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Old 08-04-2020, 08:06 PM   #1
sourdough
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Covid fears and hoarding

Figured I would just post this as we all try to navigate the weirdness of what is happening with the covid hysteria.

Got home this evening from a 3mo. trip to FL. Great trip. Checked everything out coming in the house but got a whiff of "oh no". Looked here and there. Checked 3 freezer/fridges, 1 freezer and all was OK so I was thinking some sort of "stinky" somewhere. DW said did you check the main fridge? Ummm, no. The big side by side had died. Really died....and really stunk. Cleaned out and rearranged to other fridges. But;

Don't know if you realize (I didn't) that fridges along with paper goods etc. in TX are scarce. Tried to pull up a fridge that I would like, that would always be there if I looked...none. Multiple stores in multiple towns...nothing. Tomorrow I will be calling and trying to find someone, anyone that will sell us a fridge and bring it here. You all know how that goes; that 1500 fridge will be 3k at least by the time it gets here. DW talked go my SIL and she said they had to replace theirs....in DALLAS and it there was no availability. Found one in a local appliance store (way marked up) and she said the "hoarders" are buying all the freezers/fridges etc. up....for what I can't imagine. Fear, hysteria....and I hoped we were all grown up....
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Old 08-05-2020, 02:25 AM   #2
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We have a string of apartments and now have empty units waiting on refrigerators. Had a scheduled delivery today and they pushed it out 2 weeks last night. The local big box stores are now selling the floor models. This happened in the last 2 or 3 days.

I do not think this is hording, more of a increase demand from stimulus money and the increased unemployment money. There is also the production issues worldwide due to Corvid.

Try and buy furniture for the kiddoes' home schooling, the shelves at Ikea are empty.
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Old 08-05-2020, 02:42 AM   #3
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The demand remains the same, but production has dropped because of Covid. Nephew has a large hot tub/pool business and he can't sell even one of either because there simply are none. Pools are back ordered until Oct/Nov and no quality hot tubs in sight. We haven't seen the paper shortage lately and we've been travelling a little. Most major brands of toilet paper and paper towels are back but we have seen blank shelves where the canned soup is supposed to be....go figure.
On edit: When we start seeing empty shelves where the Bud and Yuengling or the Folgers are located then there'll be hell to pay!
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Old 08-05-2020, 05:21 AM   #4
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I think stimulus money is part of it. The other part of it is the supply chain being dependent upon China. Most everything in the country is either completely or impart made off shore. If one component, say the compressors, or the control board is made in China then the whole unit is held up until an available replacement component is sourced.

A "new company" to make say the compressor equaled a new startup which equals higher cost. And then,, there's the issue of that new company getting the raw materials. Where does the majority of steel come from?

Yup, it's a cascading effect and China doesn't care.
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Old 08-05-2020, 07:10 AM   #5
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When I called PPL mid last week for tracking on the replacement a/c, the guy on the phone said they were out and that I had gotten one of the last units when I purchased it online. He said Dometic is having problems of their own manufacturing. I assumed this was due to overseas manufacturing still lagging. (BTW, PPL had it drop shipped from KAO in Atlanta)
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Old 08-05-2020, 07:15 AM   #6
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A little clarification on my original post;

DW talked with SIL again and seems the person she has been dealing with is a friend from church that owns an appliance store. The shortage is real but a combination of things it seems. A lack of supply plus demand. For whatever reason the availability has diminished and the "hoarding", if that is what it is, has been primarily on freezers - some folks were buying 3 at a time??

So make sure your cooling stuff is protected in some way when taking off on that trip. Have no idea how/why this one failed and none of the others did other than it was just time, or it's the only one with the ice and water dispenser on the front. Don't know why that would be of any consequence. It does leave one heck of a mess. DW suggested a surge protector and told her I would rather find a UPS if they make such a thing for a fridge.

Edit yet again: This comment is not about politics but more reality I guess. Just spoke with the owner of another mom and pop appliance store in another town trying to run down a refrigerator. She said she couldn't keep them in stock and neither could the distributors. Cause? She said they told her that the "workers" employed at various stages of the construction and distribution of the units was at about 25% of normal. Why? Lots of them would not come back to work because they made more on unemployment than their regular pay. Maybe that will cease to be an issue in the near future and some of these things start to improve if that is indeed the case. Just watch those fridge/freezers before, during and after that long trip. Well, maybe "after" would be too late.
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Old 08-05-2020, 09:09 AM   #7
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There are a bunch of fancy (and expensive) temperature monitors. Many years ago, I devised a "simple and sure way" to monitor our refrigerator/freezer and deep freeze. I take a half full water bottles, lay them on their side and freeze them. Then place them in the appliance I want to monitor (in the upright position). The ice is "frozen to the side" and, when we return, if the ice is frozen to the bottom, then it's readily apparent that the freezer "suffered an extended warm period" and it's likely that the food inside thawed and refroze just like the ice in the bottle.....

It's worked for us for at least the last 30 years and we've lost one freezer full of food (to an extended power outage) even though, when we returned, everything was frozen and looked good.....

This method won't tell you "the exact temperature and/or how long the temperatures lasted" but it will tell you whether the contents thawed, refroze and may be unsafe to eat....

It won't replace a failed refrigerator, it won't "go shopping for one, either"... but it will give you the reassurance that "while you were gone, the freezer remained "below freezing and the contents didn't thaw".....
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Old 08-05-2020, 09:50 AM   #8
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Danny you can get a UPS with enough power to run a fridge or freezer for a "little while". But just like the "battery back up sump pumps" that "little while" will be just that. The best option is an auto start back up generator. Depending on size they can go for a couple of grand to tens of thousands.Natural gas is the most convenient. If bat gas isn't available then propane with enough storage can get you thru a couple of days.

The AcuRite 00986 is what I use in the camper. It's <$40 and will give you a min and max temp. We typically start the TV fridge at least a day before a trip. When it gets to temp we load it up (usually the day before) and zero out the memory. When we get to our destination we know if freezer or fridge Temps varied.

I never put them on the house because we have cameras and sensors on the house that I can access over the web so I know if power has failed. If fridge and freezer are kept closed then it should hold food for several hours or even a day or two if the door gaskets are good and the interior of the house doesn't to terribly hot.
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Old 08-05-2020, 10:16 AM   #9
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Our deep freeze went out about a month ago. Everything is about a month out. Living in Iowa, when all the packing plants closed due to nearly every worker having COVID everyone bought a deep freeze and secured dates with a farmer and locker. Right now lockers are pushed out until the end of next year.
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Old 08-05-2020, 10:53 AM   #10
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There are a lot of items in high demand right now: RVs, Boats, Fridges, Bikes. Some of it may be supply. The person that bought my RV was looking new and committed to one. The RV dealer kept pushing back his delivery date. He decided to buy mine. I had 23 inquiries in less than 24 hours on my Passport.

It's definitely a sellers market right now.
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Old 08-05-2020, 01:25 PM   #11
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Quote:
Originally Posted by flybouy View Post
I think stimulus money is part of it. The other part of it is the supply chain being dependent upon China. Most everything in the country is either completely or impart made off shore. If one component, say the compressors, or the control board is made in China then the whole unit is held up until an available replacement component is sourced.

A "new company" to make say the compressor equaled a new startup which equals higher cost. And then,, there's the issue of that new company getting the raw materials. Where does the majority of steel come from?

Yup, it's a cascading effect and China doesn't care.

My business relies on Japanese Industrial Standard screws (that is what is used on Japanese motorcycle carburetors) and most of this stuff comes from China (little from Japan). These screws are also used in far-east made electronic stuff. The price has gone through the roof since the pandemic as the supply chains of hardware have been severely disrupted.
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Old 08-05-2020, 01:36 PM   #12
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Originally Posted by sourdough View Post
Figured I would just post this as we all try to navigate the weirdness of what is happening with the covid hysteria.

Got home this evening from a 3mo. trip to FL. Great trip. Checked everything out coming in the house but got a whiff of "oh no". Looked here and there. Checked 3 freezer/fridges, 1 freezer and all was OK so I was thinking some sort of "stinky" somewhere. DW said did you check the main fridge? Ummm, no. The big side by side had died. Really died....and really stunk. Cleaned out and rearranged to other fridges. But;

Don't know if you realize (I didn't) that fridges along with paper goods etc. in TX are scarce. Tried to pull up a fridge that I would like, that would always be there if I looked...none. Multiple stores in multiple towns...nothing. Tomorrow I will be calling and trying to find someone, anyone that will sell us a fridge and bring it here. You all know how that goes; that 1500 fridge will be 3k at least by the time it gets here. DW talked go my SIL and she said they had to replace theirs....in DALLAS and it there was no availability. Found one in a local appliance store (way marked up) and she said the "hoarders" are buying all the freezers/fridges etc. up....for what I can't imagine. Fear, hysteria....and I hoped we were all grown up....

Figured you were nuts when you said you couldn't find a refrigerator and looked at the in-store stock at the nearest Home Depot. ONE refrigerator model over 10 cu. ft. : Best Seller Magic Chef 10.1 cu. ft. Top Freezer Refrigerator in White $389.00


Looked at the nearest Best Buy and this is typical:

Store Pickup: Order now &
Alamo Ranch should have it ready for pickup by Wed, Sep 16.



Looked at Craigslist and there were a lot of nice looking (some new) refrigerators for sale but not sure if the prices were good or bad as I haven't bought a refrigerator for quite a few years.
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Old 08-05-2020, 03:17 PM   #13
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Well, this little dilemma has been resolved....I hope. After having zero success looking all over for the fridge (even went down and asked the owner of appliance store that closed down about it...no help) DW talked to her friend across the street. Unbelievably her freezer had gone out the end of last week right before we got back. Said she couldn't find one anywhere and someone referred her to a small furniture/appliance store in a town about 45 miles away. They had a freezer for her so I called.....and

They had ONE fridge the size that we needed. "Black stainless" - not what we wanted but hey. I had told DW I figured with the situation as it is we were going to have to pay through the nose...and we did; a little over $3000 delivered ($185 delivery) - and anything they have to do is extra but hey! I was also advised that it's a lot of work for them to do this so I might just give them a "little extra" when they get it in...but hey! AND, and this is sort of comical; what was the only fridge they had? A SAMSUNG!!! After all our conversations about Samsung residential fridges I had no intention of getting one for the house....and here I am! But hey! Guess it goes hey, hey, hey!?

I do know if the power goes out with the security system, cameras etc. and we didn't have that as far as I could tell. Guess it figured it was overworked or Covid got it. A fixed genny isn't really needed - we live right in a town. We do have flaky power and have for years. Not extended outages but intermittent at times, low power etc. for short periods. Years ago we used to install UPS units on some of the equipment we installed but they were quite large and wouldn't work in a kitchen environment so guess we'll just keep on keeping on as it is. Thanks for all the input and suggestions. Hopefully none of you run into this issue at this time. I also hope we are going to see some improvement in the situation soon.
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Old 08-05-2020, 05:34 PM   #14
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sourdough, i'm confused. you have a 2020 and it should be under warranty. what's going on there?

I personally would be dealing with a service center and my insurance company. I'd be eating out a lot if I were you.
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Old 08-05-2020, 06:05 PM   #15
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sourdough, i'm confused. you have a 2020 and it should be under warranty. what's going on there?

I personally would be dealing with a service center and my insurance company. I'd be eating out a lot if I were you.

From post 1 if you read it:

"coming in the house but got a whiff of "oh no". Looked here and there. Checked 3 freezer/fridges, 1 freezer and all was OK so I was thinking some sort of "stinky" somewhere. DW said did you check the main fridge? Ummm, no. The big side by side had died."

Nothing there about a 2020 or warranty.....plus, I'm tired of eating out; just got back from FL (that's up there too).
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Old 08-07-2020, 08:47 AM   #16
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Our alarm system (the electronic portion of the house, excluding the small K9 that thinks she’s a Lioness!) will alert us via email and text messages when power is lost to the home and when it is restored. If it’s out long enough and we’re away, I’ll assume we’ll come home to a liquid mess of chocolate ice cream in the freezer. If the fridge fails for other reasons, I guess we’ll find that out when we have your experience when we arrive and catch a whiff of something not good. We are considering a whole home generator on LP. These tropical systems that threaten and sometimes destroy the local electrical infrastructure each year is getting tiring. But we have the trailer on site with a generator that handles it, so a whole home unit may be just fluff.
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Old 08-07-2020, 10:32 AM   #17
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I guess I hit it just right when I purchased my 2 generators to power the camper and the house when we have power failures. However, we did have to wait about 3 weeks before we got them.

So, it's not just refrigerators..... just sayin' ???
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Old 08-07-2020, 12:49 PM   #18
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Yeah, I think this whole thing has impacted everything negatively in a big way from several angles. Some unavoidable, some not.
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Old 08-07-2020, 06:33 PM   #19
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Well, I guess I should touch wood that my 1976 vintage Hotpoint top freezer in the garage is still humming away, with less issues than the 2003 vintage GE Profile in the kitchen, which is also still humming away.

I am becoming a firm believer that old is good when it comes to appliances.

-Brian
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Old 08-07-2020, 06:42 PM   #20
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Well, I guess I should touch wood that my 1976 vintage Hotpoint top freezer in the garage is still humming away, with less issues than the 2003 vintage GE Profile in the kitchen, which is also still humming away.

I am becoming a firm believer that old is good when it comes to appliances.

-Brian

I promise, in my experience, your observation is 100% accurate. Of course, I'm beginning to believe it's most everything if it doesn't have the latest goo gah electronic gizmos.
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