UK trade-in retailer CEX is facing fury from consumers over the £815 it is charging for PlayStation 5s. As reported by Eurogamer, both customers and employees aren’t happy about the company charging almost double the RRP for the console. The PlayStation 5 launched in the UK on November 19 at £450, but CEX is offering £650 to attract those who already have Sony’s new machine to sell it to the store. Unsurprisingly, online reviews from customers have described the price as “dreadful.” Meanwhile, one member of staff – speaking anonymously – said that it was “repugnant” for CEX to charge this much for the PS5. “Obviously none of us think it’s good,” they said. “We have been told that the price is that high to match with eBay but that’s when it was £750, it’s now even higher. CEX is legally in the right to put the price to whatever they want but morally I find it repugnant and think they are helping keep the scalping prices so high in a year when we could all use a little bit less crap to deal with. A new console might bring someone’s mood up and I know personally I use games as a stress release and to take my mind off of things.” This follows one scalping group, CrepChiefNotify (CCN), managing to secure 3,500 PlayStation 5s using bots. The outfit landed 2,472 consoles on its November launch and had already made in the region of 1,000 pre-orders in September. The group was thwarted by Very.com, however, who cancelled 1,000 Xbox Series X orders that CCN had made using bots. At the time of writing, PlayStation 5s are being sold for as much as £990 on platforms like Ebay, while Microsoft’s Xbox Series X is going for north of £700.
