Supply chain problems you've noticed during the pandemic that are a little less obvious than TP and sanitizer

Yeah man, used car prices/trade values are at an all time high. Simple supply and demand like I said upthread. Dealers never have had to compete at the auction with the Hertzs’ of the world as they always were a steady supply of used cars into the auction cycle themselves as they take their formerly new fleet cars out of service. But they cannot get any new cars AND they sold off 1/3rd to 1/2 of their inventories just to stay afloat during the pandemic when nobody was renting cars and oil was trading at negative values. Oh those halcyon days!

My car lease is up at the end of this month. One thing I learned (from a dealer) that’s worked for me over the years is instead of ‘turning your car in’, trade it in. That is, instead of handing it back to them, sell it back. As long as it’s worth more than the buyout, you’ll come out ahead and if you’re getting another car from them (ie at the Honda store, trading in a Honda), they’ll usually play ball.
All the current deals, at least with Honda, are asking for 10% down. The buyout on my car is about 15k, my plan is to see if I can get them to buy it from me for enough above the buyout to cover any down payment on the next one.
KBB puts it the $22k range (but doesn’t take into account a recent accident, though it was repaired with OEM parts). If I can get 18ish for it, I’ll be happy.
If not, I may end up just keeping it.

That right there is exactly the game for those coming out of leases where the residual was pegged in stone 3 years ago and now the vehicle is worth more than your residual. As a Honda, it’s likely it is but be wary of KBB and NADA values. Their algorithims are fucked up relative to the rapidly fluctuating auction values right now, so don’t let that create false expectations either. If you think it’s worth
18k it’s probably really worth $16500. Even so, consider tax credits for your trade along with any lease options (which are NOT good right now, dealers aren’t even accepting employee pricing where I live right now) available. You will probaby come out ahead, which is rare for a lease’s residual to be worth less than it’s value.

I bought a new car recently. Below a certain price point, Honda only gives you one key fob due to chip shortages. The other fob is on back order.

The person that told me this trick said to go use KBB, take the middle number (good?) and then knock off 10%. When that number is above the buy out, that’s when your in a position to trade in the car rather than turn it in. Plus, since you’re not turning it in, you don’t have to screw around with all the End Of Lease bullshit.

Is that still going on? My understanding, from last spring/summer, is that the cause was demand shift. People are (were) drinking just as much beer and soda, but rather than having it at restaurants and bars, where it’s packaged in kegs and/or boxes of syrup, they’re having it at home in aluminum cans. So the demand for aluminum skyrocketed.

Joey P- I’d suggest you see what CarMax will give you for it. They’re paying crazy high prices. When my sister was buying a new car recently, the dealer offered her $4K for her old one, CarMax wrote her a check for $9K for it. Just for fun, I checked what they would buy my car for, they offered $3,500 more than I paid for it 2 years ago.

Just plugging everything into their website (including checking the box for ‘major accident’), they offered $22k, site unseen.
Whether or not they’ll actually hand me a $22k check if I show up there, I don’t know. But it’s certainly something I’m going to look into a bit more seriously. Plus it’s a lease. I suppose they could pay me the difference between the current buyout (14k) and what they’re offering.
In any case, I printed out the offer from carmax (which includes my VIN) and I’ll bring that to the dealer. Maybe I can use it as a bargaining chip.

Vernors ginger ale disappeared from the shelves a month or two ago (Idaho). Apparently it’s been unavailable in Canada for over a year. Production shut down because of Covid repurcussions, they expect to be back on the market this Fall.

I’ve always had a hard time finding Vernor’s ginger ale; I was so delighted when I saw it in Cracker Barrel a couple months ago that I bought an entire case.

I was curious what this “manajo wand” or maybe “manjano wand” was. Searching for those made me curious what you were killing with a sex toy.

The third, and correct spelling is “Majano Wand”. For anyone else interested in what this might be. :slight_smile:

Still having problems with Walmart as far as the oil filter my car needs.

I don’t even know where to begin with Wal-Mart. Pickup times are 3-4 days out. The shelves look like a bomb went off. Many things out of stock. Not a single bottle of mustard in the place. The bread aisle looked like a hurricane was coming. They still haven’t reopened to 24 hours.

I’m still doing OK with next-day delivery from Walmart, and Amazon wouldn’t be able to get me that oil filter until October if I ordered it now. May have to consider another brand.

Are you in Fred’s path?

Maybe this is the appropriate place to post, but my interest is generally in “products with supply chain issues these days” since by now we might be past the worst part of the pandemic and into the aftershocks.

However, both these products have been hard to get over the last year (mid 2021 through mid 2022) and have only recently been available:

  • PUR water filters. I had heard, when investigating, that the plant was down on the US / Mexican border, and was having trouble getting their plastic resin beads to make the filters. This to me sounds definitely like a supply chain issue, especially if the plastic were from, say, China.

  • Kashi Go Lean cereal. Other types of Kashi breakfast cereal with wheat has been continuously available, but the type with high fiber and soy protein has not. I’ve been having a really tough time finding it in stores until just last weekend, when we scored three boxes. (And yes, it could be that addicts like me buy out whatever inventory comes available, worsening the supply situation.)

I was wondering—how feasible would it be to remove chips from older vehicles and put them in new vehicles? Would it be possible to alter enough information on these chips so that they would work well in the new vehicles? Please bear in mind I’m not really computer literate so please be kind in your answers.

A local welding business received this letter from their gas supplier a few days ago, informing them the price of gas will be going up by almost 40%.

Diet grapefruit soda? Such a concoction exists?! I don’t drink soda anymore outside of plain seltzer. Haven’t had soda in just over 16 years now. But this is interesting.

I did recently have some Verner’s Root Beer via a sample which may be the brand @TreacherousCretin is referring to? But I never bought it. I’m not big on root beer, so I didn’t know what I’d do with 12 cans of the stuff when I prefer water most of the time.

I’ve heard there’s a shortage of baby formula, but that’s because of a bacterial infection.

There’s a stop-smoking medication in Aus called Champix (only available on prescription) and it’s been totally unavailable since around December last year. Strangely enough, it’s manufactured by Pfizer…