Why would any people need to see the addresses at all? The solution being proposed is something that you'd automate with a series of heuristics. And your point about the company making the same money for shipping to scalpers vs non scalpers seems like it would only apply to the shipping company, but if you view from the perspective of the product company, obviously they have an incentive to avoid scalpers because it negatively impacts the brand and the price spikes are money not captured by the product company and may even reduce further spending (eg if a buyer spaffed half their budget on an overpriced console, that's less for buying games which benefit the product company, eg Steam in this case)
You are vastly over-estimating the tech power the vast majority of businesses have dedicated to logistics. There's a large number of different systems involved with a enterprise logistics stack. Ecomm store provider, ERPs, middleware, warehouse systems, shipping systems, banking, etc. Which part of the pipeline are you going to hold up while you wait for enough orders to pool to build a meaningful heuristic?
The solution Valve came up with is quite brilliant.
It sounds like you are massively overthinking it. When you pre-order anything, you need to enter a shipping address. Why would you need to consider anything beyond that or require 'dedicated' logistics?
that's not to say I don't like Valve's solution - I agree, it is very nice
I don't think they're necessarily overestimating what they've dedicated to logistics, they're overestimating what they've dedicated to anti-scalping. If they cared to detect it, they could invest even just a token effort and make great strides. But why would they care?
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