Amazon has fired a delivery driver who was caught on cam driving off with a customer’s PlayStation 5. Sony’s next-gen console was launched a few weeks ago to astound demand across the world. Any retailer website that stocks the new system sees it sell out in minutes. Gamers’ desperate rush to get their hands on the new console has resulted in retailer websites crashing countless times on release day every time they tried to restock units.
Sadly, it isn’t just players who are striving to secure the PlayStation 5. Much of the extremely high traffic volume has been associated with scalpers, who are utilizing bots to fill their carts with as many PlayStation 5s as they can the minute stock becomes available.
These units are then sold at an unreasonable rate on websites such as eBay. Sadly, these scalpers have achieved enormous success in securing that their inventories are filled. A group of scalpers in the United Kingdom revealed that they currently have at least 3500 PlayStation 5 in stock, considerably more than major sellers can have, and obviously they are offering the units at an extremely ridiculous price.
The hype for these next-gen consoles is receiving such a high pitch that some fans are getting outright audacious in their impatience for a PlayStation 5. Eurogamer reported that a woman from Oxfordshire, whose son just turned 16 on the same day as the PlayStation 5’s release day.
The mother was extra lucky to get a PlayStation 5 as a birthday gift, but on delivery day, a security camera caught the delivery driver, after handing over other packages to houses in the neighborhood, kept the PlayStation 5 inside the vehicle and drove away.
The family contacted Amazon, who only offered a gift card to temper them at first. However, when they presented the footage of the delivery guy driving away with the unit, the company pledged to make more severe action and fired the thief responsible for the robbery. As of writing, the family has not yet received any replacement for the missing unit.
As dangerous as the PlayStation 5 stock landscape has been in the West, matters are even worse in the United Kingdom. Not only do they have to contest with the same horribly low stocks, crashing retailer sites, and high traffic, but successfully getting an order isn’t even the end of the battle.
Even orders that don’t get downright stolen might not contain the next-gen console at all. Customers in the United Kingdom have reported receiving cat food or air fryers in their shipments which were supposed to contain Sony’s new console, and Amazon doesn’t look like it’s capable of handling this anomaly.
As upsetting as the scarcity in supplies, it’s not at all surprising. Even before the consoles released, Xbox CEO Phil Spencer predicted an absolute failure to meet the demand of both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.
It is disheartening to witness the depths to which gamers are prepared to get their hands on the brand new consoles, and it is even more heartbreaking to realize that there are still no signs that things will get better. Only one can hope that the teenager from Oxfordshire has a better birthday next year.
