KEY POINTS

  • Scalpers flood various auction sites like eBay
  • But consumers seem to be fighting back
  • Some of them are using eBay to counter bots and fight scalpers

Scalpers are almost everywhere, and most of them use the auction site eBay to sell their ridiculously expensive products like the Nvidia RTX 3090 graphics card. Interestingly, a new trend is happening in the said auction site, and it looks like consumers are using the platform as well to get back at scalpers.

New Trend To Counter Bots

At the time of this publication, most retailers have limited to zero stocks of Nvidia RTX 3090, and it seems that the company is having a hard time meeting the high consumer demand. However, on several sites like eBay, it looks like a lot of sellers are offering the product at insanely high prices. In a new report from Tom's Guide, some consumers are apparently fighting back at these scalpers and are using eBay as the new battleground.

Aside from listings, which are most probably from scalpers, some consumers would come across listings of Nvidia RTX 3090 that are too good to be true. However, reading the descriptions of these product pages will show that consumers are not bidding for the graphics card but for an image of the popular Nvidia GPU. Also, some descriptions advise consumers to stay away, claiming that the listing is meant to catch bots.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060
Nvidia is reportedly preparing a graphics card to compete with AMD Radeon RX 6800XL. steamXO/flickr

According to the report, one creator admitted that they never intended to let their auction go to completion. Apparently, the listing has more to do with curiosity on how auctions of Nvidia RTX 3090 are handled. Scalpers use bots to buy as much stock as possible and artificially inflate prices to a certain point.

How To Avoid Getting Scammed

Regardless if these listings are made to trick bots or for listers' curiosity, these are still scams, and consumers do not have to go through the hassle of purchasing a picture instead of what they actually have in mind. To avoid getting scammed, the best way consumers should do is not to bid on highly dubious listings. It is important that consumers read the entire listing down to the descriptions and images since most bogus listings hide the description screens. Also, too good to be true deals are often not real.