As brought to our attention by the wonderful Will Potter on Twitter, it seems that nefarious folk are taking to auction site ebay to try to sell photos of Sony's PlayStation 5. Not the console itself - pictures of it. Yes, it's wholly ridiculous. But no, we're not making this up.
As you can see in Will's tweet, below, listings have appeared on ebay that do state that they're photos only - but the sellers aren't exactly intending to flog a few snaps. The goal here, obviously, is to trick a buyer into putting down money for, basically, nothing. To have someone, desperate for a PlayStation 5 this Christmas, to click buy now on a listing, and then get stung with the reality that they've just bought a photograph.
Worryingly, it seems people have been suckered into this scam - this listing for a "PlayStation 5 Disk Version Photo" has nine bids, with the current selling price (at the time of writing) sitting at £600. That's a healthy margin above the RRP for the console - you know, the contraption that actually plays games.
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To look at it briefly can easily make you think: yep, that's what I, someone who's after a PS5, want to buy, and £600 isn't too steep given what some people are hawking this thing for. But look closer and there's "Photo" in the listing, and the description goes further: "Disclaimer: this is a photo only."
Clearly, this is very, very uncool - and hopefully the seller will have their item removed from ebay before whoever buys this photo loses their money. But sadly, this is far from the only listing for a PlayStation 5 photo that's live on ebay, at the time of writing. Here's a photo of the digital-edition PS5, with a current highest bid of £205 (the listing says it's for the disc edition, but the photo is the digital version).
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Go into the description and you see that someone is, possibly, going to be very disappointed with their purchase: "Brand New PS5 Disc Edition (photo). New PS5 Disc Edition (photo). This is a photo of the PS5. You will receive a printed picture of a PS5." Just what we all want to find wrapped up under the tree, eh? A lovely photo of a console you don't own.
And still, there's more - a photo with a current highest bid of £580, and another with a highest bid of £530. Another one, somehow, has a highest bid so far of £6,700? There are loads of these listings, with prices ranging from the low hundreds into the thousands - all of which are only offering a photo of the PS5. Suffice to say that we hope there's a special place reserved in The Bad Place for these scammers, and we also hope that ebay takes these listings down, ASAP. Assuming they can, that is - as when we click through to report the listings, there's no clear category for: Seller is clearly attempting to con people out of their money. Ebay, come on, do the right thing here.
As for you, reader: please please please, do not buy a PlayStation 5 photo from ebay. If you really want one, drop us a line and we'll send you several for free. And if you want to check out our verdict on Sony's new console, find GAMINGbible's PlayStation 5 review here, or watch the video below.
Topics: PlayStation 5
