Manufacturing supply shortages and you

[Chew Toy McCoy]

Around last November I pre-ordered a couple things from 2 different companies, small companies but established. Both were estimated to ship around this past April/May. Both have yet to ship and the most recent update emails from both companies have essentially said “We’re beyond frustrated and tired of giving you repeated estimate ship dates that come and go without any shipments being made. They’re still going to ship but we’re going to stop telling you when we predict that will happen.” They both offered full refunds.

Neither of these are life essential items so I’m really not that upset about it, but it’s still pretty unbelievable how far things are being pushed back with still no confidence when things will ship. I estimate what I ordered requires less than 1,000 units being manufactured. So while that may not be very time and part intensive, I imagine anything less than Apple’s 1 billion iPhones automatically becomes less of a priority in the electronics manufacturing world. I imagine this kind of shortage and delay could put smaller companies out of business, or at least temporarily.

 

[Herdfan]

It is a daily frustration. I have clients order something even with delivery times much longer than in the past. Then that time comes and the product still hasn't shipped, and as you noted, no future ship date is given. So they try to find another product that will work that is in stock. Sometimes it is an exact replacement, other times it require significant modifications to work that has already been done. And some expect me to do that work for free. So I am i stuck in the position of doing the work for free and getting final payment or waiting who knows how much longer for something to come in. If it is simply a labor issue, I go ahead and do it, but there are a couple of times where I would need to order stuff to do the modifications. They need to pay for that.