This is from an ebay listing, NOT ME.  11:46am order confirmation email.  Hum.
 

I ordered a strix from amazon germany as a backup so I can wait for stock to stablize before I grab a ftw3 ultra

What I don't get, since these aren't a limited product or anything, just let everyone who wants one, order one. then fulfill them when you can.

In Canada and did not purchase one today from an online retailer
But...

Amazon.ca let PreOrders on the MSI Ventus 3 version happen and I have one of those. Was interesting that no one that noticed breathed a word about it. Probably worried that they would be cancelled if it blew up online. No word on when it will ship at this time.

Memory Express(Canada only, RIP their phone lines today) is allowing on the phone PreOrders/Reservations and I have an EVGA FTW3 Ultra 3 secured with them.

Not one paid for or in hand yet though.

My plan is to retain the MSI order as a backup just in case Memory Express fails me. They've generally been reliable, and I'm certain I'll get it from them.
I may find a friend that wants a 3080 and work something out so they can give me the cash and then change the shipping address so it goes to them directly. Would rather it went to someone I know personally at cost than risk a scalper scooping it up. 

Intoxicus
In Canada and did not purchase one today from an online retailer
But...

Amazon.ca let PreOrders on the MSI Ventus 3 version happen and I have one of those. Was interesting that no one that noticed breathed a word about it. Probably worried that they would be cancelled if it blew up online. No word on when it will ship at this time.

Memory Express(Canada only, RIP their phone lines today) is allowing on the phone PreOrders/Reservations and I have an EVGA FTW3 Ultra 3 secured with them.

Not one paid for or in hand yet though.

My plan is to retain the MSI order as a backup just in case Memory Express fails me. They've generally been reliable, and I'm certain I'll get it from them.
I may find a friend that wants a 3080 and work something out so they can give me the cash and then change the shipping address so it goes to them directly. Would rather it went to someone I know personally at cost than risk a scalper scooping it up. 

It's really impressive that you've been able to secure 2 orders when 99%+ of other people got nothing.
 
Really unusually impressive.

I got through with the step up program and queued up for the 3080 FTW3 Ultra Gaming. I did not realize how lucky I actually was to get through.

I've been perusing the usual haunts for 'tell us about your new...' threads. And so far I think I've counted less than a dozen what I would consider 'respected members of the community' purchase.

dalten22

dalten22

Kyato
Sadly it seems the bots managed to get the stock, even though evga claimed that bots don't exist and they have a system to prevent it. In one of the discord gaming servers I'm a member of, someone has posted pictures of people on a bot site bragging about buying up some of the stock on sites like this one.

I doubt they ever said bots don't exist, and "sites like this one" does mean they succeeded at buying at evga.com. Not to say they didn't either, but so many people assume things they can't possibly know. A ton of people were able to add to cart including myself but couldn't get through payment in time, bots would have had the exact same problem so it's obviously more of a supply problem than it is scalpers, at least at evga.com.  This was a near-paper launch and I can't find anyone anywhere claiming they even saw the option to add any FE card to cart through BB or NVidia.com. It's obvious they had almost no cards available, less than 1000 probably for all of north America and a lot of those got distributed 5, 10, 15 at a time to retail stores. 

I know someone who uses bots on Ticketmaster. Not only do his bots mass DDOS ticketmaster to "kick" legit users off it then passes the image captcha and uses 100s of credit cards/addresses to make legit purchases, the fake addresses are then rerouted to a handful of normal addresses or (e-delivered). Access to the software costs 10s of thousands of dollars and the network of "sellers" he works with are in the hundreds. So that's a few hundred people spamming ticketmaster all at once, instantly kicking thousands of legit users while a few hundred of their bots get through buy the max quantity. They have it timed so that when credit cards/accounts are flagged they are replaced by another instantly until all stock is gone in the preferred areas. The "upgrade" pacakges and nosebleeds are left alone for the consumers (which is how i saw my favorite bands) but the chances of snatching a great seat versus one of these "selling networks" is like 1 vs 1,000 odds. The limited stock Nvidia provided here only compounds that even more so the legit customers that were able to land a spot today... was like lottery odds.

These aren't assumptions.. it is to the point now that for a great concert you either buy the upgrade packages or give in to a scalper. Same for shoes...looks like PC/gaming hardware has caught up. 

Same thing will happen next week with the 3090. You'll find them on Ebay for ~2500 after that. Maybe we'll find them in 2021 when the current supply of botted and/or flipped units are purchased.

Not I, sadly. Been at this all day... but such is the joys of a launch like this, haha.

The problem is Ebay , the only platform where they can actually sell this is eBay and if Nvidia contact eBay and prevent them with some legal action from selling them from selling it on thier platform , then scalpers nightmarer will , the problem is with Ebay

I don't want to jinx it as the card hasn't shipped just yet, but I have a confirmed and processed purchase for an XC3 Ultra. It was a struggle as every step of the way (add to cart, checkout, shipping, etc) took minutes to load and would crash a few times. But by some stroke of luck I managed to complete the process. Confirmation email timestamped 9:44 ET

Got lucky on the 3080 XC3 Ultra - as someone else said, I was ready to go at 7:59 AM Central, the site crashed almost immediately at 8 AM. Kept pushing through, opened about 5 Chrome windows and ended up copying and pasting URL's around as they kept crashing at different times. Finally got through and saw the Ultra as the only one in stock after about 15 minutes. Added it and it crashed again - then copied the secure checkout URL to another window, got another step further to payment, submitted - it took my payment, but said it could not return me to EVGA to finalize, so I copied the finalizing URL and posted it in another window entirely - waited maybe 5-10 minutes on each of these screens before I finally got through. That was brutal, man. I'm happy I got one, but that was brutal.

Not sure how the order process works, but I finally finished everything around 8:45 AM. Perhaps I got lucky in a placement queue of some sort? I'm not sure how that's designed for EVGA - as in, maybe if you add to cart and start the order - it's then reserved? But most likely not, I assume stock isn't depleted in the system until the order is finalized. In either case, I got extremely lucky and I was ready at the turn of the hour. 

micdoom
The problem is Ebay , the only platform where they can actually sell this is eBay and if Nvidia contact eBay and prevent them with some legal action from selling them from selling it on thier platform , then scalpers nightmarer will , the problem is with Ebay

That seems like it's great in theory, but flawed in reality. What is the legal basis for Nvidia to take action against Ebay? What would they sue for? Being an arbitrage platform? Doesn't hold water as far as I can tell as a not lawyer. 
I've asked @HoegLaw(legit business lawyer) to confirm. From watching his content I suspect he will say that the courts would not only would be unwilling to intervene, but also unable to.

I do think scalpers are not beneficial to the economy and only add value to their own wallets, and cause harm otherwise. Making scalping illegal is not as simple on the surface as it may seem.

What Nvidia and retailers could more likely do is what Nvidia is doing now: Manually review purchases and cancel the obvious bot purchases. Part of the purchase terms can be no bots, human interaction only potentially.

Ebay stands to benefit too much. Seller fees are high and scalping is probably one of Ebay's biggest revenue sources. I don't think Ebay itself will ever be convinced to voluntarily disallow scalping. And a legal intervention could have implications that cause problems for legitimate businesses and legitimate resale of goods. Consider that the Sherman Antitrust Act accidently almost made all business illegal in USA(no joke, my mind was blown when Hoeg Law explained this in his Epic vs Apple content.) The courts had to reinterpret the Sherman Act to make only being unreasonable use of monopoly power illegal. If you reduce any market small enough it becomes a monopoly. Technically I'm a monopolist of Flange Master Towel Content because my channel is the only place you can get my content.

After phoning in to Memory Express to reserve a 3080 FTW3 Ultra I've come to wonder if the real solution is to stop online sales for these kinds of releases and only allow in person or over the phone purchases, or even phone the customer verifications. It would not stop scalpers, but it would make it harder for them to screw legit customers if we regressed like that.

How about they don’t allow warranties from non-authorized seller’s first a start