Nvidia Forced To Review GeForce RTX 3080 Orders Following Mass Hoarding Online

Nvidia is left baffled how stocks of the GeForce RTX 3080 ran out quickly recently with the latest flagship card getting sold out within minutes or less. The mystery behind it is that stocks ran out on most major retailers and online stores. The only problem here is the question on whether they were actually sold or hoarded.

Bots and internet profiteers have been singled out as the reason behind the surprise sales, something that prevented legitimate customers to get hold of the RTX 3080 card. But according to PCMag, Nvidia wants to do a deeper investigation to make sure that their flagship cards do land in the hand of legitimate customers.

"To stop bots and [profiteers] on the Nvidia store, we’re doing everything humanly possible, including manually reviewing orders, to get these cards in the hands of legitimate customers, Nvidia said to PCMag. "We apologize to our customers for this morning's experience," the company added.

Such a practice of hoarding items on sale and then re-selling them on a profit is nothing new. Demand has been high for the RTX 3080 which carried a suggested retail price of $699. With no stocks on hand, getting hold of these cards has now become tough. There are sites like eBay and Newegg offering the card which some consumers are vastly looking for.

Over at eBay, one listing had a bid of $10,000 and other listings have appeared. The pricing has become outrageous although some buyers may have reasonable and saner luck checking out Newegg.

Newegg indicated via social media post that they would be holding some stocks back. The ploy is seen by most as a way to buy them time as they sort out the number of cards they have at the moment. It could also help them in replenishing stocks in their inventory, assuming that the number of items they have right now are not that high.

It will be interesting how Nvidia will sort out this mysterious mess. But one thing is certain, they need to act fast. There are some consumers aching to get one and could care less about the outrageous price tag. If they fail to check the ploy, the best the company can do is employ stricter measures on their next stocks which are now said to be underway and headed to physical stores.