RTX 3080 Resellers Used Online Shopping Bot To Purchase Most of NVIDIA's Latest Graphics Card
NVIDIA has also issued an apology to its customers.
NVIDIA‘s latest RTX 3080 almost instantly sold out upon arrival, which subsequently lead to several high bids for the graphics cards on eBay. It is now being reported that bot creator Bounce Alerts played a hand in getting its members early access to the GPU for the specific purpose of reselling the products above retail price.
According to PCMag, the bot was able to help a single reseller rake in 24 RTX 3080s from NVIDIA’s online stock before it sold out. Other resellers took to social media to show they managed to nab over a dozen units, although the site only allows for one unit per customer. The script for the bot would “monitor when the product would go back into stock, and once it got alerted it was back into stock it would check out,” according to a member of Bounce Alerts. “We had several members who managed to get one card, all the way to 30 cards or more.”
It’s been suggested that over 100 people downloaded the bot specifically to order the GPU on NVIDIA’s website, most of which are expected to be resold on auction sites like eBay. NVIDIA says it will manually review orders to weed out bots and resellers while formally apologizing to its customers. “We apologize to our customers for this morning’s experience,” NVIDIA said in a post on its forum. The post also details how “the NVIDIA store was inundated with traffic and encountered errors.”
The admin for Bounce Alert suggests consumers should be upset at the limited supplies on COVID-19 disrupting manufacturing in Asia instead of the resellers.
“When given [the] chance, I’m sure most people would purchase more than 10+ units if they have the capital and look to make upwards of $25,000+ USD in one single day from [the] secondary market,” the admin said, later adding: “We hope they’re able to get on the next release!”
Although the use of bots is common in the world of footwear, the practice has begun shifting towards other markets within the last few years. Earlier this year, gaming faced the same problem when an online shopping bot fueled the shortages of Nintendo Switch units available.
In other tech news, WeChat and TikTok have officially been banned in the United States.
