Ebay has confirmed it is going after scammers who are trying to trick people into buying empty PS5 boxes.
The launch of the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S might go down as one of the messiest in history. To say that supply has not been able to keep up with demand might well be the understatement of this still-young decade. Despite that, both PlayStation and Xbox have reported enjoying the biggest respective launches in their histories. Just imagine how big those launches could have been had there been more consoles to go around.
Not producing enough consoles is only part of the problem. Scammers and scalpers are also to blame. One group claims to have snapped up thousands of consoles ahead of legitimate customers and sold them on for an inflated price. While that particular group of scalpers uses bots and software to cheat the system, others aren't quite as imaginative.
Some simply go on eBay and sell an empty box. Perhaps someone who has paid over the odds for a PS5 and is trying to make back some of that money. There have been empty PS5 boxes sold on eBay for more than $1000. Even though eBay has claimed none of those misleading listings have been paid for, it has pledged to do more to clamp down on tricksters trying to fool those desperate enough to land a PS5 that they are trusting resale sites.
"We have been taking action to remove fraudulent listings from our marketplace," eBay has told Snopes. According to the site's No Items Listing Policy, that includes empty boxes and photos of a product. That means even if the seller has stated in the description that the item for sale is only an empty box, the sale can possibly still be reversed.
Ebay does add that buyers should still express extreme caution when purchasing a next-gen console from its site, especially right now. The aim of sellers is to fool a desperate buyer, or perhaps even an unknowing parent, into mistakenly paying over the odds for a box that once held the item they actually want. Take care out there as scammers and scalpers have already made millions of dollars since the consoles launched two months ago.