Supply chain, staffing issues create long wait times for many services in Southwest Florida

Due to a mixture of supply chain issues, staffing shortages and Southwest Florida’s steadily increasing population, a lot of our industries are struggling to keep up with consumer demand.

With warm temperatures in our forecast, people are going to want to make sure their air conditioning units are working, but you could be waiting up to four weeks to be seen by an A/C repair company right now.

Fred Kobie, president of Kobie Kooling, located at 4697 Elevation Way in Fort Myers, says that right now, during the spring, is when his industry usually sees the most customers. While that is again the case in 2022, the company’s backlog is longer than usual. Kobie says his company is seeing more new customers, since more people are moving to Florida and a lot of the snowbirds want their units checked and maintained before they go back up north.

“If you call today, just out of the blue, and you wanted preventative maintenance, you may wait a week or three weeks, it depends how busy it is in the neighborhood,” Kobie said. “The preventative maintenance, technical or mechanics… they can only do so many preventative calls.”

Kobie says some of the roofing companies his business partners with are also experiencing backlog issues because of supply chain and staffing issues. Customers are facing longer-than-usual wait times for help in other areas, too. If you need a new pool cleaner, for instance, be prepared to wait a while.

WINK News called around Fort Myers to find out how long you can expect to wait for a service like getting a pool cleaning. One company says the wait could last around two weeks, and it’s worse if you need an estimate for a new pool—that could take until September, at the earliest.

“Our senior staff, including myself, do preventative maintenance calls, so one of the ways we are reducing the backlogs… I can do six or seven calls a day, my brother and my partner are out doing the preventative calls, so we have all the senior staff on the street doing the work normally just the mechanics would do,” Kobie said.

Kobie says his maintenance checks are backlogged up to four weeks.