Now listen, you may not be able to get all the things you want to give this year, but you can beat the problematic supply chain (and other shoppers) by keeping track of when your most coveted gifts are back in stock. But now retailers cannot count on that consistency, so they may only know when they’re getting more of a new product a few days in advance. The best way to stay in the know is to ask them directly. If there are big chain stores near you, look up the phone number for their nearest location or, the next time you go, ask the manager for the best way to contact them to ask restocking questions. They may redirect you to the general customer service number or say they can’t help you, as the holiday season is a busy time of year and lots of stores are currently understaffed. But if you’re lucky, you might get direct contact with someone who has enough information to improve your chances of getting the gift you want so much. StockInformer is one. The site monitors hot items, like PS5 consoles, the Google Pixel 6 Pro, or the Nintendo Switch Lite, and after you sign up, they’ll notify you of restockings in a variety of ways, including email, push notifications to your Android phone (sorry, iPhone users), or even your Telegram account. The downside to StockInformer is that it only tracks a handful of the hottest items, so you’ll have no way to track something that’s not already on their list. Still, this is a good way to keep an eye out for highly coveted tech products, which are particularly scarce due to a worldwide chip shortage. You can also follow restocking accounts on various social media platforms. You can find a myriad of them on Twitter, where some are even dedicated to certain geographical regions and specific kinds of products. From the Twitter home page, go to the search bar in the top right corner of your screen and search for “restock”. On the results page, go to the People tab to see which accounts are tracking the products you’re interested in, and give them a follow. You’ll find a lot of them are focused on electronics, but there are also some dedicated to the sneakerhead community and specific fandoms, like Pokémon. Keep in mind that many of these accounts might be inactive, so before you sign up for their updates, make sure it hasn’t been six months since their last tweet. Wherever the product is out of stock, activate the toggle switch next to Notify me when in stock. A menu will pop up asking you how frequently you’d like OctoShop to check for the item (Instant makes the extension check more frequently), and a cap price so you’ll only get alerts when the item is below a certain price. Here you can also set up the notification sound you’d like OctoShop to use. When you’re done, click on Track. If you’re looking for an item in a specific size or color, make sure you make your choices before enabling tracking on OctoShop. Otherwise, you’ll get notifications when any size or color of the product comes in, not the exact one you want. Lastly, you can set up a webpage change tracker to get a notification the second the item you’re looking for is back in stock. These programs are designed to let users know when something (anything) on a webpage changes, but you can use it for online shopping if you know what to track. We used Distill, a browser extension available for Chrome, Firefox, and Opera. Your best bet is to choose Select parts of the page. When you click on this option, a new Distill menu will pop up from the bottom of your screen. You’ll notice that specific parts of the website will be highlighted in a black outline when you hover your mouse over them—these are the sections you can track. To know when there’s a restock, pick any sections that contain text such as “Temporarily out of stock,” “We’re sorry!” or “Out of stock.” It’s also a good idea to select the list of available sizes and colors, so when yours gets added it will prompt a notification. Once you’re done, click Save Selection at the top right of the Distill menu. The extension will then take you to a website where you can tweak the settings for your tracking. The most important one here is Schedule checks—it determines how frequently the extension checks for changes. You can set intervals that range from every five seconds to every day. You can also click on the drop-down menu there and set it to Live, which will prompt Distill to constantly check in the background. But that function is still in beta, so it may not be perfect. When you’re done, click Save. Just remember that nothing is guaranteed, and even if trying your best doesn’t cut it, it truly is the thought that counts. And it helps if you go into great detail about all the alerts you set up as you recount your tale of woe.
