This is correct for used devices, or course, but people in the wholesale chain will have signed contracts agreeing not to sell below MSRP.
It’s called “undercutting the channel”, and it’s very frowned on in the physical goods distribution industry.
Has anyone made this work? I tried to make it work. Even at 10% (Discover IT category + end of year match), you can’t buy something, have it shipped to you, sell it, ship it, and make money. Any online marketplace eats your profit very quickly with assorted fees.
One of the routes I'm aware of involves buying gift cards from Kroger with a high cash back credit card during their frequent events where they offer extra fuel points on purchases. They don't charge activation fees on gift cards, and you can sell the fuel points accounts somewhat under the table on eBay, and then pocket the cash back from your credit card. Then you wait til black Friday or other sales, use the gift cards to buy electronics at discounted prices, and then ship them overseas to sell for a decent markup. It involves floating tens of thousands of dollars for several months though so not quite for your average individual just trying to make some quick cash.
https://9to5mac.com/2022/10/03/chase-apple-products-redempti...
Many of Chase's credit card sign up offers provide enough points for a cardholder to obtain an iPhone through this promotion. If the cardholder does not want the iPhone, they could resell it on a marketplace. Amazon Marketplace used to be one of these marketplaces until it started restricting listings for certain brands such as Apple.
Your examples are unlikely to be how a "third-party reseller" obtained the phone(s).
https://sell.amazon.com/pricing#selling-plans
In the past decade, Amazon started adding brand restrictions to prevent marketplace sellers from offering items on certain listings unless they met requirements set by the brand owner. This collapsed Amazon's marketplace for used goods of restricted brands and also hindered individuals selling new goods of restricted brands on Amazon. This lawsuit focuses on new goods of one of these restricted brands.
https://sell.amazon.com/pricing#selling-plans
Prior to Amazon's brand restrictions, Amazon Marketplace was a popular place for individuals to sell unwanted new and used goods. Selling on Amazon was even easier than selling on eBay, since there was no need to make a new product listing with photos and descriptions. Most of the new goods sold by Individual sellers were not raffle prizes, but unwanted goods such as gifts, items obtained at a discount, and items that were not eligible for free return to the original retailer.
It sucks.
I'm sure the reason is because of fraudulent items, which also sucks.
Pretty bad catch-22.
Anyway, I got this seller account to sell a couple of books. Used it a couple of times a decade. If I won an iPhone in a raffle, I'd absolutely be trying to sell it on Amazon.
There’s a couple of ways they are sourced but basically:
- Buy Apple gift cards for 70-80% of face value from let’s just say dubious sources and then use that to buy phones
- Fedex or warehouse employees stealing to supplement their salaries
- Authorized retailers who break their agreement
- Buyback websites or stores where people bring phones and get paid like 60% of retail or less if it’s locked. Some of this is just people wanting to return a gift they got without asking the giver for the receipt but most of the phones bought at these kind of stores are obtained through “credit mulling” where they gather up a bunch of homeless people and pay them $20 to go into an AT&T store and get a phone on credit.
- Currency arbitrage: if the Euro drops and companies don’t update their prices and you are able to get VAT refunds then you could be able to get a phone for less than it’s American retail value. This (big drop in yen) combined with the camera shutter is why Japanese spec iPhones can be a lot cheaper.
https://www.hanggroup.com/price/ is a company with 9 figure revenue that purchases these no questions asked. You can see the most they pay for a phone is $1050 for the 14 pro max which is $50 below retail.
Is this where the gift cards harvested from scam operations go?