I’ve started a boycott of certain third-party sellers on Amazon, NewEgg, and Walmart.com. Join me!
I’ve been trying, on and off over the past few weeks, to pick up the rare NES Classic Edition from Nintendo. I think it would make an excellent family Christmas gift. Unfortunately there aren’t any to be found anywhere, both on and off line. Any stock that does appear is snatched up almost immediately. Even worse, many of the ones that get bought are being resold for quadruple the price on eBay, Amazon, NewEgg, Walmart, and other sites.
I really don’t like scalpers that swoop in, buy up everything and then turn around and put it up for sale at a steep markup. I hate it so much I’ve decided to boycott the third-party sellers that are doing this. I’m going to ignore eBay sellers, mainly because I don’t shop there all that often, and just focus on third-party sellers which are selling marked-up NES Classic Edition consoles on Amazon, NewEgg, and Walmart.
Boycotting these entire sites seems silly, I just want to boycott the third-party sellers that are scalping the NES, and I wanted to do it simply. Basically, I wanted to be notified when I come across one of these sellers selling something besides the NES Classic Edition (avoiding their NES listings is easy). Because of their NES scalping I want to avoid purchasing anything from them. So here’s what I came up with.
- Install the “Highlight This” extension into Chrome
- Click on the little highlighter icon and then on the “Add a new word list” link
- Fill out the window like so (the full list of words is below):
- Click on the “Define on which sites to highlight” link and fill it out like so:
- Click the “Save” button
- That’s it!
Now when I am on one of these sites and I’m shopping around for random things, if I accidentally happen to see an item I want to purchase that is being offered by one of these sellers their name will be garishly highlighted:
…and I know to not click on the “Add to Cart” button because they are a scalper and I’m boycotting them.
It’s a pretty simple system, but now I don’t need to think much about my boycott. Instead, my hideous highlighting does the reminding for me.
Here’s the full list of sellers in my list. It includes all the third-party retailers I saw selling NES Classic Edition consoles on NewEgg’s and Walmart’s websites today, and all of the third-party sellers on Amazon’s website that offered Amazon Prime shipping of the NES.
Altatac worldwide distributors Go4computers konsolenkost_EUROPE wacky jacky Predator Gaming LEADING EDGE HALF TIME Support for Missions Fulfillinc Synergy Corp kdbimmer1 Centex Sales Santa's Surplus FastTradeShop RC Express Mart The Tooooy Shack! Cells N Sales LLC BLH Sales & Liquidations RetroMart ZyyZ 1 2 3 ProductSage BricksRwe Toy Mine NetYourselfADeal TPM & Co. Hooks Treasures BJ's Book Exchange VarietyMarket777 The Great Speed Ninja Sales87 R&N Sales Barillas Corner AJS HOME GOODS Tax Free Holidays H&RJim Family Chic Digitech Toys Toyplicity TK Unlimited Monticello Merchants AMZGeorgia Techno Dealz Chris1222books Hybrix PriceDropStation B+M Prime Goods Boxwood Brands pandabooks1978 Z-DEALS QCV Sales T&K Store Centur Predator Gaming JJ Fiedler Enterprises WoodysCloset Speedy Items
I scammed a Scalper.
I bought a NES Classic for $197 and then filed a significantly not as described claim with Amazon. I took pictures of an empty box, filled with a bunch of random garbage like newspaper, socks, etc.
Since the seller was brand new, and had no feedback rating, and I’ve been a customer for years who spends thousands a year on Amazon, I easily won the case.
Now, some asshole is probably very upset that he lost $60 and has a red strike against his account. I then sent him a message from a throwaway account thanking him for the free NES classic, called him a piece of human garbage, and then blocked him.
Wow, not sure I would ever go that far personally, and I’d never recommend doing that, but I guess that’s one way of getting back at them…