No, I Will Not Sell You 36 Game Consoles...

[jackfaire]

Yeah sorry you want to buy consoles take them to another country where I can guarantee I won't be seeing any more sales from versus 35 customers that will come again and again for their games.

It's basic economics yeah short term profit but long term loss. You want to build a relationship with your customers so that you and they can enjoy a symbiotic relationship.

[Shalom]

Quoth Ironclad Alibi : Unless they were paying in cash, they probably intended to use a stolen credit card.

There's a well known scam in pharmacy where someone buys large quantities of small but expensive stuff, such as test trips for blood glucose meters, has them shipped to another country (usually in Africa) and then their credit card turns out to be stolen and you wind up losing the money. (Often these call through the relay services; I'm sure smileyeagle1021 has gotten his share of these already. I wonder why they do this, maybe to disguise a foreign accent.) When I read this post, that scam was the first thing to come to my mind.

(I recently had such a scam attempted on me. I pretended to go along with it, took their information, what they wanted shipped to Nigeria, and all the rest of it, then told them that we could accept cash only for this deal, as our bank wouldn't let us do a credit card transaction of that magnitude. No, we wouldn't do it in several transactions either, as we'd lose a percentage on each one. "But we're a non-profit, we don't have that much cash", etc. I told them that since they had a credit card (shyeah right), all they needed to do was go to any bank and take a cash advance on it, and then they'd have cash to give us. I figured that would be the best way to get rid of them, and on the minuscule chance that they really went through with it, I'd still have the cash. Unlike checks, credit cards, or the like, there ain't no way to bounce cash. Unless it's counterfeit, which didn't occur to me until afterward.)

Even if they do pay cash, it still doesn't make them legit. There's another possibility, which is that it's a money laundering scheme to get cash out of the country. I remember years ago when the Intel Pentium II was the hottest CPU on the market (and cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars for something that you could fit in a matchbox), the drug dealers and others who needed to sneak large amounts of money out of the country without triggering the $10,000 IRS reporting limit were buying them in quantity, smuggling them out, and reselling them in their home countries, often for double what they paid here (so not only moving money over the border, but making a healthy profit as well). As one customs inspector put it, "Never mind gold, these chips are worth their weight in cocaine..."

Quoth Mike Taylor: Where I live, we get a lot of people from Brazil, Ecuador, Argentina and Colombia-- places with INSANE luxury taxes on electronics. It's actually cheaper for someone to fly from there on vacation, buy the item here, and fly back with it.

I visited Israel in 1987. Back then, when you went through customs, there was a red door and a green door. The red door was where you went if you had anything to declare; the green one bypassed customs altogether. It was mostly on the honor system, but if they caught you with dutyable stuff going through the green, they'd confiscate it outright. Now I had just bought a camcorder (Sharp Slimcam, using full size VHS tapes in what for 1987 was a small package, cost me about $799 if I remember correctly), and that was a class of item that had a whopping import duty on it. I went through the red door and had to put down a $500 deposit, which was refunded when I left the country and showed them that I still had it with me. I later heard that there were people who paid for their entire vacation in Israel, including the airline tickets, with the profits they made from selling a camcorder that they went through the green door with. Just what their buyers were planning to do with an NTSC-M machine in a country with only PAL-B/G televisions was never fully explained to me.

[AccountingDrone]

so i could take a cruise to some port in South America like Costa Rica and sell a console for more than I bought it for?

Well if I had a console ....

So what was stopping her from stopping at 13 different stores and buying 2 per store? Sheer laziness?

[elsporko]

Aren't you going to feel like a jerk when you read about her in the paper because she gave Christmas presents to 36 underprivilaged inner city children.

[Hanzoku]

Not really, no. Sadly, there are too many scams out there to trust anyone who says that what they're doing isn't a scam, really.

[Broomjockey]

Aren't you going to feel like a jerk when you read about her in the paper because she gave Christmas presents to 36 underprivilaged inner city children.

I find that scenario exceedingly unlikely for a number of reasons.

1. Anyone selfless enough to do so would accept any limits placed on sales, and be willing to do a bit of extra leg work, or would at least talk to management about it.

2. Consoles are a poor gift to give to that demographic, if simply because you'd be giving them a gift that would necessitate spending more money (purchasing/renting more games after the bundled game - if any - has worn out its novelty).

3. I could go on, but I don't feel like it, so nyah

[poofy_puff]

3. I could go on, but I don't feel like it, so nyah

Usually, when a charity does something like that, they collect OLDER SYSTEMS AND GAMES / ACCESSORIES that are available free, cheap, or second-hand.

[EricKei]

Just what their buyers were planning to do with an NTSC-M machine in a country with only PAL-B/G televisions was never fully explained to me.

Simple. The "importer" would just sell it to people who don't know any better -- for cash -- and then disappear.

[smileyeagle1021]

(Often these call through the relay services; I'm sure smileyeagle1021 has gotten his share of these already. I wonder why they do this, maybe to disguise a foreign accent.)

actually, the main reason is that up until recently it was almost impossible to trace relay calls. The only records we keep are time of call and the person's username/IP address. Usernames give NO information about the person and IP addresses are easy enough to disguise (using proxy servers, or even just using a public connection, such as like a library or public wifi). Now that the FCC requires all users be registered it has slowed down the flow of scammers. It doesn't stop scammers, it doesn't take much to make up a fake name and address, but at least it makes it a little more difficult.
If the person were to call directly their phone number is stored in phone records, and it doesn't matter what the accent is, hiding ones voice is good if you are trying to hide your identity.

[lordlundar]

Aren't you going to feel like a jerk when you read about her in the paper because she gave Christmas presents to 36 underprivilaged inner city children.

Give them corporate's phone number and let them make the arrangements. Odds are they might get it for free as a donation.

[jackfaire]

Charities have to register (at least in US) for tax reasons and would be expected to approach the corporate office for a donation like that.

[Chromatix]

Organisations who really do buy in bulk (think Child's Play) tend not to do so at retail if they can help it. I'm not sure precisely how they do it, but it's surely more efficient to go further up the chain of supply once you go above a certain quantity.

Of course that comes with some extra hurdles to clear, such as making a more formal business arrangement, that involves letters back and forth and stricter identity checks.

[Broomjockey]

I think elsporko was saying it was an individual who was going to do it, not an organization, so this line's rather off-topic.

[draggar]

I'm confused on that regard. What do you care what she does with after paying for it? You get your money.

Oh wait, is it cause other people tend to buy games with their new stations?

Because she wasn't buying any extras - I'm willing to bet if they let 36 people buy game consoles seperately then they would have sold probably 20 games, and maybe 10 add-on accessories (especially with the Wii).

Plus, as mentioned, it's better to have 36 happy customers than 1 happy and 35 unhappy.

[Soulstealer]

Simple. The "importer" would just sell it to people who don't know any better -- for cash -- and then disappear.

I don't know if this works for television but my brother got the name of someone who put mod chips in game consoles from my cousin the police officer.

Yes yes, I realize the irony of this. my other police officer cousin that is related through the other parent is less likely to do this but he also busted a newly drafted relative when she forgot the classified part of classified assignment.