There was a thread on reddit/pine64official about this subject, someone trying to flog PinePhones for $500-800 including the PMOS. Whatever your interest it's pretty much a certainty someone is trying it on somewhere f.ex watches, collectables, anti-bacterial hand wash, face masks, even toilet rolls.
I think for PinePhone the window of opportunity is very, very small to pull something like this off.
And a buyer would need to be completely unaware to fall for it.
You are right. But I think for someone who needs urgently a PinePhone when it is out of stock it is a misery. Can the period when the PinePhone is out of stock not be minimized?
09-11-2020, 07:33 AM
(This post was last modified: 09-11-2020, 07:34 AM by lot378.)
(09-11-2020, 06:36 AM)Peter Gamma Wrote: But I think for someone who needs urgently a PinePhone when it is out of stock it is a misery. Can the period when the PinePhone is out of stock not be minimized?
Unfortunately, it's the nature of the "big ticket" items that Pine64 sell i.e. PineBook, PinePhone even the PineTablet that they are manufactured in batches, sell out before the batch finishes production and then the sequence repeats itself. Still there is no cause to buy any of these items anywhere else than from the PineStore. It's simply a matter of having the discipline to wait for the opportunity and placing a pre-order. People might want desperately to buy any of these items and it's their call if they want to pay more than in the PineStore. Nobody can really control that, except the people involved that are paying. They might have more cash than sense or be acting out of impulse etc. It's their choice to make, even if others do not approve.
And the cases where any of these items appear on auction sites is tiny, almost insignificant in proportion.
The bottom line is that it is not worth being concerned over.
09-11-2020, 07:40 AM
(This post was last modified: 09-11-2020, 07:40 AM by KC9UDX.)
@ Peter Gamma No. Here's why: let's say they produce more, to minimise the out-of-stock time. Then the resellers will just buy more of them.
Hey if they're selling them for $1000 that's awesome. Why? Because it 1) brings up the value for everyone else that owns one 2) hopefully the demand is because more people are getting involved, in which case software development will accelerate.
Like I said earlier (which someone disliked) the only issue I have with this is that at a high price point, some buyers are likely to think they're getting something comparable to an HTC, Motorola, Samsung, etc. Then when they find out they have something which they perceive as worse than a Huawei, they're going to throw the PinePhone in the trash, and talk trash about Pine64 all over bookface, red it, utube, wherever.
You are right. This issue should be resolved.
Bringing up the value for everyone is terrible and makes these inaccessible which is counter to their low price point in the first place. The primary competitive angle the PinePhone has over Librem 5 is a highly accessible low price. If they get artificially inflated by scalpers it only benefits those sellers. You can expect development to come to a grinding halt if developers can’t easily get their hands on the devices. And that’s good for no one.
I would very much caution against being apathetic towards scalpers here.
(09-11-2020, 09:14 AM)patrickmollohan Wrote: At the $150/$200 price range, it is a fair deal. Not any penny beyond that.
Well, Pine admitted they aren’t making much (if any) profit at this price. I think it was to stimulate interest and get developers on board. And it worked beautifully! But I of course would expect them to eventually release a production phone priced a bit higher. It shouldn’t be as high as Librem because it’s for the hardware only but it’ll probably be around the $300 mark... If totally guessing but as a company I think they’re investing right now with hopes of establishing a base then releasing a more profitable product later. Unless they want to continue to live off their SBC sales. Totally just speculation on my part here.
But the main point was scalpers steal value and artificially inflate prices for their own benefit and like you said, none of it returns value to the community.
So here's what you do. I don't see what's so difficult about this. Buy a PinePhone from Pine64. Don't buy one from a reseller. And if you decide to sell yours, sell it for less than half what you paid for it, just to keep your virtue up.
It seems though that you didn't understand my point about value. Raising the value is not directly equivalent to Pine64 raising the price of a new one. Accessibility is determined by availability. If you're concerned about accessibility, you should be worried about low prices! In fact, it's only due to the inaccessibility, caused by the low price, that allows the resellers to fetch high prices.
(09-11-2020, 09:37 AM)KC9UDX Wrote: So here's what you do. I don't see what's so difficult about this. Buy a PinePhone from Pine64. Don't buy one from a reseller. And if you decide to sell yours, sell it for less than half what you paid for it, just to keep your virtue up.
It seems though that you didn't understand my point about value. Raising the value is not directly equivalent to Pine64 raising the price of a new one. Accessibility is determined by availability. If you're concerned about accessibility, you should be worried about low prices! In fact, it's only due to the inaccessibility, caused by the low price, that allows the resellers to fetch high prices.
I agree about not buying inflated merchandise from eBay. I disagree about availability making the PinePhone inaccessible. The limited availability is due to the small batch system that Pine has to use to protect itself from overstocking. Pine has no way of knowing if a purchase is a scalper or not. There are no solutions to constant and immediate availability that don’t involve Pine flooding supply and potentially losing money. They HAVE partially solved this with frequent community editions. And at some point in the near future, they’ll likely supply PinePhones similarly to their SBCs.
So, like others have said (sorry I’m on mobile and can’t see previous posts right now), the solution is be patient and buy from Pine directly. Don’t support scalpers.
Scalpers only do what they do because people participate and give them business. The low prices make the potential but its the scalper’s buyers that promote it. Don’t buy from scalpers and it will be an even more rare occurrence.
So why doesn't everyone do it?
If you consider scalping pinephones yourself, you should quickly see that it's actually very risky. There is no guarantee of being able to sell them at all, much less at an inflated price. If he goes huge on his next order, he could lose all of his profits so far. You notice when he's lucky, but you won't necessarily notice if his luck turns.
Prices on whole categories of items are up because of the pandemic. You don't hold your normal half off sale when you're out of stock until October and people are beating the door down trying to buy.
When it suddenly turns, people will be stuck with a shitload of hand sanitizer and distance-learning supplies. Demand saturates, prices crash long and hard. Who's holding the dead stock?
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