The Continuingly Confusing Case of the UK's Missing PS5s

3 years 4 months ago
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There’s nothing more exciting than opening a brand new console on launch day.

Unless of course, yours turns out to be a bag of cat litter. Or a George Foreman grill, or tins of dog food, or bed sheets, or fitness equipment, or a Himalayan Salt Lamp.

For me, it was an air fryer that sat in my Amazon package, in place of the PS5 I’d ordered from Amazon months previously.

On launch day, excited my PS5 package had finally arrived after an unexpected delay, I hit record on my phone to capture its unboxing. But, after giving the driver the special password from Amazon to ensure a secure delivery, I discovered I had been sent a kitchen appliance instead. The anticlimax was captured on film.

I called Amazon immediately to tell customer service about my mysteriously replaced PS5. They said they would investigate, and that I would hear back in 24-48 hours. Baffled, I tweeted the recording I’d made – and it turned out I was very much not alone.

“Woke up excited for my #ps5 getting delivered......going to be going to bed having had to create a crime report to the police due to the delivery driver ‘misplacing’ it,” said one reply. “Went past my address but did not deliver it, then Amazon claimed it was lost,” said another. “This happened to me too. Marked as delivered with no sign of an attempted delivery. Truly ridiculous,” someone else tweeted.

A pattern quickly emerged. Across the UK, the same thing was happening: the originally scheduled PS5 delivery was being ‘missed’, marked as delivered when it hadn’t been, or delayed until much later. When it arrived, the package would contain something - but it wouldn't be a next-gen console.

There were too many stories of similar occurrences for this to be a coincidence. What was really happening here?

What follows is an investigation which took me from confusing Amazon customer service, all the way to the potential for nationwide organised crime. And I’ll warn you in advance, like a DualSense plugged into a non-brand kitchen appliance, it still doesn’t make any sense.

Consolation Prizes

Of more than 500 customers who replied to a poll I posted on Twitter, 52% of people missing their PS5 from Amazon never received anything, and 47% had received a random item in its place like I had.

This kind of thing might be occurring more often than we realise. Other Amazon customers contacted me to say the same thing had happened to them with other high value items, such as iPhones and hard drives. Usually, if an item goes missing, you’d expect the company to simply issue a replacement. But with PS5 launch day, and no more stock, the problem - and perhaps scam - has apparently happened en masse, and far more noticeably.

I mentioned earlier that my delivery had been unexpectedly delayed before the package arrived. For seven hours, my PS5 had been unaccounted for. So, what had happened to my console during that time, and where could it be now? Shortly after I shared the video of my package being opened, someone tweeted me something I hadn’t considered.

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“@AmazonUK don't use clear plastic tape, so I suspect that [it] has been opened, swapped and resealed in transit,” replied Twitter user Alex Haines. Rushing to other Amazon packages I had, the difference was glaring. The familiar black ‘Prime’-branded reinforced tape was on all of them. But it wasn’t on what was supposed to be my PS5 delivery.

Other people noticed the same thing. Sam Felts told me, “I noticed the tape was just clear, not normal Amazon tape, and there was also a layer of tape underneath the one I opened that was already cut.”

Twitter users began speculating that this was evidence the boxes had been tampered with. They theorised our PS5s were being taken out of the package by someone in the supply chain, stolen, and replaced with random items.

With an RRP of £449 in the UK, the PS5 is clearly a high-value item. But given the demand and lack of stock anywhere, the consoles are being sold for more than double that on eBay right now. Could my PS5 have been stolen by someone in Amazon’s logistics chain only to be sold at an outrageous markup on the grey market? I browsed eBay listings, wondering if I was scrolling past my own console. Despite the fact that those who had preordered months ago couldn’t even get hold of their PS5, some sellers had procured plenty. It seems entirely possible that, if our Amazon-ordered consoles have been stolen, they could quite easily be being sold on.

The Method for Madness

The motivation seems clear enough, but how the swaps were taking place is less obvious. The general assumption from the many victims online was that this was an inside job. But where along the Amazon supply chain could that realistically be taking place?

Some speculated Amazon warehouse employees could be taking the consoles, and switching the contents before delivery (or never delivering them at all). However, one former Amazon employee, who had worked as security in an Amazon Fulfilment Centre, anonymously told me the security measures in the warehouse were so tight it simply isn’t possible for an employee to sneak an item the size of a PS5 out for themselves.

“The packing in the warehouse is entirely covered by line managers and CCTV,” the source told me. “All warehouse staff go through manned security checkpoints to exit the warehouse, and everyone, including management, is required to go through a turnstile with a Random Number Generator search function. One in 10 people are selected, and if they are, they have to submit to a metal detector and turn out their pockets.

“I once caught a guy trying to leave with a Micro SD card,” says the Amazon warehouse source, “No way could someone get a PS5 out that way.”

My source, who also worked at Amazon for the launch of Grand Theft Auto 5, told me the company even brought in extra security for the hugely anticipated game’s launch: “The HGV bringing the games to the warehouse had an escort, and there were extra cameras covering the pallets of games  Although it’s more difficult for staff to walk out with a console than a game, I'd assume they'd also take extra precautions with such a high-profile item.”

If the warehouse is ironclad, what about the Amazon delivery drivers? Many Amazon customers who hadn’t received their PS5 had reported delivery drivers parking outside their home but never delivering the item. I asked an Amazon driver contact – who also asked to remain anonymous – about what this could mean. Does a driver need to arrive at an address to mark a package as delivered, even if it isn’t?

Author
Bex April May

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