[JollySharp0]

I am in the UK. Not the US!

> If you were offering 5x MSRP and you couldn't get a video card... I don't believe you.

My 1080Ti had died. I had to use a 8800GTS from the late 2000s for about a year. As that was the only GPU I had. I have no iGPU on my CPU.

There was at one time, no stock available. Not on Amazon, Not on Overclockers, Not on Scan. They had some weird lotto system taking place on most sites.

Scalpers claimed to have cards. But I wouldn't risk sending a lot of money to some random seller on ebay.

> Unless this article is massively misleading, sure it was out of stock at 1x price but it wasn't out of stock at 2-3x price.

Again I am in the UK. You could not buy any PI other than 1GB model and maybe the zero. Both of which were useless to me.

[kelnos]

> Scalpers claimed to have cards. But I wouldn't risk sending a lot of money to some random seller on ebay.

Ah, so you could have bought one, but you judged the available suppliers to be too risky.

Completely fair, but then it's not true that you couldn't buy one "at any price". It was just not a price+risk that you were willing to take.

Also, re: Raspberry Pis, you couldn't always get the exact RAM configuration you wanted, but they were pretty continuously available during COVID on Aliexpress. You did have to pay 3-5x normal price, but you could do it. I really needed one after one at home died, and paid the 3x markup, and it was annoying but fine. Not sure if Aliexpress is equally as available in the UK as it is here in the US, though.

[JollySharp0]

> Completely fair, but then it's not true that you couldn't buy one "at any price". It was just not a price+risk that you were willing to take.

You are being pedantic. I find this type of discussion very tiresome. I've explained why in other forks of this thread. Quite honestly it pisses me off.

> Also, re: Raspberry Pis, you couldn't always get the exact RAM configuration you wanted, but they were pretty continuously available during COVID on Aliexpress. You did have to pay 3-5x normal price, but you could do it. I really needed one after one at home died, and paid the 3x markup, and it was annoying but fine. Not sure if Aliexpress is equally as available in the UK as it is here in the US, though.

Not in the UK. Someone was running a site with all the places that you could buy from. I was checking most days. Stock was extremely limited other than a few models.

[bonzog]

>Not in the UK.

This was my experience, too. Pis would disappear from online retailers before you noticed the stock alert email.

I only got hold of a Pi 4 by chance when Raspberry Pi did an official pop-up store in Southampton for one day only. The queue to get in was about 45 mins long.

[Dylan16807]

Okay, UK, maybe that changes things more than I expected. But what about ebay and the sites that replaced classified ads? And is it unreasonable for me to say that you could have bought a US listing and had it reshipped?

Edit since you added: Scalpers claimed to have cards. But I wouldn't risk sending a lot of money to some random seller on ebay.

Even with ebay's buyer protection?

Well not to be mean but I think "I refused to use ebay" invalidates your claim that you couldn't buy a card.

[JollySharp0]

> Even with ebay's buyer protection?

I've had problems with it before (I can't remember specifics as it was a while ago). I'd rather not going through the hassle and/or risk in the first place.

There are still plenty of scams on ebay. During this era there were people scamming. e.g the box for a GPU. Listing the entire specs and then putting right at the bottom of the listing it was only the box and not the card.

> Well not to be mean but I think "I refused to use ebay" invalidates your claim that you couldn't buy a card.

What you are doing is being hyper-pedantic. It is fucking tiresome when people do this online.

If you are going to be a smart arse, I will modify my statement to say "I could not get a card from a reputable online store as they were all out of stock and did not wish to risk buying from a less reputable one".

I would be foolish to trust some overpriced (or underpriced) listing on ebay. I've had an ebay/paypal account now for 25+ years, I've learned to never do this because I got screwed every time I did.

[kelnos]

> What you are doing is being hyper-pedantic. It is fucking tiresome when people do this online.

That's not pedantry. There's a huge difference between "they were unavailable and I couldn't get one at any price" and "I could have bought one from a scalper but I didn't trust them". Even if it's reasonable not to trust them (it is!), the first statement is sensational, and untrue, especially considering you emphasized "at any price" in your comment upthread.

> If you are going to be a smart arse, I will modify my statement to say "I could not get a card from a reputable online store as they were all out of stock and did not wish to risk buying from a less reputable one".

That's what you should have said in the first place; that would have been honest and correct.

And please, there's no need to call the other poster names. That's uncalled-for and childish. You seem to be new here (9-day-old account), so please read the site guidelines and turn it down a notch or three.

[JollySharp0]

> That's not pedantry. There's a huge difference between "they were simply unavailable and I couldn't get one at any price" and "I could have bought one from a scalper but I didn't trust them". Even if it's reasonable not to trust them (it is!), the first statement is sensational, and untrue, especially considering you emphasized "at any price" in your original comment.

It is for any normal person in relatively normal setting.

Only amongst technical people is this sort of discourse tolerated where someone pretends that an unreasonable option (the scalper in this case as you admitted yourself) should be included in a statement when it is perfectly obvious it should not be included because it is not in any way reasonable.

I could have flown to the US and bought a card or China. Is that reasonable? For most people it isn't reasonable. It wasn't for me. Buying from an untrustworthy seller, is unreasonable.

> the first statement is sensational, and untrue, especially considering you emphasized "at any price" in your original comment.

They were out of stock on every reputable site. Therefore I could not buy a card at any price from them because they didn't exist.

> That's what you should have said in the first place; that would have been honest and correct.

I was honest and correct to begin with. The poster was using prices and availability in the US and not the UK.

> And please, there's no need to call the other poster names.

I never called them names. I expressed my annoyance at their behaviour.

[Dylan16807]

> It is for any normal person in relatively normal setting.

A normal person understands scalping and that if they want it badly enough they can go on ebay.

They're not going to say it's "unavailable at any price" when it's right there for double the price.

If you're willing to pay the scalped price, the risk of using ebay is not in fact unreasonable.

[JollySharp0]

You are being a pendant as far as I am concerned and arguing semantics with me is not going to convince me and many others.

So I suggest in future you should learn that using this line of logic (where you expect me to do something unreasonable to a huge number of people) is not something that people are going to put up with. It is really annoying to have to converse in this manner and in fact I believe that often that is wholly disingenuous and I no longer wish to speak to you.

[kelnos]

> It is for any normal person in relatively normal setting.

I disagree. But clearly I'm not going to convince you (and vice versa), so let's just call it a day.

> I never called them names. I expressed my annoyance at their behaviour.

"Smart arse" is name-calling.

Why don't you step back from the keyboard for a bit and cool down. Might do you some good.

[JollySharp0]

> I disagree. But clearly I'm not going to convince you (and vice versa), so let's just call it a day.

Try it in a IRL conversation and see how quickly someone gets annoyed with you. It won't be very long.

> "Smart arse" is name-calling.

I said "If you are going to be a smart arse". Which means "If you are going to engage in this behaviour then ...".

I never called anyone names.

> Why don't you step back from the keyboard for a bit and cool down. Might do you some good.

I am perfectly fine. I can be mildly annoyed by someone and still be quite rational.

Also this sort of statement is close to concern trolling.

[8note]

i would certainly consider "at any price" to mean that you'd be willing to pay the 5x price to 20 different scammers and still got no card.

there might be a cultural difference between the old world and new world for what "at any price" means, but id take it to mean that to be at least spending $1M for it

[Dylan16807]

I wasn't trying to be a smart arse at all. "I couldn't get a new card from a store" and "I couldn't get a card at all" are extremely different claims in my mind.

I'd rate my pedantry level as quite low. From my point of view this is not a nitpick.

Especially because you emphasized "at any price". It's the scalpers and the used market that were selling at any price. Sticking to reputable stores means sticking close to MSRP.

[JollySharp0]

Buying from scalpers and other untrustworthy people like thieves and other toerags is unreasonable.

I would expect people to understand that unreasonable options should be omitted from conversation.

There was no stock at any of the online outlets that are commonly used in the UK when it came to GPUs for what seemed like a long time.

> I'd rate my pedantry level as quite low. From my point of view this is not a nitpick.

"I have investigated myself and found that I did nothing wrong".

[Dylan16807]

Ebay is reasonable.

Ebay is not all scalpers either. You could have gotten another 1080Ti from a legitimate previous owner.

[JollySharp0]

> Ebay is reasonable.

Paying a scalper on ebay isn't. Which is what I said. Misstating what I said is disingenuous.

> You could have gotten another 1080Ti from a legitimate previous owner.

They were being scalped as well. Also people were holding onto their 10 series cards because the other cards were too expensive. So I would have had to buy an older card (which I had already had one fail) at an inflated price.

I could have bought a GT 710 or a GT1030, but that wouldn't have been any better than my 8800GTS really.

I could have flown to Taiwan and bought a card. I could have stolen one. I am sure you will invent another fantasy scenario where I could have gotten a graphics card that I didn't think about at the time.

The fact is that I could not buy a new card from an online retailer in the UK as they were out of stock. Even when they did come into stock there was a lotto system. So you couldn't really buy one then. That is a fact.