As NVIDIA and its AiB partner struggle to get their GeForce RTX 3080 inventory refilled, hiccups within the process are expected, one way or another. For MSI, the gaming brand had its hands full recently, dealing with an errant subsidiary.
The controversy first popped up on Reddit, where the subsidiary, Starlit Partner, was outed and accused of selling MSI’s RTX 3080 graphics cards on eBay. Even worse, Starlit Partner was reportedly selling said GPUs at nearly double the SRP of the RTX 3080 at US$1359 (~RM5643).
For the record, the GeForce RTX 3080 starts from US$699 or RM3360, and any increments to that base price is left to the discretion of NVIDIA’s AiB partners.
Thankfully, MSI has rectified the situation and even released a statement to the issue. It attributes Starlit Partner’s actions to an error that ultimately gave it access to inventory that the subsidiary was not allowed to handle.
As for the RTX 3080 cards that have already been sold, MSI has instructed the Starlit Partners to contact customers who purchased them and provide them with two options: return the card and get refunded in full, or keep the card and get refunded the amount that was in excess of MSI’s SRP for the card.
At the time of writing, MSI did not say if or how it intends to punish Starlit Partners for its transgression. It’s already bad enough that the PC gaming world is having to deal with unscrupulous resellers and bots hoarding the world’s supply of NVIDIA’s new RTX 3080 cards. But having one of its sales subsidiary scalping its cards without its knowledge is just low.
(Source: Reddit, TechRadar, Videocardz)
