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*** NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3080 SERIES STOCK SITUATION - NO COMPETITOR DISCUSSION ***
Tbh I think we won’t see anything this week, I think we will see some next week though
I really hope so dude, I've been without a pc for 3 months now
That sucks. The price of cards has gone insane. I was looking at what I'd got for my 2070 super, expecting it to be around €250 but I see them on ebay for the same price I paid for the 3080. They'll probably go back to normal pricing right after I get the 3080.
Soldato
- Joined
- 6 Jan 2012
- Posts
- 5,502
Chin up! Could be worse, imagine if Heinz ketchup was as hard to get hold of as a 3080
Associate
- Joined
- 14 Jan 2021
- Posts
- 71
The one silver lining for me in this is, so far, my 2080 TI hasn't been devalued by the 30 series. I had originally hoped to get about €500 back for my 2080 TI after my 3080 arrives. I considered that optimistic but now I think the only optimistic part is assuming the new card will in fact arrive.
That is not the case, especially with automated online ordering and where the retailer has made it clear, as OCUK do, that acceptance is only confirmed when the goods are shipped.
... and once again if you did manage somehow to end up in court arguing this point, the only remedy is cancellation of your order and a complete refund which is available to you at any point just for the asking...
Specific performance, in this case delivery of the goods, is not enforceable as a remedy.
The website constitutes an 'invitation to treat', the placing of an order along with payment is the 'offer', acceptance of the offer is clearly stated by OCUK to be shipment of the goods.
The fact that payment has been made via an automated system does not in itself constitute acceptance of the offer.
Associate
I know I wasn't. I just used my position in the queue as a backup in case I couldn't get one before hand. I ended up getting a 3090 instead because I was tired of settling for a mid tier card like the xx70 cards. I cancelled my order as soon as I got the card and used the money to upgrade my PC, so that I wouldn't have any power and bottlenecking issues.
Associate
- Joined
- 14 Jan 2021
- Posts
- 71
I'm not familiar with the laws around this so feel free to take my opinion with a grain of salt, but I'm not entirely convinced offering refunds is a get out of jail free card for taking money from customers and failing to deliver the product that they paid for. There surely must be some kind of protection that enforces a reasonable time period in which to receive the product, or something like that.
As long as the statutory rights are not infringed. i.e. if a company was to set a refund deadline, start the 'unwanted return' timer before the goods are delivered, start the warranty period before the goods are delivered...that sort of thing, then the company is not doing anything wrong by taking your order without a firm delivery date. It's not like we haven't told the customer that it's a pre-order.
We can set the contract acceptance point at any point from payment to delivery within terms & conditions. We just happen to use the same terms as Amazon UK and I'm sure that Amazon's army of lawyers have gone over their T&C with a fine tooth comb for every region in which they operate.
The customer retains all of the power in this arrangement. Wait for the goods or have a full refund, we're not imposing any limitations or additional hoops for the customer to jump through either way.
We're not misleading anybody, we contacted customers early on to state that the order was a pre-order, we weren't able to give an ETA and if they wanted to cancel put your name & order number is 'this' form and we'll process that as soon as we could.
consumer law exists to protect people from misleading sales tactics and infringement of statutory rights.
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Comfortable is not the right term. Many of us want a specific card at a fair price from our a PC parts shop that we trust. It sucks that we have to wait, but most of us are so British that patience is unquestionable.
It's good you managed to nab one early, but I bet you made a compromise somewhere
It seems that the shortage of chips is becomming worse not better:
That there is a bit of a chip crisis in the industry is not exactly unknown anymore, CPUs, GPUs, Chipsets, NAND Flash, add to that the latest component shortage, MOSFETs.
Prices for MOSFETs are set to rise significantly in the months ahead thanks to worsening shortages arising from persistently tight 8-inch foundry capacity and rapid increases in demand for graphics cards and automotive electronics applications, according to industry sources.
https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/mosfet-prices-to-increase-on-worsening-component-shortages.html
In related news to the previous one; no chips means no cards to finish. Tesla has to shut down the Model 3 production line at its Fremont factory in California. A stop is planned for two weeks. The tech industry worldwide suffers from a shortage of microchips, which is now also affecting the electric car manufacturer.
https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/t...-line-for-two-weeks-due-to-chip-shortage.html
That there is a bit of a chip crisis in the industry is not exactly unknown anymore, CPUs, GPUs, Chipsets, NAND Flash, add to that the latest component shortage, MOSFETs.
Prices for MOSFETs are set to rise significantly in the months ahead thanks to worsening shortages arising from persistently tight 8-inch foundry capacity and rapid increases in demand for graphics cards and automotive electronics applications, according to industry sources.
https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/mosfet-prices-to-increase-on-worsening-component-shortages.html
In related news to the previous one; no chips means no cards to finish. Tesla has to shut down the Model 3 production line at its Fremont factory in California. A stop is planned for two weeks. The tech industry worldwide suffers from a shortage of microchips, which is now also affecting the electric car manufacturer.
https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/t...-line-for-two-weeks-due-to-chip-shortage.html
Yes, consumer law does expect the goods to be delivered in a reasonable time period, but, the 'penalty' for failing to do that is the customer gets to cancel the order and receive a refund...
This is why I keep mentioning that specific performance isn't a right, the law recognises that stuff happens and if the retailer simply can't get the goods then the customer has the right to cancel and get their payment returned to them. If the customer doesn't want to cancel then they can wait as long as they want, as ScottiB said above, the customer can ask for the refund anytime they want and OCUK have made it easy to do just that.
Just for balance and clarity, the retailer has the same right to cancel, but it is not normally in their best interests to do so of course.
Associate
- Joined
- 14 Jan 2021
- Posts
- 71
Just to clarify a little, I think bringing up litigation was crass and I don't want to encourage that kind of empty posturing, I just would be surprised if there aren't some kind of further protections in place and I'm curious about it.
To explain where I'm coming from, it's fair to assume that there are a significant number of customers who, for one reason or another, are not in a position to cancel their order, among the 5K-10K backorders. Let's assume some of those customers are at the back of the queue and their specific product is never officially discontinued, either by the AIB or OC, despite no new stock coming for an extended period of time. Surely there must be some kind of regulation for what happens to the money the customer has paid for the order and I can't imagine it would simply be allowed to be swallowed by OC. To be clear, I'm not suggesting this is necessarily a realistic scenario, just it illustrates the kind of scenarios I'm thinking about well.
In that case, the contractual obligation would be ended, OC would be expected to give the customers back their money, but no lines are being killed off without OC knowing and OC aren't going to be slipping up with such a potential danger.
Soldato
Whilst I can understand some of the newer cards being Out of Stock I'm still absolutely amazed that, when I checked the whole OcUK website a few minutes ago, there are only TWO enthusiast level cards of any make to actually buy on the whole website - not two SKU's but TWO entire cards, a single £2k RTX 2080Ti (lol price) and a single £190 GTX 1050 (a hundred-ish GTX 710's though).
Thats astounding that OcUK don't even have any older GTX 10XX, RTX 20XX, or even any form of AMD cards at all to sell, none, not a single card!
Thats astounding that OcUK don't even have any older GTX 10XX, RTX 20XX, or even any form of AMD cards at all to sell, none, not a single card!
I understand the context in which you are asking, but it does all come down to order cancellation.
The trigger is in the hands of the customer though, if they choose not to use it for whatever reason then their money stays in the hands of the retailer.
... I can certainly understand why people would not want to cancel at this point, but it is a choice, there is no compulsion to keep the order in place and that right to cancel and receive a refund is all the protection they need. The law is not going to force the retailer to cancel an order that the customer has decided not to cancel as long as they believe it can be fulfilled at some point.
On the flip-side if the product is discontinued then the minimum the retailer would have to do is cancel the order and refund the customer payment as it is no longer possible to fulfil the order as placed.
I say 'minimum' as the retailer could have course offer alternative products to the customer if that was possible, but once again the protection for the customer is that right to cancel and receive a refund.
The retailer has options as well of course, but as yet there has been no sign that OCUK intend to use them as long as they can continue to obtain stock or product substitutions to fulfil orders that doesn't lose them too much money in the process...
Associate
- Joined
- 7 Apr 2015
- Posts
- 105
Thanks for the continued updates Gibbo and ScottiB. Asus seems to be dropping some decent stock recently. Wish Gigabyte would pull their finger out 
Commissario
A wild guess is that a lot of the older cards haven't been in production for a while so OCUK may not have had many left in the warehouse as they wouldn't have sold normally, and a year of covid with people spending more time at home (thus building machines for fun), working from home (thus having machines for work) and the disruption has caught up.
At the moment I'm glad I rarely dispose of old parts until they're well and truly ancient, as it means at a pinch i've got 3 spare GPU's at least but they're all 4-5 years old (and I was able to loan one to a friend a few months back).