my opinion. I know going forward that my likelihood of using either of these sites is quite low because of my recent experiences. 
  
We’re 3 months away from Christmas – and there are thousands of parents across Australia who work full time to support their families and can’t take the time to line up on release days, meaning if they want to purchase any 30th Celebration products, they will have to pay the exorbitant market prices set by the unscrupulous people who use software to automatically buy all the products before any real customers can.  
  
Kmart Australia very clearly knows there’s importance in setting limits for customers purchasing the stock – this is reflected in their in-store release day policies, where items over $20 are 1 per person and anything under that is 5 per person. The online system also has limits per transaction – however there is no limit as to how many times a customer is able to submit multiple orders for the same product. We don't understand why Kmart doesn't block this behaviour. 
  
EB Games has hard limits per account and manually validate each account to see who breaks the terms and conditions. 
  
JB Hi-Fi have a verification process – where if you place orders for a product you’ve already purchased in the last 12 months, they automatically cancel your order. 
  
This indicates it can be done – there just needs to be a level of effort actually put in. 
  
The TCG Community, as a whole, is requesting Kmart take action by doing the following: 
  
Introduce any sort of bot protection at checkout. This can include: 
Captcha gateways that are turned on prior to each online release happening, meaning checkout isn’t a tedious process for customers outside of these drop times. JB Hi-Fi has this process, and so does the Pokémon Center websites (the ones that actually stock product) 
OTP (One Time Password) gateways which require the user to manually intervene with checkout to enter the code 
Virtual queues that customers are forced to join before release 
  
Implement purchase limits per verified account  
Customers will need to verify their account using an Australian mobile number or any sort of identification that cannot be manipulated or duplicated 
This means the user will not be able to create multiple accounts and use the same mobile / fake numbers  
The timeframe for the limit per account is indefinite 
This process does not allow the user to checkout the product before being cancelled – this process takes place a step back, where the customer will either not be able to add the product to cart or proceed to checkout 
  
Vet online orders thoroughly. They can claim they do – but screenshots have been circulated of customers receiving 50 boxes from Kmart containing One Piece Illustration Boxes and Prismatic Evolutions Poster Collections. This process can be done by cross checking: 
Postal address 
Payment name 
Payment details 
Email addresses 
  
As one of, if not the, biggest non-hobby focused retailers in Australia that stock TCG product - you have the opportunity to set a standard of how customers are treated in regard to providing equal and fair access to stock.  By continuing to not do anything about this – you are contradicting your own rules that you wrote in the FAQ’s of your website -  https://www.kmart.com.au/faq/payment-and-ordering/#placing-orders 
  
“Why are there purchase limits on Pokemon products? 
  
Purchase limits may apply to high-demand products such as Pokémon trading cards to help give more customers an opportunity to purchase them. Limits may vary by product and can change depending on stock availability and demand.” 
  
Kmart / Target / Wesfarmers group: it’s time for you to take action.