RS Components vs. Farnell

[The Real Andy]

On Wed, 12 Aug 2009 07:45:50 +1000, "David L. Jones"
<altzone@gmail.com> wrote:

ian field wrote:
"David L. Jones" <altzone@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:0X6gm.53662$sC1.44473@newsfe17.iad...
Sylvia Else wrote:
Trevor Wilson wrote:
Well, things must be hotting up between these two, excellent
suppliers. RS sent me a promotional email at 2:05PM today and
Farnell sent me one at 2:15PM. Presumably, I am not alone in
receiving emails from these guys.

I haven't heard from them - but maybe I've changed my email address
since I last bought anything from them. I rarely do, because their
minimum shipping cost makes single items very expensive.

Farnell charge a paltry fixed $10 for same/next day courier.

Maybe a tad expensive for a single $2 part you can get from Jaycar,
but for most other things it's really quite good value.
Electus charge more than that.

In the UK farnell have just increased the minimum order charge from
Ł20 to Ł35.

You also have to watch out for items marked "US stock" as these parts
incur a one off shipping charge of around Ł16.

Farnell Oz have a minimum order of only $10, but that's for credit card
payment only (common with many companies who take credit card). You can turn
up to the trade counter and buy a single 5 cent resistor with cash if you
want. And AFAIK we don't pay any extra for US, UK, or Singapore stocked
items, they just take a few extra days to get here.

Farnell are quickly losing all their business to Mouser and Digikey thanks
to their bigger stock range, lower prices and (reasonably) cheap postage to
Oz. So they are doing their best to win back customers.

Dave.

Last time I bought something from farnell the broke it into 2 shipping
orders after I explicitly told them to wait until they could ship it
as one. Big business so I can understand how they did not follow my
instruction.

Parts orded were Microchip ICD-2 and the microchip motor drive dev kit
that uses the Internation Rectifier IRAMS series parts. ICD-2 shipped
from AU I copped the shipping charge, then dev kit shipped from UK and
I copped conversion rates + shipping.

Well I have never ordered from farnell since. If I have to pay
international shipping rates and conversion I might as well ship it
from the US at the cheaper rate...

 

[Davo]

ian field wrote:

"David L. Jones" <altzone@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:0X6gm.53662$sC1.44473@newsfe17.iad...
Sylvia Else wrote:
Trevor Wilson wrote:
Well, things must be hotting up between these two, excellent
suppliers. RS sent me a promotional email at 2:05PM today and
Farnell sent me one at 2:15PM. Presumably, I am not alone in
receiving emails from these guys.
I haven't heard from them - but maybe I've changed my email address
since I last bought anything from them. I rarely do, because their
minimum shipping cost makes single items very expensive.
Farnell charge a paltry fixed $10 for same/next day courier.

Maybe a tad expensive for a single $2 part you can get from Jaycar, but
for most other things it's really quite good value.
Electus charge more than that.

In the UK farnell have just increased the minimum order charge from Ł20 to
Ł35.

You also have to watch out for items marked "US stock" as these parts incur
a one off shipping charge of around Ł16.

I work for a power company in Western Australia. RS doesn't charge us at
all for freight. If we buy less than about $30 worth of stuff they make
a loss. We're about 200km from the nearest RS outlet.