Has MSI USA sold GeForce RTX 3080 at a higher price? The company responds to the allegations

We are well aware of the current situation inherent in the market for NVIDIA RTX 30 series graphics cards and their scarce availability. Unfortunately, the demand remains very high and buyers are willing to do anything to take home a specimen, even going so far as to buy it at prices beyond all logic offered by obvious profiteers on eBay or other sites. Some people have even gone as far as employing bots to buy cards as soon as they appeared on major retailers for the purpose of reselling them later at a high profit.

This phenomenon shouldn't be of interest to established third-party manufacturers, but recently on Reddit some users have accused MSI USA of having sold, through the company Starlit Partner, four GeForce RTX 3080 graphics cards at almost double the recommended price. Specifically, it was the MSI Gaming X Trio model, which was offered at $ 1,359, well $ 600 more than the list price.

We would like to clarify right from the start that the situation only affects MSI USA : the four incriminated RTX 3080s were sold by Starlit on eBay.com and neither the Italian division of the company, nor those of other European countries, have anything to do with the incident.

Regarding Starlit Partner / eBay: pic.twitter.com/QqRDBNRdVa

- MSI Gaming USA (@msiUSA) October 7, 2020



Asked about it, MSI responded via an official message on their Twitter account, confirming that Starlit Partner is their property and is engaged in the sale of excess inventory or refurbished items and should not market new products such as the RTX 30 series graphics cards. Following an investigation, it was discovered that, by mistake, access was also given to products that it should not cover. For this reason, Starlit Partner will contact the purchasers of the cards giving them the possibility to return the product and receive a full refund, or have a partial refund covering the difference between the list price and the one paid on eBay. After identifying the problem, the sale of additional cards was blocked.

Obviously, MSI USA has apologized for the inconvenience, promising that more thorough checks will be carried out in the future. We remind you again that it was an isolated case, which concerned only the American branch of the company.

While waiting for the Geforce RTX 3080 to be available again, on Amazon you will find various MSI boards of the RTX 20 series at discounted prices .