“Bots come in and buy up all the toys and then charge ludicrous prices amidst the holiday shopping bustle,” the New York Democrat said on Sunday. “Cyber bots — we call them ‘Grinch bots’ — are expanding their reach and unfairly scooping up the hottest toys your parents can’t even click buy.”For example, Schumer said, the popular Fingerlings — a set of interactive baby monkey figurines that usually sell for around $15 — are being snagged by the scalping software and resold on secondary websites for as much as $1,000 a pop.“Grinch bots cannot be allowed to steal Christmas, or dollars, from the wallets of New Yorkers,” he said. The senator said as soon as a retailer puts a hard-to-get toy — like Barbie’s Dreamhouse or Nintendo game systems — for sale on a website, a bot can snatch it up even before a kid’s parents finish entering their credit card information.The toys then end up for sale on other sites like Amazon and eBay for hundreds or even thousands of dollars more.
Source: Schumer says ‘Grinch bots’ are stealing Christmas | New York Post
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