PC Brands Struggle With Shipping Delays as Amazon Prioritizes Essentials

Right now, PC enthusiasts and consumers struggling to put together a home office are encountering a key obstacle when it comes to beefing up their domestic computing power: toilet paper (and other essentials). 

While some vendors, including PC makers, have products available for wanting customers, it's hard to make that happen with Amazon, a key online retailer, only shipping out products that are considered essential, like toilet paper. In the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, Amazon is currently on an essentials-first policy, that puts delivery of products related to basic daily needs over the likes of consumer electronics. This presents a problem for the large section of the workforce currently forced to work from home, as well as the brands looking to supply them with products. 

For instance, while Nvidia recently reported increased demand for laptops, desktops and workstations, customers looking to purchase anything from Amazon that the site doesn't list as essential are seeing delivery dates of April 21.

Complicating matters is the fact that Amazon has yet to publicly list what it considers essential, leaving customers to resort to trial-and-error while browsing for potential purchases. For instance, as of this writing I was able to find laptops and even RTX GPUs that would allegedly arrive as early as April 4, but Amazon’s “best seller” for standing computer microphones wouldn’t get to me until April 22. 

Despite companies like Microsoft claiming that supply chains are “getting back on rails,” today we're still seeing high demand and possible supply but low shipping capacity. 

Even outside of Amazon, urgent medical equipment demand is sending the price for chartered aircraft skyrocketing, making any kind of shipment-by-air costly, as Bloomberg reported.

“Chartered prices have been pushed up from less than $300,000 four to six weeks back to $600,000 to $800,000 in the last few days,” chairman and founder of logistics company Pacific Air (HK) Ltd. Anthony Lau told the outlet Friday. “The price is changing by the hour. We have never, ever experienced this.”

Normally, PC parts manufacturers would simply book cargo space on passenger planes, but the collapse in passenger demand is now encouraging airlines to shift many passenger planes to chartered cargo flights, reducing availability for this less costly alternative. As companies like American Airlines and Korean Air Lines Co. make this transition, cargo rates have increase by over 10%, according to Bloomberg. 

Marine transportation, meanwhile, can extend shipments by 1-2 months, Digitimes said. 

To increase shipment of stock already sitting in its warehouses, Amazon recently announced plans to hire 100,000 new warehouse and delivery workers. However, Amazon fulfillment centers are particularly prone to COVID-19 spread due to their high volume of workers, as shown by a New York delivery station briefly shutting down last week after an employee tested positive for the virus. More workers could increase risk. 

Additionally, PC components like graphics cards and power supplies could soon see a shift to non-essential status as existing stock sells out, with The New York Times reporting that Amazon is no longer accepting certain items, including, consumer electronics in their warehouses.

While global shipping issues are due to impact the whole market, some stores have taken efforts to negate stock shortages. New Jersey-based vendor Maingear told Tom’s Hardware that “We anticipated the demand, so we have plenty of stock of all the components for our systems. So we have not had an impact on our supply chain or delivering systems quickly to our customers.” 

Enthusiast or not, alternatives to Amazon, like Newegg and more boutique suppliers, might be the best bet for getting hardware for now.