EDIT: MSI has responded to this directly.

Starlit Partner is an individual sales subsidiary working under MSI. They carry excess inventory and Refurbished items and would not be given newly released products such as the Geforce RTX 30 series GPU. As such, we have conducted an investigation and found out that an error allowed them access to inventory they were not permitted to handle.

Starlit Partner has been instructed to contact the individual customers who purchased these GPU and offer 2 options - return the product and receive a full refund, or a partial refund of the amount paid over MSI's MSRP.

Moving forward, MSI will enforce a stricter policy to Avoid situation like this happening again.

Essentially, an error allowed the MSI ebay seller subsidiary, which exists to sell excess and refurbished items on ebay, to accidentally access the newest and most popular piece of hardware on the market directly, and sell it on ebay. An error.

Also, FWIW, some folks believe it's only four 3080s that this happened to. Turns out there were 3090s sold by the same seller, also for inflated prices. Listings have been removed, damage control is in full effect, as just some random guy I have no idea how widespread this was before the story took off.

Original Post

As said, MSI is scalping their own 3080s on ebay under the name Starlit Partner. Browsing the Starlit Partner seller reveals that everything they sell is MSI, most (maybe all) new in a box. They have the nerve to say "We work closely with the manufacturer." Because they are literally the manufacturer.

Starlit Partner trademark

Link to 3080 being scalped

A card retailing for 759.00, potentially being sold by the manufacturer on ebay for 1359.00, and they are absolutely selling out of them. There were some available when I started looking into it and now the auction simply says 0 available, 4 sold.

Even if it's legal, it's certainly dirty, and how are they not being absolutely crucified for it already?

This was first posted a different sub and it was deleted. It has since been restored. r/hardware allowed it to remain for visibility while it was unavailable at the original location.

Edit: Here's an initial impressions video from the owner of the discord where this was noticed. He runs a stock tracking discord full of people trying to score their own 3080s, so you can imagine several being potentially scalped by the manufacturer didn't go over well. I made this reddit post to get the word out, but I was not the first or only person to discover this.

Final edit:

I've removed portions of the post that I had edited in with potential counter evidence from redditors that were trying to refute this or find a way to defend MSI last night during the time of the post. I get it, and I added it at the time for full disclosure, and if I'm being honest, I would have liked for Starlit to not be linked to MSI. I was actually hopeful that some of the "evidence" that was found would turn out to be correct and this was just some scammer impersonating the company. Since we have confirmation directly from MSI (see above) that Starlit is their subsidiary, and they do in fact sell MSI products on ebay in an official capacity, obviously there's no need to try to find a way to defend MSI. Whether you believe MSI's statement that the seller was able to access brand new inventory of items that are selling out instantly at retailers and etailers to sell on ebay for double the retail price due to an "error" is up to you.

Please see the comment from moderators u/bizude and u/Nekrosmas stickied below for more information.

You can also refer to this thread and the comment stickied from moderator u/Nestledrink for additional updates and information.

I really hate when people do this. Recently, I watched a documentary and one of the guys in it was named "Tristan" but he pronounced it "Tri-stAHn." Like, why make your kid go through that?

Sure, we all know some parents torture their kids and give them names like Thaddeus or Light Bulb or other weird shit, but I think it's infinitely worse to give your kid a common name but then try to make the pronunciation unique. Like "Hi, this is my daughter Jessica, but it's pronounced "Jeh-ZEE-kah. And this is my son Steve, but it's pronounced "Steh-vay"

Why do people do this? I'd much rather have a name like "Wizard III" than be named James (pronounced "Hah-mez") or some shit and have to live my life constantly correcting people.

EDIT: I realize that my examples weren't the best, as some names obviously have different pronunciations in other languages. Like "Benjamin" in English versus "Benjamin" (pronounced like Ben-hah-meen" in Spanish. I'm talking about the names where it's clear that the parents gave their kid a weird pronunciation for the hell of it lol.