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Pandemic causes national appliance shortage: ‘I’ve never seen the demand like it is now'

This shortage is real. We are cooking on a hot plate now with a fan venting it out the window. There's a parts shortage, too. We pulled the master circuit board out of our oven ourselves, (husband has some background - breaker was OFF), and we sent it to an electronics firm that will try to repair it. At least we found out about this online so saved the cost of a repair tech visit who could have done nothing.

This is an old Jenn-Aire downdraft oven. Horribly expensive to replace. What happened is that while baking, the broiler element decided to turn itself on and stay on even after the oven was turned off after we smelled burning rubber, etc. You have to turn the breaker off to stop it. It has been reported elsewhere on repair forums. Some people have tried turning the breaker and oven back on the next day and doing a reset you can do on newer models and the problem will seem to have gone away, but then a couple of hours later the broiler turns itself on again. Obviously VERY dangerous.

I initially found out about the appliance shortage because I was looking for some online for our new home in another state. Everything was out of stock! Better get prepared. I had a professor who warned about coming appliance shortages back in 1990. He said demographics predicted that there wouldn't be enough working age people at some point to supply the aging population with appliances. I didn't get the impact of his worries until now.
 
Now I wish I'd never found that circuit board repair firm. $300 and a lot of tedious work later, we are still using the window fan and hot plate. This reminds me about what I read about the Great Depression - even if you had the money to buy things, nobody was making them due to low demand and the deflationary cycle that created. This situation doesn't have low demand right now, but the effect is the same.
At least the oven can't kill anyone now since the board is out.
 
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Still on the hot plate. The repair company agreed to a refund of all but the expensive overnight postage. They didn't admit to the board repair being defective, but said they should have responded faster while there was still time before our move to see what the issue was.
It's a good concept to repair rather than replace, especially when you can't replace, but not when you are in a hurry.
 
I'm sure electric hot plates are flying of the shelf too. I should buy one since my oven is very old. I live in a cold winter climate, so grilling out or a fire pit is not an option up here.

I experienced the appliance shortage in May while shopping for a small chest freezer. Almost all were out of stock. I had a choice of two that were still available at that time.
 
I need a new clothes dryer. Only the most expensive ones are available. So I bought a dryer vent attachment for the vacuum and deep cleaned the inside vent. I also vacuumed out the vent end piece at the outside wall. Magic! The dryer is drying much better for about $20 instead of $850.00. For bedspreads I have a rack for outside. This is Florida after all!
 
It wouldn't be a bad idea, Mary. It would be nice to find one that is easier to clean than mine. You can't lift up the element to clean under it. It works fine for poaching fish and making soup, but cooking rice is not so nice!
Venting could be tough in the winter but if your hood fan still works, all should be good.
 
After fleeing the broken stove, we ended up with no refrigerator or washer or dryer AND a leaky gas stove we had to shut down. So back on the hot plate and worried about food poisoning from storing food outside in coolers.
The gas leak seems to be fixed today and a new USA made fridge is supposed to be delivered Sunday. It is a garage ready fridge but should work. It was very hard to find, especially since our internet wasn't connected yet. We thought it might be easy to find a used fridge, but that was not true.

Appliance repair companies are very busy so they have benefited, at least.
 
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