{"id":663947,"date":"2026-11-01T20:52:08","date_gmt":"2026-11-01T20:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/663947\/"},"modified":"2026-11-01T20:52:08","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T20:52:08","slug":"youll-never-guess-how-scalpers-are-reportedly-snagging-rare-iphone-duos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/663947\/","title":{"rendered":"You\u2019ll Never Guess How Scalpers Are Reportedly Snagging Rare iPhone Duos"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unless you take extraordinary measures, you\u2019re probably not getting your hands on an iPhone Duo for the remainder of this calendar year<\/a>. There\u2019s a whole constellation of reasons for this, and according to Bloomberg\u2019s Mark Gurman<\/a>, one bright star in that formation is that sharp-elbowed scalpers\u2014as well as non-scalping consumers\u2014are using AI agents to jostle for advantage.<\/p>\n

As Gurman phrases it, \u201cscalpers and other buyers are using AI-powered bots to monitor Apple\u2019s website and snap up newly available inventory for in-store pickup within seconds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before the iPhone Duo went on sale, one Redditor asked the iPhoneDuo subreddit<\/a> if Meta\u2019s Muse was a good tool for a job like this, only for commenters to essentially pelt them with rotten vegetables<\/a>. \u201cThanks for all the replies! I\u2019ll steer clear,\u201d reads an edit on the original post. Gurman\u2019s reporting suggests agent-happy users found a way anyway.<\/p>\n

One result: resellers on Reddit literally can\u2019t believe their luck. A nervous Redditor who says they received double the retail price for an iPhone Duo on eBay asks<\/a>, \u201cdoes anything about this seem suspicious?\u201d The comments are reassuring<\/a> if you\u2019re an iPhone scalper. Yep, people pay those kinds of prices, it seems.<\/p>\n

This product release is a perfect storm for scalpers. The Duo went into production amid a memory shortage<\/a>, one factor that helped drive it to the status symbol price floor of $1,999<\/a>. But Bloomberg reports<\/a> that Apple also opted for a rollout plan that kept supply way below demand\u2014dripping the phones into stores all over the world in October, rather than waiting until November, and concentrating firepower on the mega-markets of the U.S. and China.<\/p>\n

During the Duo\u2019s release weekend, Gurman says Apple put 80% of its available Duos on store shelves, and set aside 20% for shipments and in-store pickup\u2014which is what\u2019s being gamed with AI bots\u2014and even then, there were only \u201c50 to 250 units per store.\u201d According to Gurman\u2019s sources, flesh-and-blood humans are consistently waiting outside Apple Stores in the early morning, Black Friday-style, presumably because robots can\u2019t do that yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unless you take extraordinary measures, you\u2019re probably not getting your hands on an iPhone Duo for the remainder…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":663948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,670,343,344,85,277410,46,125],"class_list":["post-663947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-apple","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-il","tag-iphone-duo","tag-israel","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/663948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}