SimplyGames maintains the trouble’s being stirred up by a few pesky commentators.
If you want a PS4 badly enough to preorder it, you want it badly enough to pay more than your originally bargained for, is the logic being followed by UK retailer SimplyGames. It originally offered the PS4 at £350 a go, but recently jacked up the rate to a minimum of £415, or £470 if you go for one of its packages. Pay the extra, or lose your place in the queue, SimplyGames told its customers. “This appears to be profiteering,” a Trading Standards official said to CVG, and added, “it is illegal and up to the Home Authority to intervene if the seller is UK based. This is one of those occasions when swift injunctive action is needed to prevent consumers being ripped off.”
Sony wants nothing to do with this PR disaster. “Sony is not and would not force anyone to buy something they don’t want,” said a Sony representative. “We value our consumers and offered the bundles precisely to give them choice and value. And the key word there is choice.” The problem lies with SimplyGames, which apparently received fewer standalone consoles than it thought it would, and increased the price to compensate. But the stock problem may have been caused by SimplyGames, which seems to have created unofficial bundles and deals – presumably by plundering its standalone supply – which it then offered to customers.
SimplyGames is standing firm, and claims its customers are happy to pay more than they bargained for. “It’s just commentators who have stirred it up,” says SimplyGames’ Neil Muspratt. It has no stock left to accommodate standalone preorders, it says, so it hasn’t the means to change its policy even if it wanted to.
Source: CVG
