Friday I opened a new box of single gang nail ons. Only to notice an entire layer is missing. Label says 100, physical count is 75. Distributor said that’s how they are coming now, but we only charged for 75. They said was something about conservation efforts.

Have any of you heard anything like from your sparky friends? And have any of you come across something similar in your field?

KOT

If label says 100, and there were only 75, then you got ripped off. What did the invoice say?

Conservation efforts? That's a load of BS. What are they trying to conserve? if you need 1oo to do a job, you can't cut back to 75 because you want to be "green". You will still fail your inspection.

What disty was it?

Is there a back order for 25? I could give the distributor a slight break if there was a discussion with you and you acknowledged that you only needed 70 for this week's project, but you ordered 100 in order to qualify for a price break. Meanwhile, another distributor customer was desperate for 25 and the distributor did not have enough stock to cover all of the orders that week. In this case it would be reasonable to create a back order for some of your units.

I do know this. When I was on a solar project, we had to find something else to do because there wasn’t any PVC pipes in the sizes we needed. That was at multiple distributors and big box stores. 3/4, 1, 2 and 3”.

Then when I went back to residential, I was installing 14/2 and 12/2 into a house that was made less than 2 weeks prior.

My only guess is that this COVID crap really messed things up. Shutting factories down and stuff.

KOT

how many were you billed for 100 or 75

Supposedly 75, at least that’s what I gather from hearing the phone conversation.

KOT

So in other words... you haven't bothered to check and see if you were billed for 100 or 75.
WTF?
Do you just not care if they did rip you off? Or you are that trusting of the person on the phone, that you simply have no doubt you didn't get shafted.

Business is business! Even if I did trust the person on the phone, I'm going to double check.

I don’t have access to the receipts. I’ll ask the boss if the receipt says 75 today at the job site. I too agree seeing it in writing would be better. Still would’ve been nice to see even a handwritten “75 count” on the box. Rather then been shocked to see 25 missing.

KOT

If someone bills for one price and supplies less product after the order has been placed, that's called fraud. It's not an accounting error, an 'oops', or "I guess we'll just blame the person who recently quit".

This sounds like a load of BS.

Cutting product to ship more boxes = conservation? Ok...

Or did he mean rationing? Are they trying to spread out the product to keep people appeased?

I work for a large Electrical Distributor in So Calif (Counter Sales & Inventory Control). Our industry is experiencing ongoing shortages of raw materials used in manufacturing items that use plastic. PVC conduit shortages started a few months ago (first the smaller sizes, and now the larger sizes as well as PVC elbows) and plastic boxes and other random PVC-related products and fittings. There were also ongoing shortages of plug-on circuit breakers that were holding up meter box upgrades and residential solar installs but they are now tricking back into inventory. Now we're seeing shortages of Romex from our suppliers (plastic jacketing). We are monitoring and reviewing large orders, so it's possible that other suppliers are short-shipping product but if so they should at least be communicating that to the customers.

But the reduced production is not just because of Covid, the plants that make the raw materials are in the Gulf states and in Puerto Rico, and last year's hurricanes in those regions wreaked havoc on the infrastructure and on the facilities themselves which caused plant closures. We saw the same PVC and Plastic shortages after Hurricanes Katrina (2005?) and Maria in 2017. Halted a lot of underground projects.

This time though, Covid just made things worse.

Ask your suppliers if they use virgin or reground plastic. If they say they only use virgin, find a different brand and/or supplier- there's no reason they should insist on virgin unless the color must be perfect and for the purpose of making junction boxes, the color doesn't matter at all. Reground is also less expensive than virgin material.

What brands are you selling and where are they made?

Hey Randy, how is the price of romex? Apparently a roll of 14/2 at 250’ went from $35 to literally $65/$70 in the last week or two.

The single gang boxes that started this whole thread is fiberglass by Allied Molded Products.

KOT

Little off topic but I remember when I bought my first house in January 2006 I bought a roll of 12/2 Romex for $25 from Home Depot, later that year I bought a second roll for $50 and couldn't believe how much it went up. Sometime in 2007 I saw the price was up to $90, and I remember being glad I bought when I did and didn't need any more. Of course, after 2008 the price came back down.

KOT our suppliers are providing prices for 2-3 days only on any wire. The price of copper has increased 6 times since Jan 1st and there is supposed to be another increase April 1 (not a joke, coming from multiple suppliers). If I were your boss I would be quickly placing orders in the next day to ensure you are getting wire for what you are paying for it now.

As for supply on other items, we have seen supply issues with breakers. Most breakers are manufactured in France and with COVID shut down last year it really hit the stock levels. We are still having issues finding odd sized breakers but for most 15A & 20A they have caught back up and are fairly available again. PVC pipe and boxes, haven't had any issues, although all our pipe and boxes are mfg'd in Canada and since these factories supply construction have been deemed essential so were never shut down.