[Update] Awkward Prices of Certain Graphics Cards on Amazon India After the Launch of a New Tax System in India

There has been some unease amongst the Indian gamers who were eagerly looking to upgrade their rigs and give it some extra horsepower. This was because a new tax system was supposed to be introduced in India, which supposedly overhauls the existing tax system under different states and Union territories in India. After the launch of the system, it was predicted that computer parts would become more expensive, but nobody could have expected the bummer they received when they opened Amazon and switched to certain graphics cards.

Amazon India is usually very bad with their pricing, and more often than not local retailers often stock stuff at a much lesser price. But something seen today on Amazon India made the minds of potential buyers go haywire.

I just had a look myself, and I was no less surprised. The prices on Amazon were haywire. Just looking at the prices of 3 versions of the GTX 1070, the ZOTAC GTX 1070 AMP! Extreme, MSI GTX 1070 ARMOR OC, MSI GTX 1070 GAMING OC, the prices were not high, not very high – more like close to insanity.

The pricing was 189500 INR, 199000 INR, 199500 INR for the respective GPUs mentioned in the above paragraph. ($2932, $3079, and $3086 respectively). Holy crap, that’s like the price of an entire PC! Whatever the increased taxes may be, the prices cannot be this high! However, there is another aspect to this problem, which is the cryptocurrency mining market. Since India itself has officially recognized cryptocurrencies as currencies, with exchanges of their own, many people have been buying GPUs for mining, and this might be a reason for the high prices. However, this high of a price is still unbelievable.

I could not believe my eyes, so I immediately called the local retailers. I’m lucky to be in a city which has some of the most popular retailers in India. I immediately checked the site of one such retailer, it was down for an hour or two to implement the change in prices. When it came online, the new prices of the graphics cards mentioned above were changed to the following prices :

The prices of the same graphics cards were 39949 INR, 33527 INR and 41700 INR ($610,$519 and $645) on the retailer’s site, which were much lower than Amazon’s prices. What going on here? Only the “official” Amazon retailer Cloudtail was found to sport decent prices similar to the retailer who gave me the above prices.

Maybe cryptocurrency mining really is an issue? I decided to compare two cards whose global prices haven’t been hit by the cryptocurrency mining craze. That didn’t help at all, it masked the real problem more.

Comparison of the prices of a ZOTAC GTX 1060 AMP! on Amazon and on the retailer’s site, the prices were 68000 INR and 23999 INR respectively ($1052 and $371). Why the difference between the prices of a graphics card that has no demand for mining? I can smell something wrong, which made me check further.

(Sorry for the bad quality of the last image, I have a very bad habit of keeping the cursor at places of the screen where I should not be keeping it)

As is evident, prices of the ASUS ROG STRIX GTX 1080 OC and the ZOTAC GTX 1080 FOUNDER’S EDITION sported a mammoth difference too. The prices were 169000 INR and 69600 INR ($2615 and $1077) on Amazon, and 54735 INR and 59249 INR ($847 and $917) on the retailer’s site respectively.

All the graphics cards mentioned above are not very popular for cryptocurrency mining, and the new tax laws would mean a small hike in prices, but not upto a 50% increase in prices. There’s definitely some market manipulation going here. Moreover, all the graphics card listings on Amazon were from one particular seller called Blue_horse. It all adds up!

I have the privilege of living in a big city, but those in towns and tier 2 and tier 3 cities may not have the privilege of having popular retailers of computer hardware so close to their home. Amazon connects the country, and helps reach out to these people. Sure, I can go ahead and buy a graphics cards at lower prices from the local retailer. What about these guys? The worse part is, the listings on Amazon were from a verified seller.

It might be an attempt at market manipulation, or simply taking advantage of the obscurity of the new tax laws passed recently in India. Whatever it is, it is hampering the already small gaming scene in the country and reducing the overall purchases of computer hardware, just because some middlemen decide to be greedy and neither care about the scene nor the people.

Blue_horse is only one seller. There are many others, on Amazon as well as Flipkart (which is another popular e-commerce site in India). The real question is, how to bypass these fraudsters?

We personally feel it’s our duty to spread the word and the duty of all gamers to stand united against scum like these. Contact Amazon, Flipkart, and inform them about these listings. Try to convince them to remove these sort of sellers from their marketplace.

Update: We have contacted Amazon India and here’s what they said about the listings when asked about the unusual skyhigh pricing:

“Due to frequent changes in market place, price may fluctuate & we try to list the best price available with us.”

When we highlighted that others are selling the same product at a very low price tag, “We will get this reviewed internally for any corrections” responded Amazon.

We’ve also reached out to Blue_horse for their comment, though we haven’t got a response as of writing this update.