As of 10am March 24th Discount Electronics was sold out of all Windows 7 computers company wide.
Most of the stores had some Windows 7 inventory available shortly after they opened Tuesday morning. The Windows 7 computers on DiscountElectronics.com remain unavailable to purchase as of the printing of this release.
Discount Electronics has not yet restored inventory at its warehouse to levels that allow for Nationwide sales again yet, but the company’s CEO is hopeful they will have that remedied before the end of the week. Although the stores do have some stock the company is not going to be advertising Windows 7 computers as long as this shortage persists.
‘We have never been a company that believes in loss leaders or bait and switch advertising,’ said Rick Culleton, CEO of DiscountElectronics.com. ‘We will not advertise a product we don’t have an ample supply of. The available inventory will vary store to store for now.’
Some Discount Electronics locations have wait lists for customers wanting to purchase Windows 7 computers and laptops.
Culleton said he has been in retail computer sales for 16 years but was caught off guard by the surge in demand for refurbished Windows 7 computers presumably caused by the lack of new Windows 7 computers being offered by manufacturers.
‘We had seen a jump in demand both when Windows 98SE was discontinued and again when major OEMs stopped shipping Windows XP machines’ said Culleton, ‘but neither of those events prepared us for this.’
Discount Electronics’s CEO went on to say ‘We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused our customers. We are working overtime to get additional inventory in and distributed to our retail stores as fast as possible.’
