https://www.engadget.com/newegg-scalpers-bots-ps5-xbox-series-x-gpus-162441880.html
Trying to find a new console or graphics card has proven immensely frustrating for many consumers. Scalpers and bots have swooped in to snap them up and sell them at inflated prices. Newegg, however, is trying to give everyone a fair shot at buying products that are in high demand.
Newegg Shuffle is a lottery system. Ahead of each drawing, you can select certain products that you’d like a shot at buying. If you’re chosen, Newegg will notify you by email and place the items in your cart. You’ll then have a few hours to make your purchase or you’ll lose your reservation.
Shuffle events usually start between noon and 2PM ET Monday to Friday. At the time of writing, Newegg is offering customers the chance to claim a PS5 bundle (with three games and an extra DualSense controller) or one of several NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series graphics cards. Other products that might appear in the lineup include Xbox Series X/S, AMD Radeon 6000 series GPUs and AMD Ryzen 5000 series graphics cards.
Newegg has undertaken other measures to tackle customers who have multiple accounts. It’s banning the IP addresses of people who it believes may be using auto-refresh, autoload and crawler bots.
The shuffle system isn’t perfect. Scalpers and bots still have a chance, albeit a smaller one, to grab consoles and graphics cards. Still, it’s encouraging to see a prominent retailer doing more to fight them.
via Engadget http://www.engadget.com
February 25, 2021 at 10:33AM