The depths of depravity that many fellow humans are more than willing to plumb for a momentary and ill-fitting gain are consistently surprising, even to the most jaded of humans unlucky enough to be stuck on this rock.
People take advantage of their positions and luck to extort their will on others, and they have no qualms about whom they need to push out of their way to find whatever advantage they believe they’ve earned.
Before, users that were receiving packages that contained PC upgrades or consoles had to worry most about porch pirates, individuals that would drive around neighborhoods and look for packages by a front door for easy theft. This is far more difficult now, with the vast majority of users now working from home and able to monitor precisely when a package arrives.
So, the hole in the modern delivery process needed to move up one level, and it’s being worsened by delivery companies hard-pressed for drivers; Amazon has recently pushed out an initiative for what they note as ‘the last mile’, where individuals take packages from local warehouses and are paid for the deliveries.
This, in turn, has resulted in a proverbial ‘lowering of the bar’ regarding precisely who is delivering packages, and it’s starting to show nasty returns during the initial wave of the PlayStation 5 launch.
While inventory is limited, scalpers have taken to eBay and are attempting to sell PlayStation 5 consoles for absurd values that have reached over $30,000 in recent days, with bids appearing to be contested by multiple parties.
https://twitter.com/TakeAIM100/status/1330175648372027397
It’s the Nvidia launch all over again, or perhaps more like anything physical from Nintendo; a scalpers paradise and there seems to be little in terms of corporate-led mitigation.
If you do manage to successfully purchase on, don’t hold your breath: users around the world are reporting that third-party mail carriers are magically ‘losing’ PlayStation 5‘s at a wild rate; drivers are reported as stopping in front of homes, and then simply driving off while the delivery is marked as lost.
At the moment, there’s a rash of reports coming from the UK, but don’t presume that you’re safe if you’re in the US. Reports stemming from the United States have simply been overshadowed by the absurd reporting numbers from the Royal Mail.
https://twitter.com/Skunkfacewoody/status/1329107533835931654
The solution at the moment, as reports continue to climb, isn’t entirely clear for any parties involved: couriers didn’t necessarily have the most sterling reputation in the first place with their seemingly preferred act of skipping deliveries and posting a ‘Sorry we missed you’ on the door of a home filled with people eagerly awaiting the package, yet now the situation has been far more widespread as warehouse corporations are hiring fast and loose to keep up with the demand that is climbing due to the pandemic.
This isn’t something that Sony could possibly solve on their end without some brilliance, and users are similarly stuck between a rock and a hard place. Consumers beware.
