MSI subsidiary accused of 'scalping' NVIDIA RTX 3080 for $600 over retail

By Sean Endicott
published

An MSI subsidiary briefly sold the RTX 3080 for significantly over market price.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 (Image credit: NVIDIA)

What you need to know

  • Starlit Partner, an MSi subsidiary, has been accused of selling the RTX 3080 for an inflated price.
  • An eBay listing from Starlit PArtner listed an MSI RTX 3080 for almost $600 above retail price.
  • The listing has since been removed, and refunds should be offered.

MSI subsidiary Starlit Partner has been accused of "scalping" the NVIDIA RTX 3080 for almost $600 over its normal retail price of $760. An eBay listing (opens in new tab), which has since been taken down, listed an MSI GeForce RTX 3080 GPU for $1,359. A Reddit post flagged up the overpriced card and relationship between STarlit Partner and MSI, which led to backlash across the web (via The Verge).

MSI released a statement on Twitter today that confirms that Starlit Partner is an "individual sales subsidiary working under MSI." The statement explains that Starlit Partner normally sells refurbished items as opposed to new items like the RTX 3080. MSI states that the RTX 3080 became available through Starlit Partner due to an error.

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People who purchased the RTX 3080 for an inflated price have two options. They can receive a full refund or opt to receive a refund of the difference between what they paid and what the card retails for. It's worth noting that MSI specifically states that "Starlit Partner has been instructed to contact the individual customers who purchased these graphic card products." That means that customers will have to communicate with Starlit Partner rather than MSI.

MSI also states that it will "enforce a stricter policy to avoid situations like this happening again."

The RTX 3080 is one of the best graphics cards you can buy and is in very high demand. It sold out almost immediately when it became available. The ensuing shortage contributed to an escalated second-hand market.

PNY GeForce RTX 3080 XLR8 Gaming Epic-XGreat Value

 (opens in new tab)
PNY GeForce RTX 3080 XLR8 Gaming Epic-X

Staff Pick

This fine example from PNY sports a killer design, which will look great in most PC builds. The core clock speed of 1440MHz and boost of 1710MHz are perfect for more demanding games. Not only that, but you get 8,704 CUDA processing cores, 10GB of GDDR6X RAM, and up to 760GB/s bandwidth. This GPU is ready for high-end 4K gaming PCs with PCIe 4.0.

Sean Endicott
Sean Endicott
News Writer and apps editor

Sean Endicott brings nearly a decade of experience covering Microsoft and Windows news to Windows Central. He joined our team in 2017 as an app reviewer and now heads up our day-to-day news coverage. If you have a news tip or an app to review, hit him up at sean.endicott@futurenet.com (opens in new tab).

4 Comments
  • It's called business. If you don't like the price, don't buy the product. Vote with your wallet. If you paid an elevated price and have buyer's remorse, that's on you, not the seller. The only time there should be a problem with this where the government (I know - not happening in this case) is when it is products that people need for health/survival, and the price is clearly artificially elevated.
  • Can't agree more.
  • Wait, so you think it should be legal for a company to buy their own cards and resell them at a higher rate through another company they own potentiallyeven before customers have access to buy at the original price? Wow, i would hate to live if your business world. I guess all monopolies should be legal too?
  • Just wait for rdna2 and nvidia's response products. Those will surely upset the scalpers