Pre-orders for the Apple Vision Pro are now open. According to a new report, duffers are using "thousands of bots" to secure pre-orders for the Apple headset and are listing those pre-orders on eBay.

Looking at the listings, some of the prices are... . are totally insane. There are still auctions under $3,000 at the low end, but some sellers are asking up to $10,000 for a 256GB Apple Vision Pro headset. These prices do not include shipping and insurance.

Casada claims to have heard "chatter within the bot community" over the past month, and scalpers see the Vision Pro as one of the biggest events on the 2024 calendar. Apparently, this is due to the headset's high demand and potentially high price, and Apple's flexible return policy minimizing financial risk.

Anyone who has ever tried to pre-order a Vision Pro headset knows that it is not as easy as putting it in a basket and checking out. Apple has implemented a Face ID-based system that scans your face to make sure the headset will fit properly when it arrives.

Not surprisingly, Casada notes that scalping bots have found a way around this by hard-coding the developer's face scan values into the bot. Bots can also circumvent purchase limits, with one bot reportedly checking out 1,592 pre-orders.

Strangely, the Vision Pro is not even sold out. It appears to have sold out fairly quickly over the pre-order weekend, but you can still visit Apple's website to pre-order the headset.

In-store pickup may not be available, and delivery estimates were for the end of February. So while you won't get it on launch day, you won't pay a fortune for it; ordering from Apple also guarantees that the headset will be in your face.

But as we saw with the PS5 launch, duffers are pretty shameless when it comes to making a profit. The only thing you can do is not be complicit and buy the latest gadget from an authorized retailer. And if it is expensive, like the Apple Vision Pro, you want to make sure that there is a valid warranty so that you don't end up spending thousands of dollars if something goes wrong.

Let's hope Apple can continue to meet any non-scalable demand for the Vision Pro; we don't want a situation like the PS5 restocking; we don't want to have to pay for a new PS5, and we don't want to have to pay for a new PS5 that is not a PS5.