Similar to a post we did in 2020 talking about tariff impacts, several recent shipments got hit with an additional 10% tariff. We knew this was likely to come and we purchased more inventory than usual last year to shield customers from the future price increase, but it appears that buffer has been consumed and now getting hit with additional costs. We will continue to shield customers when and where we can, but be aware prices will likely increase soon.
Hacker Couture, the sister site to Hacker Warehouse is now live. To help celebrate the launch, a HackRF Portapack H4M combo is on there. Check it out!
Here are a list of dates the warehouse will be closed. We will still be accepting orders during these times, but shipping of orders will be paused while the team is on break.
- May 4-15
- August 1 to August 13 (Black Hat, BsidesLV, DEF CON)
- October 10-24
- November 24-30 (Thanksgiving week)
- December 19-29 (Christmas week)
Also note that it might take a few days to catch back up on shipments once back. We appreciate your understanding and support.
Here are a list of dates the warehouse will be closed. We will still be accepting orders during these times, but shipping of orders will be paused while the team is on break.
- March 2-10
- May 1-13
- July 3-15
- July 29 to August 13 (Black Hat, BsidesLV, DEF CON)
- October 8-24
- November 18-22 (Thanksgiving week)
- December 24-25 (Christmas eve/day)
- December 30-Jan 2 (New Years)
Also note that it might take a few days to catch back up on shipments once back. We appreciate your understanding and support.
Here are a list of dates the warehouse will be closed. We will still be accepting orders during these times, but shipping of orders will be paused while the team is on break.
April 17-25May 25-29 (Memorial day weekend)August 4-16 (Black Hat, BsidesLV, DEF CON)October 13-27November 20-27 (Thanksgiving week)December 20-27 (Christmas week)
Also note that it might take a few days to catch back up on shipments once back. We appreciate your understanding and support.
Hacker Warehouse will be in the vendor are during DEF CON 30. Maps were recently released and the vendors will be in the new Caesars Forum complex.
From a logistics aspect this means that online orders from 8/1 to 8/15 will start going out on 8/16. Shipments might be delayed further if inventory gets sold out at the event. If you are out there, please stop by our booth and say hello. We will have a few new products along with demo samples from our recent collaboration with Paragon Gear as well!
Thanks for your understanding about shipping impacts and we are excited to see our hacker friends and family again soon!
2022-08-20 Update: We are back and starting to fulfill orders in the backlog. It was amazing to see fellow hackers at the conferences. We did sell out on many items so we are waiting on a few manufacturing runs right now before we can complete some orders but majority of orders we should be caught up with in the upcoming week. I have seen lots of reports from people that they tested positive for covid that was caught during con. Wish everyone that caught it speedy recoveries.
2022-08-25 Update: I posted on twitter prior that we had flipper zeros coming in hopefully in time for DEFCON but sadly they got stuck in customs. If it weren’t for customs it would have made it to us in time. We did get the shipment cleared and forwarded on so stay tuned for our listing!
We will be closed during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday weeks. For Thanksgiving that translates to any orders placed from 11/19 through 11/28 will start to be processed on 11/29. For Christmas that translates to any orders placed from 12/17 through 12/26 will start to be processed on 12/27.
I hope everyone has a safe and happy holidays. Cheers.
This post is a continuation of information sharing on impacts that we are having as a retailer. Earlier posts in the series are Shipping Impacts during COVID-19 era from August 2020 and COVID-19, Shipping Impacts and Tariffs from April 2020. Please read them for additional context.
Chip and component shortages – One can’t start manufacturing runs until all of the components are available and the costs for components are going up. This becomes a two part issue. 1. Not being able to have stable inventory on some items and understanding when manufacturing can start for general timelines. 2. Increased costs.
Speaking to item 1, for those products being impacted, smaller batch runs are being made when possible and/or alternative designs using chips available are being made. Putting orders in the queue keeps your place in line and will be fulfilled in order. Sadly, I don’t have a way to provide a time estimate though.
As to item 2, similar to how we tried to shield customers with tariff costs we shielded off the first wave seen in price increases during this year, but components continue go up so in order to keep this business going, we will need to increase some product prices soon.
Electricity Shortages – This doesn’t impact us as much but factories in China are being forced to shut down for 1-2 days because of electricity shortages. So even if manufacturing can start, the factories aren’t able to operate at traditional capacity which then causes further time delays.
Inbound Shipping Carriers – Shipments into the USA has been troublesome. Container shipping costs have skyrocketed about 3-4x from a few years ago. Even after paying the added costs, the time to obtain goods is taking longer too as there is a backlog at the ports. Last month there were 60+ ships waiting at the LA port to offload goods, as of today writing there are over 160 ships waiting!
Typically we use air carriers instead of cargo ships as thankfully electronics are small. But occasionally we’ve had things in containers so this easily adds to the time delays.
Outbound Shipping Carriers – USPS, UPS, DHL all seem to be getting better and shipping times. Still not pre-covid delivery times but not the 2 week+ that we saw last year when it seemed like every carrier was in the overwhelmed state. As a negative side effect to getting shipments quicker, we’ve noticed that tracking information is not updated as often or at all. In the past I saw only a small amount of parcels show up to a customer before tracking information even shows up online. Now it seems like this happens for 1 out of 4 or 5 customers as our inquiries of package emails have increased. There isn’t anything for us to do here. If you got a shipping notification from us trust that we handed the shipment off to the carrier and it is in route. Please be patient and understanding that the tracking information isn’t as frequently updated vs pre-covid times.
I hope this information has been useful. We continue to stay open and here to support the community. Happy hacking. Cheers.
DEF CON 29 will be a hybrid event this year having both online and in person aspects to the event. Hacker Warehouse was lucky enough to get invited to be one of the vendors and we are excited to be out there and support the community!
From a logistics aspect, this means that online orders from 8/1 to 8/10 will start going out on 8/11. Shipments might be delayed further if inventory gets sold out at the event. If you are out there, please stop by our booth and say hello. We will have a few new products so make sure to check them out.
Lastly, we will be taking a trip next week to scout locations and ensure our setup will work where we are projecting to be. This means any order from 6/4 to 6/13 will start to go out on 6/14.
Thanks for your understanding about shipping impacts and I’m excited to see hacker friends and family again soon!
Our last post in April referenced longer shipping times than normal. Now that we are several months into the COVID-19 era, I want to provide some insights on what we see as shipping timeframes, along with carrier links for their latest status updates.
In general, please be patient while deliveries are in transit. Once we package up and is in transit to you, it is in the carriers hands from there and we can’t do anything to make things go quicker.
Our insights from shipping out daily packages to our USA and international audience:
- eCommerce is huge right now and tons of packages are overloading the shipping carriers. When speaking to our shipping support representatives, their explanation of the situation is “experiencing holiday volume without holiday staffing”.
- We communicate with several other shops in various industries and across the board all the main carriers (USPS, UPS, DHL, Fedex) are seeing massive delays in international destinations.
- We have seen various delays in our international shipments as well.
- Ex: USA -> Canada: Seen instances of 2-4 week delivery times
- Ex: USA -> Australia: Seen one instance of 6 week delivery time
- Our domestic shipments seem to have decent delivery times still.
- Some cases have seen upwards of weeks for delivery.
Various links:
- News / Articles
- Why Your Post Office Packages Are Delayed – vice.com article about USPS
- Covid-19 Late Package Report – A service provider breaks down UPS and Fedex delayed packages across the year
- UPS tacks on additional fees as it faces a flood of packages during pandemic – UPS hints at “holiday surge” fees soon.
- USPS
- Domestic residential service alerts – List of service disruptions based on state
- International service alerts – List of service disruptions based on destination country. Some countries have had service suspended as well.
- COVID-19 delivery FAQ – Various FAQ items such as hold times, when a package is deemed lost and claims.
Stay safe, be well, happy hacking.