Still shortages of electrical parts almost a year later!

Last October, November, and December I did three big electrical projects at my house. The shelves at Home Depot, Lowes, and Home Depot were almost bare of PVC conduit and fittings for those three months. I drove probably 1,000 miles and spent many hours gathering up the numerous parts I needed for my three projects. Now, nearly a year later and the shelves at the three chains are pretty much full again. However, now I need some 1-1/4" liquid tight fittings and nobody has them. Local electrical supply houses are out of stock. I ordered some supposed to be in stock from Gordon Electric Supply and it turns out they won't arrive until October! They have some from another manufacturer, but they want $67 each with a minimum of five. The ones I ordered are $7.39 each which is the normal price.

This is so frustrating. Nothing I have wanted to buy this year is in stock. I wanted to buy a new riding mower in early June. The earliest delivery date was Oct 1st if they got enough engines. Oct 1st is just about the end of mowing season here in Minnesota.

I ordered a mower in April, and it came about a week, and a half ago. I expect it came as soon as it did because it's a commercial model, and I'm sure a larger margin than homeowner models, so I think they built it as soon as they could.

I "bought" two platform ladders, from a Black Friday sale at Lowes, and I'm still waiting on them. I checked on that order, and they had to update the order to two later model numbers, for the same price, but I'm still waiting on those too.

I decided to check EBay and was able to find the 1-1/4” parts I need. The price I found wasn’t bad at all. I looked all over the Internet and called a few electrical supply houses to no avail before checking EBay.

The mower I wanted to buy was around $17,000 and would be considered commercial.

Took a little over four months for my mower. Nine, and still waiting, on those ladders.

I needed some nail-on plastic boxes for some outlets in the barn (5)--went to Lowes, Menards, HD.....NONE to be found! This was a few months ago.
Decided to try a mom/pop hardware store 50 miles away--they had more than I needed. The price was $.89 ea!! Weird huh??

Bruce

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Originally Posted by Brian Elfert

I decided to check EBay and was able to find the 1-1/4” parts I need. The price I found wasn’t bad at all. I looked all over the Internet and called a few electrical supply houses to no avail before checking EBay.

The mower I wanted to buy was around $17,000 and would be considered commercial.

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One nice thing I've found about ebay is when something is listed the seller has it in stock. Amazon can be more hit or miss. Sellers who don't have Amazon supply the part often rely on the mfg to ship the part and if the company that makes it doesn't have it in stock then they wait weeks before cancelling the order.

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Originally Posted by Bruce Volden

I needed some nail-on plastic boxes for some outlets in the barn (5)--went to Lowes, Menards, HD.....NONE to be found! This was a few months ago.
Decided to try a mom/pop hardware store 50 miles away--they had more than I needed. The price was $.89 ea!! Weird huh??

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I wouldn't expect a hardware store to have 1-1/4" liquid tight fittings as a stock item. None of the big box stores carry 1-1/4" liquid tight fittings in their stores. I have a specific reason to want to use 1-1/4" instead of the commonly available 1". Normally, 1-1/4" liquid tight fittings wouldn't be so hard to buy as electrical supply houses would have them.

Most people don't think to check hardware stores for items like electrical boxes so this is probably why they had them. I find that electrical at most hardware stores is pretty thin. I did buy a few electrical items at hardware stores last fall when I couldn't get the items at the big box stores.

It's weird how random the shortages are. A couple of months ago I tried to buy some switch plates at my usual supplier. They normally have several thousand on the shelf, but they were out. The only ones I could find were at another wholesaler where they just received 5000 of them, but every single one was spoken for. Just last week everybody was out of 8/3 NMD90 (Romex to most of you) range cable.

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Originally Posted by Alex Zeller

One nice thing I've found about ebay is when something is listed the seller has it in stock. Amazon can be more hit or miss. Sellers who don't have Amazon supply the part often rely on the mfg to ship the part and if the company that makes it doesn't have it in stock then they wait weeks before cancelling the order.

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A lot of Ebay sellers use stock photos of items and still have the items drop shipped. I ordered something on Ebay once and two days later got a "gift" shipment from Amazon. That seller apparently uses Fulfillment by Amazon and then orders their own product from Amazon as a gift to the Ebay buyer. The items I ordered from an Ebay seller yesterday had a photo of the actual items so no doubt they have them in stock.

Where to find stuff can be confusing. I need MAP gas to silver solder brass parts for banjos, and back in the early spring I was running low. Tractor Supply, NAPA and AutoZone were all out every time I checked for weeks, and finally it occurred to me to ask for it at the small local lumberyard chain. They had 30 or 40 bottles on the shelf. I guess no one else thought to look for it there either.

I feel your pain. Over the lst year I have bought alternative colors and configurations of all sorts of things for a new shop build. I even modified the way of doing some things while remaining within code. Some of the "silly" things I could not get were 1/2" romex nuts, 3/4" anything electrical, certain liquid tight elbows or FMC to 'other' connectors, even freakin' wall plates in the color spec'd. Some things remained unavailable for the better part of a year. I felt like I was in the 1980's USSR.

I found that if I remained flexible and ordered some from here, some from there, and watched diligently for what I was after (I carried my bill of materials on my phone for a year) I could get through. Now I have to figure out what to do with a lot of things bought for method 'A' that was abandoned for method 'B' since a complete list of parts for method 'A' never became available. :)

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Originally Posted by Brian Elfert

A lot of Ebay sellers use stock photos of items and still have the items drop shipped. I ordered something on Ebay once and two days later got a "gift" shipment from Amazon. That seller apparently uses Fulfillment by Amazon and then orders their own product from Amazon as a gift to the Ebay buyer. The items I ordered from an Ebay seller yesterday had a photo of the actual items so no doubt they have them in stock.

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I have been noticing some sellers doing this lately. The last time it happened the seller used Bluecare Express. I assume it's a company that specializes in using Amazon to fulfill ebay orders.

I'm well aware of having to buy electrical parts from a wide variety of sources after doing three major electrical projects last fall. Sometimes I spent more time driving around looking for parts than doing the work. You couldn't depend on online inventory. One Home Depot would show 25 of a part and you drive over there to find they had zero. A few times I ordered from Amazon and had to wait a few days.

My father has been helping my brother with electrical on his new house and he ended up driving two hours round trip to pick up some parts at a Lowes on the other side of the metro area.

I went to Habitat for humanity to buy electrical boxes. All I could find were old baxalite with no clamps and very nice adjustable metal ones. Romex I buy from ebay sometimes. Used ism fine for the big stuff. I have never seen any problems more then six inches from the ends.
Bill D

I used four sources for the stuff I needed to wire up my temporary shop recently. No one source had everything I needed. This past weekend, I had to select a different, slightly more expensive, option for one component when doing what I needed to do to get my MM16 up and running in a different location in said shop after rearranging things. (for the better...) Some components are stacked to the rafters in the store(s) while those next to them are completely empty.