Holiday Shopping Shortages

welcome back to another episode of cappuccino chat this time it's going to be a little bit different i'm kind of going on a rant about kind of buying those holiday gifts and some of the frustrations we're feeling from the supply chain delays all right as i mentioned this time it's going to be a little bit different i'm not really talking about anything technical security wise as normal i'm kind of going on a little bit of a rant here just be careful with the supply chain stuff hopefully you didn't fall victim to it uh this video is gonna be coming out in january but in december um here's what happened so my youngest daughter's birthday is on thanks and ended up being on thanksgiving this year funny enough so she's been saving up for over a year she needs a new ipad she wanted to get a better one we knew some stuff was coming out so we were waiting and we couldn't decide between you know 64 gig or a little bit bigger one because she likes to take videos and pictures a lot again she's the one that got me started doing these kind of video blogs and stuff uh look back for episode one if you never saw that one she is the one that got me started on this so we kind of waited a little bit late but we ordered it on we went looking for it on monday before thanksgiving and come to find out the larger ones were actually selling out pretty fast i would have thought the lower end ones the cheaper ones would have been but no some of the higher storage ones were also selling out so apple kind of told us hey it's not available you're not going to see it till mid december so that wasn't good so we went to another online retailer nameless not amazon not going to tell you who it was but their website said hey we'll have it by friday so black friday the day after thanksgiving day after a birthday we thought you know that's not too bad we'll go ahead and get that order so we order it and black friday starts and there's a of course deals going on so i go on the same online retailer site and i order my wife her christmas present because it got a discount on that one our daughters wasn't going to be part of the discounted stuff because it was again the entry-level ipad if you will so got online ordered it got the text that that order was good uh waited a while went down later on in the afternoon thinking i could just pick up both even though i was only notified on one get there uh pick up the one i ordered for my wife of course but the one for my daughter still isn't there and i asked about it and they're like oh there's been some delays um it's in transit we can't really see much other than that it's on we'll let you know maybe it'll be tomorrow or the next day like okay not a problem uh days go by monday tuesday give them a call and we'll actually get online and chat with them it was easier less of a wait time and going back and forth or checking on the order well all we can see is that it's in a shipping status so we can't change anything we can't even cancel the order for you so i'm like you've got my money i can't cancel it you can't tell me when i'll get it so i can't think about maybe getting something else so i tell the person this in chat and they come back and say well you can do what you want because if you don't end up wanting it when it comes in you can just return it and we'll refund your money so they'll refund my money but i got to wait for it to show up first and tie up stuff it was just crazy i couldn't believe that that was the whole thing with today's technology and systems that they couldn't see anything on shipping status where things were good news is a couple days later after that all happened i get a text hey your order is ready go down there pick up the ipad for my daughter it's you know a week week and a half late but you know my daughter's got it at least so that was good so hopefully you guys didn't fall victim to this uh lessons learned again kind of order early everybody was saying that but yet you know you'd go online when i was looking at things and everything that i was looking for was available so we didn't think this would be an issue so you got to be careful when doing that also for the business we're still seeing supply chain issues for business computers and stuff so that's where this kind of really also kind of leads into i'm constantly being asked for desktops and laptops and monitors and stuff and it's crazy i can't i still can't get anything when i'm looking stuff up it's march april may before things have do dates on them and then there's no guarantee so you can you know gladly pay them today but you might not get it for four or five months which is a little crazy and then stuff will come in and spurts and i'll buy it and stick it in inventory here just you know and then let clients know i've got stuff just so we have something to um get our clients by for their business monitors are big very hard to get by certain monitor models again computers laptops laptops you're running out of choices a lot of times you may have to buy more of a laptop than what you really need or want and pay more money for it plus prices on everything are going up it's just really crazy i mean network switches i i wouldn't have thought this but we waited two and a half almost three months for a network switch to come in just because of all the chip shortage and the supply chain issue so again hopefully you didn't fall victim of this but when you're planning out this next year for 2022 and you're thinking about you need some different equipment my suggestion is get it on the board sooner rather than later you know if you're one of our clients or you want to become one of our clients get a call with us let's discuss let's plan some stuff out see what we need to swap out for you for the year and start looking for it now as we may need to place that order and get stuff in the pipeline so that we can actually do it you don't want stuff to die with you if you're running older equipment which a lot of people were doing because of uh the kovit in 2020 um kind of extending the life of things again when they break they're going to break on their terms not on yours it's always going to happen in the busiest and the worst time for you and your business so try to think that through and maybe get at least one or two or think about some spares or something so that if something bad does happen we can get you up and running we don't want people buying junk that they're just going to throw away later if at all possible so don't want that to happen to you again that was my rant sorry about that but just wanted to share a story about what happened to us during the holidays hopefully it didn't happen to any of you if you're looking for anything for your business please reach out and again as always the number 760-770-5200 you