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[EBAY] Great deal or something fishy?
Scosglen
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I was putzing around Ebay looking for some deals on PC games when I stumbled upon a featured seller for Spore, which just came out yesterday in the states, offering the game for $22, $30 shipped.
This seems like a ridiculous deal compared to walking into my local Gamestop and handing over $55, which is exactly why I'm wary to proceed. All the seller metrics seem to point towards a reputable seller, the shipping is insured for free, guy has been on ebay for 8 years and has high feedback, the box seems to be the standard north american release like I would pick up off any B&M shelf here.
I suppose my biggest question is how are these guys able to sell at such low prices? There are actually a lot of sellers from thailand or india selling newer PC games in factory seal for about half of what I would expect to pay at a store. Is this a notorious market where you run the risk of getting a bootleg copies or the foreign language version of the game you're buying or am I just being too paranoid?
Link: http://cgi.ebay.com/Spore-PC-Game-New-In-Box-Original-Sealed-In-Stock_W0QQitemZ170260046985QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item170260046985&_trkparms=240%3A1308&_trksid=p4295
This seems like a ridiculous deal compared to walking into my local Gamestop and handing over $55, which is exactly why I'm wary to proceed. All the seller metrics seem to point towards a reputable seller, the shipping is insured for free, guy has been on ebay for 8 years and has high feedback, the box seems to be the standard north american release like I would pick up off any B&M shelf here.
I suppose my biggest question is how are these guys able to sell at such low prices? There are actually a lot of sellers from thailand or india selling newer PC games in factory seal for about half of what I would expect to pay at a store. Is this a notorious market where you run the risk of getting a bootleg copies or the foreign language version of the game you're buying or am I just being too paranoid?
Link: http://cgi.ebay.com/Spore-PC-Game-New-In-Box-Original-Sealed-In-Stock_W0QQitemZ170260046985QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item170260046985&_trkparms=240%3A1308&_trksid=p4295
Scosglen on
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Well it's a Store and he has over 70 copies of it so I don't think so in this case.
Beware imports when you have to register online.
Very, very suspect. Some eBay power seller in a third-world country had enough clout to get a large advance shipment of the hottest game of the fall? Seems a lot more likely that it's a diverted or stolen shipment that was intended for a different region. I'd error on the side of caution here.
Okay. We've offered reasons why it's probably not on the up and on. You have an international seller selling an item 25 dollars less than what it should be.
Now it's up to you to come up with the reason this is legit and then proceed with your purchase.
Personally, I really don't think it's worth trying to save the 25 bucks.
Let's look at this from a different angle. I've never bought off Ebay before so I don't know the minutia of their safety protocols, but won't I be protected if I go through with the buy and the description turns out to be false? Would I have to settle this with the seller or will Ebay strongarm my money back if it becomes necessary?
Not really, no. Not for $25 or whatever; I'm pretty sure there's a minimum of $50 before they take over, and even then it's only after 90 days.
Doesn't matter; I'm reasonably certain this seller is legitimate and is selling a copy of the game. However, I'm less confident that it's a copy of the game you could register online with EA. In other words, it's possible that it's a re-branding of an Asian copy of the game, in which case the price is low because they're sold for less in Asian countries than in North America.
EDIT: To clarify, I'm not sure how strict EA is with that sort of stuff (do they track which serial numbers are from which regions, for example).
PC games as a general rule are region free, with the exception of certain Digital Delivery companies(Fuck you Direct2drive), simply because you have no way of enforcing a region lock. A computer in asia running windows isn't different from a computer in europe or the states running windows.
I also sent a question directly to the seller asking if he can clarify why the game is so cheap and what region specifically the box is from. We'll see how that goes.
If you've already made up your mind that none of the red flags we could point out are "enough", why did you start this thread?
At best, the guy is wilfully breaking EA's region and territory restrictions by selling a game across regional (and pricing) boundaries, which is reason enough not to do business with him. At worst, he's selling a product that was literally stolen out of a shipment intended for the US, Canada, or Australia. There is no way in hell this is entirely on the up-and-up, period, sorry to break it to you so bluntly.
Edit with an anecdote: I used to buy my prepaid minutes from a guy on eBay for less than half what they went for in stores. The dude had thousands of positive feedbacks, and looked legit as fuck right up until the day he was arrested. He got away with it for years before he was caught. There are countless sellers with 10,000+ positives who are openly, overtly selling bootleg anime merchandise and DVDs. The positive feedback these people get is for the prices they're selling at, not the authenticity of their merchandise or the legality of their business.
Weaboo List
A common scheme that I see a lot in dealing with cameras and lenses is a seller that has perfect or near perfect feedback will be selling a $5000 item for around $3000 and sometimes less. It looks legit, but it turns out that their account has been hijacked and someone is using their good name to get a good buck. A lot of these will claim that they have a number of copies available and that you should e-mail them outside of eBay to set up a transaction. Some of them, however, do not follow those guidelines.
Contact the seller and if you get a reply try and get a feel for whether or not it's fishy.
Ryan M Long Photography
Buy my Prints!
It's possible, but unlikely that someone who's gone through the effort of hacking a well-feedbacked ebay account will then try to rip people off of $30
However, let's look at it from a realistic perspective - you're talking about a game that's just released this week being sold for $30 (assuming he has some insane shipping connection). We've all seen the retail profit margins on PC games thrown around in the sales thread; there's always some debate, but it's pretty clear that it's on the order of maybe 10%. Even if you give 20% retail markup, though, that would put a wholesale price on the order of $40.
So unless he found a store trying to dump a large number of copies of the most anticipated PC release of the year for below wholesale on the first week of its release, it's either a) stolen, or b) a non-US copy.
But this is ebay, so who knows.
My only concern is that online registration is required to play Spore. With Bioshock, I seem to recall there being issues with trying to register foreign copies within the US.
Well, from a legal perspective it's still not totally kosher, since there's a reason they're not licensed to be sold in the US
But yeah, for Spore specifically you might have to hunt around some Spore-specific forums; although most aren't doing this yet, you do always run a risk with stuff like this that they might reject non-US keys for US ip's (similar to what Valve did when a ton of people bought the cheap-as-hell Thai? version)
For the record, he responded by saying that it was in fact the Pacific-Asian(English) release of the game and chalked up the large discount to conversion rates between Rupees versus the dollar.
Oh, you're probably right. I mean, he does have over 70 copies according to the OP, so that would work out to 2100, but it would sound like a lot more trouble than it was worth.
Ryan M Long Photography
Buy my Prints!
Really, that's my rule with anything involving money.