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Is Walmart Turning A Blind Eye To Scalpers?


Outsiders

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I started this mission to see how much Walmart cares about their customers who purchase their toy collectibles that are sold at their stores and online site.  Reading TNI Admin JayC post about fixing scalping problems again helped push me to do it as well...

On Friday, August 7th, Walmart.com put on sale at 2 PM Eastern, the 7" Mortal Kombat Spawn figure Signature Edition with a limit purchase of 1 for $59.99.  This was a very limited figure of 1000 and was signed by Spawn creator Todd McFarlane.  The figure being sold was the 7" Mortal Kombat Spawn figure with the mace, which is the second release.  The first release being with the sword and the third release being the Target SDCC 2020 with the axe.

When the sale went live, I refreshed the page and clicked the pre-order button.  I received a pop-up message stating there was an internal error on Walmart.com side and I should try again.  I refreshed the page again, clicked the pre-order button and same pop-up error again.  I refreshed the page again and the figure was listed as sold out.  I knew going into this purchase it would be very hard to obtain because of the limited supply but I decided to check out eBay.com and saw 2 or 3 figures being sold with the asking prices from $200 to $1,000.

Six hours later and at the time of posting this thread... There is currently 38 live auctions and 10 completed auctions on eBay.  Out of the 38 live auctions, there are 15 live auctions where the sellers have a quantity of 2 to 6 figures for sale.  Out of the 10 completed auctions, 2 sellers sold 2 figures and another seller sold 4 figures.

For only 1000 figures available with a limited purchase of 1.  I'm starting to wonder how many employees from Walmart.com are selling these figures?

I decided to take this information and email Walmart.com about this incident and the listings on eBay.  I informed them about what happened to me on their website and pointed out directly all the eBay auctions.  I don't believe Walmart will do anything about the auctions but I wanted to let them know that real customers are sick and tired of getting screwed over by Scalpers who are somehow purchasing multiple items just to sell at a higher cost and major corporate stores are ignoring the whole situation just so they can make a buck.

Walmart has not commented about this incident.

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Nice read, thanks for the experiment. You know I completely forgot about the signed Spawn going up today, admittingly it wasn't something I was terribly interested in since I am getting the Kickstarter set with the signature anyhow but wow Walmart at it again, I'm getting sick and tired of exclusives going through them, I got an email yesterday stating that the G1 vintage Blaster reissue that I pre-ordered from them the first hour it went up will be delayed and possibly cancelled. That made me upset, does not Walmart know what a pre-order is!?! Just drives me crazy.

I'm fully expecting a cancellation email very soon.

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Walmart, Target, Walgreens...they don't give a rat's ass as long as they sell product.  I think the best we can hope for is the manufacturers to take a stand and make them put anti-bot measures on sale pages as part of their exclusive deals.  But don't count on it.  They might be inclined to do that in the future if they get enough complaints this summer and become afraid that the market for their products will dry up if the people who actually want them get fed up, but again...don't count on it.  They already got their money from the retailers and businesses tend to be notoriously short-sighted about things like this.

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As I mentioned that I don't believe Walmart will do anything about this incident as I still haven't heard back from them.  I believe I mostly made this thread to rant and rave about what happen and how corporations know what is going on but want to come across as this is all new to them.

I checked eBay and the total of live auctions is now 43 with 4 of the sellers listing between 2 to 5 figures to sell and a completed auction of a seller that sold 2 figures... Maybe I'll expand my mission and find out where I can get a buying bot so I don't miss out on an exclusive again.

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Satam is right they only care about the sale once that is done, they are good, they don't really care what people do with the figure afterwards. This whole thing about figures selling out in an instant online is troublesome and getting more and more frustrating. Best we can do is let them know about the problem and hope something is being done about it. 

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2 hours ago, Satam said:

I hope you're joking.

Part of me wouldn't do it because there isn't enough exclusives released that I would need a buying bot.

But if I looked at the selfish side of me than I could see myself getting one.  Why not?  If it means getting an exclusive I wanted and knowing I have a better chance at getting it because of extra help... Hell, why should I have to sit back and miss out on something just because some Scalpers wants to try and make a quick buck.

I did some research on bots and they are not that hard to get.  I won't go into where to get them but most people code the bots themselves or have someone do it for them and the costs depends on what you want.

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