Due to what Nvidia called “unprecedented demand” for its new RTX 3080 cards, the first release sold out before most consumers could even get a look in, with store pages slammed by bots buying up stock for resellers. Now, customers who signed up for Amazon’s in-stock alerts for the graphics card are instead being sent to overpriced listings selling the RTX 3080 at prices up to $5000, as reported by The Verge.
Amazon’s stock alerts allow customers to sign up for email notifications, letting them know when stock becomes available for an out-of-stock item. Normally useful for in-demand items, in this case users who’ve signed up for alerts are being sent to listings of up to $5000, many times the card’s recommended retail price of $700.
The new Nvidia release has been so messy that the company has apologized for it, promising to ship new stock to retailers “every day,” and saying that it has been “doing everything humanly possible, including manually reviewing orders, to get these cards in the hands of legitimate customers.”
Some frustrated would-be buyers have taken matters into their own hands, with one Reddit post describing a frustrated Nvidia customer writing a bot that would inflate scalpers’ GTX 3080 listings to unattainable prices, with no intent to purchase.
GameSpot’s review of the 3080 concluded that the new card is currently your best option for 4K gaming, if you can get your hands on one, though a bit of overkill for other situations. “The RTX 3080 is an incredible card but just make sure it’s something that you’ll actually get the most out of.”
