eliza61nyc
Well-Known Member
Oh please get real. The dude on ebay is not reporting that income to the irs.
There's a bridge in Brooklyn for sale if you believe that.
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A rant against Disney Profiteers
- Thread starter OG Runner
- Start date
There's a bridge in Brooklyn for sale if you believe that.
Chef Mickey
Well-Known Member
One is illegal, the other isn’t.
Disney’s margin for consumer products is public information and is nowhere near your example.
Smiley/OCD
Well-Known Member
I would argue that it's not illegal, it's using the system to one's advantage...as far as their margin being public information, while their total profit margin may be public information, individual profit margins on a particular item is proprietary information. No where is there a list of Disney's wholesale costs on any particular item. I worked in retail management for 30+ years...you would NEVER reveal how much it costs to buy a widgit from your vendor...let's tell UNI how much profit they make on a similar item that Disney sells...they might be buying from the same factory and one could be paying substantially more/less. That info. you would never make public. If you really want to make the argument that it's stated somewhere that the items you buy are not to be resold, it's illegal, fine, but so is going 5 m.p.h. over the speed limit...I don't know too many people who have gotten tickets for 5 over.
FettFan
Well-Known Member
My own opinion is that Disney needs to make limited releases....actually limited.
The limited edition WDW Funko Pop! figures for example.....Disney sells them for a regular, reasonable price of $19.99.
BUT....instead of limiting them to maybe 2-3, Disney sets their limit for sale at 10. You end up having entire families wait in line with each family member buying 10 of them.
So let's say a family of four does this. That family now has 40 of a certain item.
And then they go to eBay or Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/POP-Disney-Exclusive-Plastic-Protector/dp/B075M3CC8Y
Orange Bird listed for $91.00. Remember, this was an in-park exclusive, sold only a the four main parks and the World of Disney store at Disney Springs. The list price was reasonable.
So that's my two cents....to discourage extreme scalping, Disney needs to put deeper limits on specialty merchandise.
FettFan
Well-Known Member
And Disney actually pays taxes on their profits. The same can't be said for Amazon re-sellers.
Chef Mickey
Well-Known Member
Business has tons of other costs to design, develop, deliver, store, etc the products. Disney consumer products division has about 30% operating margin. Good margins, but nothing insane. With all due respect, you can’t even spell widget, so I doubt you have much expertise in the bottom line. Of course there are wider spreads on product, but when all is said and done, it’s 30% margin BEFORE taxes. That’s a fact. Nothing else matters.
It’s like the guy that looks at the materials cost for an iPhone and says, “Why does Apple charge, $999?”
Disney also pays taxes and does business legally, because they have to as a public company.
Using your annual pass to get a discount and reselling the item at retail, particularly in any large scale, is illegal and would be punishable if pursued.
Smiley/OCD
Well-Known Member
I agree, to help curtail the resales, simply limit the amount per customer sold and make it harder to amass quantities...it won't stop it, but it will make it harder.
Smiley/OCD
Well-Known Member
Gee, I'm sorry that I misspelled a word...I didn't know that spelling was a prerequisite for being a member here.. As far as my business expertise goes, YOU know NOTHING about me other than what I have stated on here, the profits I've made buying for the companies I worked for. I usually enjoy your posts, but that was a low blow. Maybe spelling IS a prerequisite to be on here, but apparently TACT is not.
World_Showcase_Lover007
Well-Known Member
Now that I’m out of the restaurant/bar industry, it feels good to let ppl know that their $6-$8 bottled beer costs the bar $0.78 or even less. They can make the choice whether to continue to buy at such a high markup. An 80% markup on liquor is the norm, with places like Disney, cruise lines, etc going way way way beyond that.
FettFan
Well-Known Member
If Disney didn't want resellers to sell their $20 item for $65 on ebay... they'd just sell a ton more for $20. Don't make it limited. sell it online, in parks, until it stops selling. No one will buy a $65 one on ebay if they can still buy it for $20 from Disney.
That's one way. BUT if you can buy anything online, what's the point of buying it in the parks?
Some things should be park-only exclusives....and when they are, limit them.
This isn't Nintendo we're talking about here, as Nintendo caters to an in-home market.
Damon7777
Well-Known Member
"illegal" ???
Are you sure you're using the right description?
Not very sporting of you to attack my fictional/hypothetical small time entrepreneur as a tax cheat criminal without proper evidence.
Illegal means against the law. Anti-scalping and disaster profiteering statutes aside, I'm not aware of any law prohibiting buying an item at retail and reselling it for obscene profit on eBay. Perhaps you can post a link to such a law...
Feel free, it wouldn't be the first time a discussion went completely off the rails in a new direction.
Where did I say Big Corp make sloppy money: good? I was only "ranting" about the extreme increases made by they secondary
sellers. I mentioned the shoes New Balance made for the Disney Marathon. They were selling for $110.00. I know the average
markup on them is 100% ($55.00 to produce, $110.00 sale price) That is a big profit. When you buy them for the $110.00 and
then sell them for $400.00. That is excessive and the type of thing I was talking about.
It definitely applies. Unfortunately, I live in New Hampshire and that would involve another day out of work,
another day of hotel and park costs. Considering I pay over $200.00 just to enter the Marathon, (there is tax),
I get there when I can.
Trackmaster
Well-Known Member
Let me bring out my lawyer hat here (not an actual lawyer though haha):
- A park is within their rights to ban somebody from the park for a year, a lifetime, or any other time that they choose.
- They will usually contact the local police department of this ban and get approval.
- The local police department will deliver a letter to the person's home address informing them of this ban (often times, the park itself won't even contact the person, they'll hear about the ban from the cops and not the park).
- If the person still goes to the park while they are banned and they have been given constructive notice they are illegally trespassing.
- When the cops are called to remove them from the park, if they resist there is an entire arsenal of crimes that they've committed that can be thrown at them to prosecute.
Trackmaster
Well-Known Member
Another legal distinction here:
Yes, it is unlawful to be selling merchandise for a profit if you're not property licensed and regulated to be in the retail business. Generally, you must obtain a license to sell merchandise, and go through the proper, wholesaler channels. If you're deemed to be a collector, you must wait a certain amount of time, and the goods must be old enough to be considered legitimate memorabilia. This applies for goods that are sold over the counter, and not necessarily ones that are free or available to the public at no cost (baseballs from games, autographs, artifacts, etc.).
It depends on the terms of service agreements, or the implied relationship that you have based on what a reasonable person would think based on common sense. A company can jam anything into a terms of service agreement, but all that matters is what a judge would think when it goes to court. If a judge finds that the terms of service were unreasonable, ambiguous, too favorable to one side, hard to understand, or a reasonable person would not or could not read the whole thing, he or she will void it.
This is probably a case of legislation being needed to clarify the situation and finding a solution that's beneficial to all. People shouldn't be hoarding merchandise that's in short supply only to profit off of it. And they shouldn't be profiting off of their access to the park that was for one person's admission and using that to transfer merchandise rights to other people. There was no commercial substance that was added, and any profit should be invalid.
Yes, it is unlawful to be selling merchandise for a profit if you're not property licensed and regulated to be in the retail business. Generally, you must obtain a license to sell merchandise, and go through the proper, wholesaler channels. If you're deemed to be a collector, you must wait a certain amount of time, and the goods must be old enough to be considered legitimate memorabilia. This applies for goods that are sold over the counter, and not necessarily ones that are free or available to the public at no cost (baseballs from games, autographs, artifacts, etc.).
It depends on the terms of service agreements, or the implied relationship that you have based on what a reasonable person would think based on common sense. A company can jam anything into a terms of service agreement, but all that matters is what a judge would think when it goes to court. If a judge finds that the terms of service were unreasonable, ambiguous, too favorable to one side, hard to understand, or a reasonable person would not or could not read the whole thing, he or she will void it.
This is probably a case of legislation being needed to clarify the situation and finding a solution that's beneficial to all. People shouldn't be hoarding merchandise that's in short supply only to profit off of it. And they shouldn't be profiting off of their access to the park that was for one person's admission and using that to transfer merchandise rights to other people. There was no commercial substance that was added, and any profit should be invalid.
Chef Mickey
Well-Known Member
Not everything is proven/disproven by a link on the internet. I'm not a lawyer, but it's my stance that this could be pursued and won by Disney. You left out the fact you're taking advantage of a discount and re-selling it...not just buying an item and re-selling it.
If I'm wrong, so be it. My point is, Disney makes a reasonable 30% operating margin on consumer products and they run a perfectly legal business.
DisneyDebRob
Well-Known Member
I dislike it as much as the next guy when I have to search Ebay for something I wanted. My wife love the Disney Dooney hand bags and some of them go quick so it’s off to Ebay we go. Saying that though, the market will sell for what people will pay. If no one buys that bag for the 100-200 bucks more then Disney, they will lower it. So we either wait for that better price or overpay to grab it. It is what it is.