Amazon is making an attempt to fend off scalpers and bots that snag all the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles earlier than you’ll be able to safe one. It’s rolling out an invite-based ordering possibility for high-demand merchandise which might be in low provide to assist reliable customers get their arms on the gadgets.
The invite possibility is accessible now for PS5 within the US. It can be enabled for Xbox Series X within the coming days. The firm instructed TechCrunch it plans to make use of the system for extra merchandise and in different nations.
Requesting an invite does not value something and you do not should be a Prime member. When you go to the PS5 web page on Amazon, there’s now a “request invitation” button — chances are you’ll must click on the “new and used” hyperlink to see it alongside the opposite ordering choices.
Amazon will assess whether or not an account that requests an invite is genuine by taking a look at issues just like the account creation date and buy historical past. If it believes you might be, certainly, a human and your invite request is granted, Amazon will ship you an electronic mail with directions on easy methods to purchase the product.
You’ll have a sure time interval wherein to finish your buy earlier than the invite expires and you will see a countdown on the product web page. Amazon will dish out extra invitations for a hot-ticket merchandise because it receives extra inventory.
Sony has an analogous invite system on its PlayStation Direct web site, the place it sells the PS5 in restricted portions. It would have been good if Amazon had applied its model earlier than the consoles arrived in November 2020, however c’est la vie.
Although requesting an invite will not assure that you can purchase a PS5 or Xbox Series X from Amazon, it might assist. What’s extra, it would imply you do not have to take part within the rush to safe one every time there is a restock.
There are different methods Amazon might fend off scalpers too, resembling limiting the worth of things for Marketplace sellers. At the time of writing, a third-party vendor is providing the PS5 disc model on Amazon for $999 — double the console’s retail value. Others are promoting it for round $800.