Jack Bayliss, owner of a speculation subscription service, believes he is helping his subscribers to become entrepreneurs and make a better living by reselling PS5 And Xbox Series X

PlayStation 5 and Xbox X Series speculation is the order of the day due to production shortages due to component shortages, a situation that may not improve until 2023. Resellers of next-gen consoles have earned a bad reputation from users who want to buy a new system without having to pay the inflated prices that can be found on some websites. What do resellers have to say about it? VGC shares a statement by Jack Bayliss, owner of Aftermarket Arbitrage (a reseller service), who has tried to justify his actions by claiming that he is helping “create young entrepreneurs” with his service.

To give some context on how Aftermarket Arbitrage works, it is a subscription service where members pay £30 a month to be informed of new restocking of products that are in short supply, such as PS5 or Xbox Series X. The platform has more than 1,500 subscriptions, and Bayliss claims to be earning more than £45,000 (about $61,000 at the exchange rate) a month by helping buyers acquire items they want to sell at a higher cost than the original price. The reseller in question told Sky News that he believes the profits generated from reselling outweigh the downsides and explained why he believes this.

“I can see the other side of the coin, the area that the media and the general public who hate us citing resellers. For me, having the PS5 or an Xbox is not a necessity, it’s a luxury, okay? If you can afford to spend £450, spending the extra £100 should be pretty marginal if you have the cash to splash on it. Yes, some families are going to have to pay another £100, but what you don’t think about is that our members, who have 30 consoles, are earning £100 on each one. And then they’re earning a good month’s salary in a couple of days,” Bayliss explained. He added that many of the members who are subscribed to his platform “are very young” and that he is giving them guidelines for setting up their own businesses in the future.

“What they’re doing is being entrepreneurial, going out, creating an additional income, and they’re doing something that 90% of the population can’t be bothered to do.” Additionally, Bayliss claims that some of his subscribers have managed to sell enough consoles to quit their jobs. “They spend more time with family, with their kids. We’ve had people who have been able to renovate their house, they’ve bought the kids a playground, they’ve bought the wives new cars, they’ve bought themselves new cars. One of our members had a £20,000 gambling debt. And we accepted it. He’s been with us for a year, he’s clean now, and he’s made, I think, he’s made a significant amount of money,” he commented.

If we take Bayliss’ assertions as true, we would be talking about the problem of profiteering being far more widespread than even we thought because of the simple fact that a significant number of people can make a living solely from the profits they make from reselling highly sought-after products at much higher prices than the original ones. What is the solution to this problem? Currently, the UK is considering a ban on reselling, while John Carmack, co-founder of id Software, believes that both PS5 and Xbox Series X should be sold without middlemen to reduce speculation until the stock problems disappear.

Source: vandal