Scalping is an unfair practice where a person collects an item that is limited and/or highly sought after to drive up a false sense of limited supply to create more demand for a product, and then exploits that demand by reselling the product for an exponentially higher price than the original MSP.

If supply is truly limited then there’s not much that you can do, but I believe everyone should have a fair chance at that stock. Scalpers often times employ an unfair methods called a “bot.” (a program with the specific purpose of obtaining as many of the desired object as possible at release) 

Scalpers release multiple bots with the intent of bogging down and crashing websites to make it highly unlikely that anyone other the the most lucky and prudent of shoppers will be likely to even get one of the chosen item, and allow them (the scalpers) to obtain multiple.

popular items targeted are rare editions of item, or items with significant value like shoes, trading cards, video game systems, etc. The recent release of the Xbox series X and the PlayStation 5 are a perfect example. Both systems went up for sale and within minutes they were sold out. While your average joe couldn’t get one, a quick check on EBay showed that there were people who secured multiple and were now willing to sell the 400/500 dollar systems for any where between 1000-2000 dollars, and months before, the same thing happened with the preorders.

How can we change this? I’m glad you asked! First, we need to make the bot programs illegal. It’s not fair practice and it’s taking away from all of us. People who use this practice are letting their greed come before their sense of decency and empathy for their fellow man. They’re turning peoples passions against them by creating a sense of I need it right now.

we also need to put regulations on retailers to prevent the use of bots and allow a fair chance for everyone to get a limited quantity/rare item at a fair price. The regulations I propose are as such:

1.) It is illegal to obtain any item through a program that is not monitored and controlled manually by an operator. (I.e. clicking the Mouse and entering your information with a keyboard) NO AUTOPILOT.

2.) Limit big ticket items to one per checkout, if you want a second one then try again after securing the first.

3.) put a captcha code on checkout so that you have to prove that you are not a “bot”

4.) change the stores so that once an item is in the cart, it’s locked in to the buyer rather than once you’ve checked out.  It’s extremely disheartening to think you’ve obtained an item only to discover it’s sold out as you’re typing your shipping info in.

5.) require dedicated servers for checkout on retailer sites, that way they stop crashing when you’re trying to check out. Remove people who are in their carts from the people flooding the shopping portion of the site, that way the sales part is a smooth streamlined event.

I believe if we get enough signatures we might be able to get the federal trade commission’s attention and hopefully make the internet a better place for all of us. Shopping online is still relatively new, but I think that some regulations to make it fair for everyone is needed. Please join me in this fight and if we can’t get the FTC’s attention, then let’s get the major retailers to take notice!