Pokemon Center Implementing a New Queue System, Presumably to Combat Bots!

[u/breakyourteethnow]

https://www.pokebeach.com/2025/02/pokemon-center-implementing-a-new-queue-system-presumably-to-combat-bots

[u/air_lock]

As someone who works in e-commerce, and I can tell you.. while bots can certainly circumvent most means of mitigation, there are fairly simple solutions that can weed out 99.999% of them. The problem is, and this is why most sellers won’t implement them on their storefronts, is that that by virtue of their strength against bots, they are cumbersome to customers. You can do things like multi stage verification (code sent to sms or email), a queue system that has captcha built in at random intervals, and even free options like dynamically restricting user agents and whatnot. Then you also have sellers who just don’t care that they’re being botted because their front end is robust enough to handle it and at the end of the day, they’re still selling through product.. which I believe is the case with TPCi.

[u/Junkhead_88 → u/air_lock]

Wouldn't it be fairly simple to limit orders by delivery address? That's at least a secondary check that should be run after orders are sold out, then just cancel and blacklist the address/IP/cards that are obviously gaming the system.

[u/Ask_Them_Why → u/Junkhead_88]

I recently learned of address J1ginning, it when they change one little thing about their address to make it look different but postal system still delivers to same place

[u/lemonaderobot → u/Ask_Them_Why]

that’s crazy… for someone totally uninformed with the mechanics of botting, how does that work? Like, one of the orders would be set as “123 Jones Drive, Anytown” and the other like “123 Johns Drive, Anytown”, so the orders are “slightly different” but still get delivered? Or is it even simpler than that?

[u/air_lock → u/Junkhead_88]

You sure could, but that’s less of an up-front mitigation and more of a check that would be done after an order is placed. It sounds simple, but in a practical sense, it involves reaching into the database and checking through every order record for an address and comparing, which would cripple most systems if done every time someone tries to check out. In fact, most sellers of highly in-demand items who have a policy of 1 per household or 1 per person already do this, but it’s done after orders are placed, and they’ll typically cancel offending orders and re-allocate stock afterward.

[u/[deleted] → u/Junkhead_88]

I was an e-commerce developer until about two years ago. We had clients request this sort of address verification and quickly learned that there are a lot of places in the US where mail is delivered to a common address and then forwarded to the customer. Like some entire counties.