With the highly anticipated release of Prismatic Evolutions on January 17th, many buyers are facing a frustrating situation.
Numerous of them have received notifications from sellers informing them that their preorders have been canceled, only to later find that these same sellers have relisted the product at inflated prices, often significantly higher than the original preorder price.
This raises the question: Is it morally justifiable for sellers to cancel preorders in order to resell the product at a markup? How do we navigate the line between business strategy and ethical responsibility in a marketplace driven by hype and scarcity?
Mind you I understand sometimes allocation comes into play, or sellers sell before they even have their numbers, but there are times where greed enters the picture.
Thoughts?
Is it morally justifiable for sellers to cancel preorders in order to resell the product at a markup
I don’t find it ethical. It’s a short sighted play, in my opinion. If you burn people on a pre-order, they aren’t likely to come back, and people like to talk about negative experiences more than positive ones, so will likely share your poor business practices.
From a business standpoint, these sorts of sellers must assume their short term gains will outweigh any long term implications, if they’re thinking that far ahead.
When it comes to morality I don’t think it’s really debatable what the right answer is. But in markets like this morality isn’t really a part of the equation for a lot of people.
Beyond morality it’s just pure breach of contract. Even in the cutthroat world of business, contracts matter. Cancelled preorders are basically interest free loans and rob the buyer of opportunity cost. If you sell preorders you are accepting the risk that you could be underselling items, and buyers accept the risk they could be overpaying. You can’t change the risk calculation after the fact because you don’t like the outcome. It also creates a culture/incentive system where sellers are punished for doing the right thing.
It comes down to this. If there were actually consequences in this hobby people would never do this because they would be whipped in a court of law. The only reason it happens is because its too small scale and skirts under real legal consequences.
During covid the community would name and shame the shops that were gouging prices like this. It seems the community at large moved on from that and rarely does it now, they accept that its going to happen and many times will buy at the markup.
I found it distasteful then and find it distasteful now and am still avoiding sellers who have been caught doing this.
I’m gonna tap the sign once again that says this scarcity is artificial, people should be able to control themselves but also TPCi could immediately curtail this by printing to initial demand by exclusively selling the first wave of the product on their website until the market stabilizes
Important question. A lot of the worst actors I’ve seen so far are US and CAN based which makes sense because product is readily available. There’s potentially something there about shops in other regions needing to order directly through TPCi or through their distributor. Also, they’re a massive media company. One of the largest media franchises of all time (I think Winnie the Poo is back at the top). Surely they can set up EU and other support, they just haven’t.
From reports that have been shared about it, this is specifically only this store because they have had breakins to steal pokemon product several times in a relatively short window of time in the recent past. It is run by an older owner who doesnt want the hassle. There is also no proof they arent just saying this because allocations were cut and they werent getting product anyways.
Yeah I wish they would set something up. Skimming through Card market and bookmarking every fairly priced reseller you find is quite tedious and often more expensive than MSRP.
I think it’s a bit rude, honestly. True the US and Japan (now also CA and AU/NZ) are your biggest markets but minimally there’s enough european consumers to warrant another
I have heard rumors that allocations are way down. Is there any reason why that would be the case? Is it same amount spread to more distributors or that some distributors are getting more while others are getting less?
Ive heard even vaguer rumors that distributors have been upping prices for shops and that its becoming an even more pay-to-play system with smaller and smaller margins for shops. Is there any possibility that some distributors are backdooring more and more product to streamers/breakers/etc and smaller shops are suffering for it?
My lgs says that distributors are acting more and more like investors with their allocations. No idea how widespread or even how true it is that they’re holding some
