The RTX 3080 is already sold out everywhere, and as soon as something sells out people like to then resell it, which means there are plenty of auctions on Ebay. But who on earth just bought the Nvidia Geforce RTX 3080 for $96,000. What the fuck?! $96,ooo?! Who would buy a graphics card for 9900% more than its MSRP?
If you woke up this morning hoping for the chance to order an RTX 3080, my sincerest condolences to you. You are not alone. Nvidia’s Twitter account has been flooded with comments from users this about not receiving notification emails in time to buy an RTX 3080.
Others who were awake in time to buy an RTX 3080 when orders went live clicked on the ‘buy’ button only to get a pop-up that said they were sold out. Some Twitter users are also claiming that Nvidia graphics card partners did not send notification emails to their customers either.
Wish y’all would’ve made a system so real consumers could have actually ordered a card. Stayed up all night just to get crashed servers and everything sold out within 2 minutes without me even seeing the item as available. Literally went right from “Not Available” to “Sold Out”.
— Jordan L (@MrJordyboy) September 17, 2020
According to a video posted by one Reddit user, they never even saw a ‘purchase’ button pop up on Nvidia’s retail page on its own site. In the provided video, you can see the browser on the right auto refresh every few seconds. After about three refreshes, the ‘notify me’ button disappears and changes to ‘out of stock.’ Multiple Reddit users have also said the same thing happened to them when they tried to purchase an RTX 3080 this morning.
I was able to verify that as of now, the Nvidia website does say that the RTX 3080 founders edition is sold out. The rest of the options say “check availability,” when then take you to another retailer’s site to check its stock on partner manufacturer cards. The first three I clicked on redirected me to Newegg and Best Buy, which also said the RTX 3080 was sold out.
There was also a literal line out the main entrance of Micro Centre in Tustin, CA of people who were waiting to buy an RTX 3080 in-person — people that, sadly, might not have gotten one today. According to the Reddit user that posted the video, the Tustin Micro Centre had 85 RTX 3080s in stock as of 9 pm yesterday, and there were over 100 people waiting in line at the time.
Naturally, when a product sells out this quickly (and in some cases doesn’t sell at all) resellers can be involved. A quick look at Ebay right now shows some cards auctioning as high as $US60 ($82),000 ($82,320)! Most cards are being sold for anywhere between $US1,000 ($1,372)-$US5,000 ($6,860), but still — this is a $US700 ($960) card! Someone just bought it for $US70 ($96),000 ($96,040)! (If you are this person please reach out to me at jnelius@gizmodo.com. I need to know your story.)
Nvidia at least seems to be aware of the scalper problem and actually claims that’s one reason online sales have been so weird. In a statement sent to Gizmodo it noted that “[d]espite preparation, the Nvidia store was inundated with traffic and encountered an error” when it attempted to push the store live this morning. While it claims it was able to resolve those problems it also noted that “[T]o story bots and scalpers on the Nvidia store, we’re doing everything humanly possible”. The statement went on to say that Nvidia is reviewing orders manually in an effort to stop scalpers — which could make picking one up on Ebay at a premium a bad choice.
Nvidia also stressed that while demand is high it is working on getting more RTX 3080 GPUs into stores and that as of 6 a.m. Pacific today “over 50 major global retailers had inventory”. Nvidia’s statement went on to apologise for today’s events.
Nvidia isn’t the only company that quickly ran out of stock. Many people who tried to pre-order the PS5 this morning have apparently been screwed over by retailers. Sony said on its Twitter account yesterday that pre-orders would start this morning. Unfortunately, if you weren’t watching Target, Walmart, or any other retailer’s Twitter page last night you missed that they started preorders early.
And like the RTX 3080, scalpers are marking up the price of the PS5 online. That’s not surprising in the least, but come on! 2020 has been a nightmare, to say the least. At least give real, paying customers a little bit of happiness instead of trying to gouge their bank accounts.