Supply and demand
June 30th, 2009 by lafnlabI don’t know about this, but it seems strange/odd. Maybe it’s the economy or something.
At work, I ordered an HP LaserJet printer from a vendor a couple of weeks ago. Shipments from this vendor usually arrive in a few days, so yesterday I sent them an email asking where they expected to ship the printer. Two weeks is a long time for this vendor, so sending an inquiry seemed appropriate. Their reply was received a few hours later, saying there were supply problems and HP notified them it would be 6 – 8 weeks before the printer shipped. That’s a lifetime, so I’ll be shopping around at other vendors for something that isn’t HP. The annoyance factor is their website doesn’t mention if something is in stock or not. It just has the “Add to cart” button.
Last week, I ordered a replacement video card for my MacPro. A day or two later, the company sent me an email saying it would be a few extra days because they had it on backorder with the supplier. Yesterday, they sent me an email saying they were having a hard time finding a source for this card.
If each order was late separately, it wouldn’t seem so strange. This makes me wonder if there is a shortage of something going on. Shipping? Silicon? Simple coincidence?