With the holiday season just around the corner, there is a ton of shopping activity, especially for gamers across the world. However, with the rise of scalpers and botters, it seems impossible in this day and age to get your PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X without paying a hefty mark-up. The PS5, in particular, has been very hard to get because of scalpers, with a scalping group even stating that the negative press against them isn’t justified. That said, we are starting to see some pushback, as recently some US lawmakers have started to propose a bill to ban PS5 scalpers and botters, and all hardware ‘Cyber Grinches’ in general.
The bicameral bill is called the Stopping Grinch Bots Act, which was introduced earlier this week by Representative Paul Tonko (D-NY), Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) and Senator Ben Ray Luján (D-NM). The bill is, in essence, a crackdown on cyber Grinches using “bot” technology to quickly buy up whole inventories of popular holiday toys and resell them to parents at higher prices.
The legislation is already being widely supported by numerous consumer groups like the Consumer Reports, Consumer Federation of America, and the National Consumer League. It’s also important to note that Senator Tonko, Blumenthal, and Schumer passed a similar bill in 2016 called the Better Online Ticket Sales Act (BOTS Act). The BOTS Act worked against ticket scalpers, with the goal for the Stopping Grinch Bots Act to act as a safeguard for consumers on online retail sites.
Regardless of whether this bill gets approval or not, remember that the best way to stop scalpers at the moment is to not buy anything from them. As long as there are people willing to fork over for overpriced consoles, PS5 scalpers will remain.
Source: Paul D. Tonko
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