UK Wii Shortage as Retailers Sell Out Within Minutes

Reports are surfacing that Amazon, Dixons and Woolworths (they still have those there?) are selling out of the Nintendo Wii faster than David Beckham can bench himself. Purportedly, within minutes of getting new stock, the shelves are vacant and customers are scrambling to get a Wii from anyone they can. Nintendo has stated that they are trying to cope with the demand, yet some British consumers have contacted French and German sites where demand is lower. A spokesman for the site Wii-consoles.co.uk, which locates consoles for shoppers, stated that their site is contacted by desperate shoppers “well over” 100,000 times a day.

Online retailer Dixons, sold out of thousands of Wii consoles within two hours of posting them online Wednesday, while Amazon is believed to have sold 1,400 during a 10-minute period. eBay has seen the Nintendo Wii being offered on their site for almost twice their retail price.

Woolworths chief executive Trevor Bish-Jones said that the supply of Wiis will not be enough to satisfy demand this Christmas. “There is a steady flow of Wiis into the country between now and Christmas. It will not be enough to meet all consumer demand but is sufficient for retailers to enjoy good levels of sales in the run-up to Christmas,” he said.

Basically what Trevor was trying to say is that, as usual, the consumer is out of luck while the retailers get to roll naked in piles of money screaming with glee.

Via: Telegraph.co.uk