Delays in Shipping of Equipment

We continually have delays with Ricoh after their so called warehouse efficiency change a year or so ago. It used to be we would have the equipment in 2 days. Now most of the time it takes about a week or so to get everything....Thats if it is not backordered. With Canon we typically have everything in 2 days, somtimes even the next day if it is ordered early in the morning.

I have been told some things about the port in LA and that there are ships just sitting out in the bay waiting to come in due to the strikes or whatever is going on.

We have had issues with the new xx54 series Ricoh but that is not uncommon with the launch of a new model. Are you experiencing backorders elsewhere in the product line?

Right now Wide Format has been very slow for us. I have an wide format on order right now that took a week but we still don't have the roll feeder or the print. Now they tell us the print option is not available until sometime in February.

Just to update this. We are currently experiencing major  backorders across the product line. Several orders I have placed are now showing 30-45 days of backorder. I still believe they hold inventory for the direct branches and the dealers are the ones who have to wait it out becuase many time if I call our Rep and make a big fuss about switching the customer to Canon they magically find what I need. It's comimcal like they found one missing in the breakroom or bathroom and will ship it out immediately.

What is scary is that March/April is always a bad time for back-orders as they try to juggle inventory at fiscal year-end for tax reasons. It may begin to turn around just in time to go bad again.

Thats a good point Old Glory. I didn't even think about that.

I just spoke to a buddy if mine who owns a company that trucks the containers from the ships to the destinations. He told me that what we are hearing from Ricoh about the back orders is 150% true. He said there are ships anchored off shore who are having to wait 15-25 days to unload cargo because of some dispute with the labor union that has everything at a standstill until arbitration works it all out. He did tell me you won't find much in the news about it and that it has not been covered much. He gave me a website to check but I haven't been able to get it loaded yet....once I do I will check and see what all I can get from it.

Unfortunately he said he didn't think it was going to get better soon and that some ships were now being routed through panama canal to the east coast and railed out to the destinations but he said the east coast ports don't have the space to take on a lot of the west coast excess containers. Some of his largest customers in the fortune 100 arena couldn't even get their containers off loaded in port so It Is quite a problem apparently.

I ordered more Ricoh equipment today and it all came back as backordered for 20 days or so. 

Fortunately with us having multiple lines I don't worry as much but it is all coming from the same countries so eventually if this isn't resolved I'm sure all the other manufacturers will have the same issues once inventory in US distribution centers gets low or runs out.