What instances of post-COVID-19 pent up demand have you been seeing?
Already, there is a thread about the higher price and lower supply of new cars, though that applies to used cars as well.
People have also mentioned shortages of rental cars.
One thing that I have heard about recently is that many non-urgent / elective / semi-elective medical procedures were delayed due to fear of getting COVID-19 in the health care facility, but now health care facilities are fully booked on them as those who delayed them are trying to do them now that they have been vaccinated.
We have run into issues with rental cars as you mentioned.
We are also trying to get work done in our house and are having an awful time finding people who will respond to our inquiries. They are all swamped and booked out for months, which we are actually OK with. We had one guy we liked a lot and even though he was booking months out we were excited to have found someone. But after coming out to our house he asked us to get back to him with a few details which we did the next day, and we haven’t heard from him since. It’s very frustrating.
Rental car prices in some areas are through the roof, although we managed to get a reasonable weekly rate through Costco for our recent Big Island trip.
Had trouble scheduling a dentist appointment for my son. He had an appointment scheduled for next week but it conflicts with his job and he doesn’t want to miss work for the appointment so I called to reschedule, figuring I could push it out until right before he went back to college. Nope. They are now scheduling for December. They say there is so much pent up demand from people who hadn’t been in a year that it is crazy.
Have had to rent cars twice in the past 30 days. Was crazy expensive. The primary issue, as I have been told, is that many of the rental companies sold off large portions of their fleets due to covid when no onne was traveling. Those cars just sitting there were costing them money. Now people need cars to rent and it’s a scramble. They’ve created their own supply / demand issue. High demand low supply right now causes pricing to increase. We paid $1200 for an 8 day rental of a Camry with a different location dropoff (picked up in NY, dropped off in Boston). That was 150/day. Same car prior to covid would have been 25 - 30/ day. Not sure about the drop off scenario. Crazy!
I cannot find an apartment. I had a winter rental in a coastal town where I have lived for 30 years, after selling my house. Apartments are taken up by newcomers working from home, perhaps, and also the bottleneck in houses for sale means renters aren’t moving. I am in a summer rental now, in the city, hoping to find a year round apartment for the fall. It is scary coming out of my safe COVID refuge at the same time that masks are coming off.
And I am not sure we are “post COVID.” I certainly don’t want to jinx things by using that term. But people are still dying, lots of them. And vaccine rates are not high enough. And Delta may spread in the US.
Appliances. Everyone I know who ordered them is either still waiting OR orders were canceled, or it took more than several months to receive their new appliances.
My son recently got two new kittens. When calling his vet to get them in for their first appointment he had to wait 5 weeks. The receptionist apologized telling him now that Covid has relaxed everyone is catching up with their pets. She’s never seen anything like it.
No rental available where we wanted to take summer family vacation.
We want a new refrigerator but I will just wait and not get into a frustrating situation.
We desperately need to remodel our master bath and had thought we would this fall, but we might put that off another year. See what happens.
Just checked the prices for the room where we stayed in Hawaii. Holy JP Morgan! $1200 a night. Someone must be able to afford that, right?! Glad I made some reservations way ahead of time.
Vet appointments. I’ve needed an urgent appointment twice in the past 4 months. Once for a severe ear infection and once because my dog hurt his back and was obviously in pain. Our regular vet couldn’t schedule us for weeks so we ended up having go to an emergency 24 hour animal hospital.
Furniture. Still waiting on a sofa we ordered months ago.
It wasn’t so much the fear of getting COVID in the health care facility, but that the fact that PPE were being used in large quantities for elective procedures, leaving health care workers working with COVID patients vulnerable for no good reason really. Many elective procedures also used ventilators that at the time were considered precious commodities.
