Yet another reason to avoid PartMiner

[David R Brooks]

That pegged Maplin neatly. It's a stupid move. Tandy failed in the high
street in the UK because of it, and Maplin succeeded so well that Tandy
mostly went back to the US where they operate more like Maplin did here. So
why Maplin now start to do what made Tandy fail I do not know. It's painful
to watch, so most of the time I don't watch.

Your point about RS and couriers I also recognise, I wish they'd reduce
costs by using the standard mail. The kind of logic that says that to get a
decent service you must use an expensive private courier is wasteful, and
the neglect reduces the quality of the main service, making a self-
fulfilling prophecy. Same logic that's currently making a crisis in
UK dentistry. That scandal is making street long queues now, it's too big
to hide, as will be the pollution of lots of tiny vans doing what a single
train used to do.

Can't speak for other countries, but here in Australia, RS ship free if
your order is more than $100. That doesn't make a huge order, these days...

 

[Lostgallifreyan]

The problem with RS is if you're not in a major city or town. Courier
delivery drivers simply don't even bother to deliver the packages,
they just say 'attempted-delivery' when clearly they haven't. 3-weeks
it took to deliver the catalogues in the end, before someone
eventually rang to say they were in the village.

Even if you give couriers your telephone number, they just don't
bother. This is the gripe with RS, in that their delivery method is
fine if you're in big easy to find business premesis.

That definitely sucks.. if anyone working in RS is reading this, consider
the Royal Mail. Not only does it work well with most recorded deliveries,
at least as well if not better than most couriers (and cheaper), there's a
special advantage: a parcel can be sent to a local post office for
collection. Try doing that with a courier. I did once, it's
impossible, even impossible to get a direct phone line to a local
office. Instead of neglecting the postal service so that we all have
nothing to do but moan as it shrinks, use it.

 

[Aly]

Rapid and Farnell are my current favourites. Rapid's
catalogue (which I was sent gratis, without asking) is good.


Tim

Yes Rapid are excellent. They're a 10-minute drive down the road from here
and the trade counter is ideal, you just walk in with a load of numbers and
you're out in 20-minutes.

Only issue with Rapid at the moment is this ROHS compliance, it's messing up
their stock levels all over the place. But, some non-ROHS stock is
ridiculously cheap. 30VA 15v-0v-15v toroidals for £3!!!!!!

 

[Lostgallifreyan]

Can't speak for other countries, but here in Australia, RS ship free
if your order is more than $100. That doesn't make a huge order, these
days...

RS will ship for free for any order I place. Wasting money is wasting
money, even if it's not mine. The point is that the waste is
particularly stupid. Originally the courier idea was a fast track service.
Now that everyone wants it the efficient service has become neglected and
the 'fast' service isn't anymore. There's no sense in a special service if
the general one is not an option. All it does is ruin both, eventually.

 

[Aly]

Many thanks.

Email sent containing scanned image of 1993 catalogue

(i don't even know what I have here, found the catalogue while looking for a
cable)

 

[Aly]

That definitely sucks.. if anyone working in RS is reading this, consider
the Royal Mail.

Oh, RS apologise repeatedly in a perfectly worded scripted
message.............

One of the bits of work I've done is prototyping for the automotive
industry, ABS braking sub components and alike. I just said to RS, "if I
don't have it then I can't spec it."

Like I'm going to cock up a project and put RS on the list of suppliers.

Mostly I just go direct to suppliers, Microchip, SGT, Maxim etc. etc. The
stuff always arrives by Royal Mail about a week later, some of it comes from
Asia!!! It always arrives though, funny that init!

Stuff from Hong Kong gets here faster than using DHL. :-(

 

[Arfa Daily]

I agree with this. I outright refuse to use suppliers that expect ME to
pay
for their advertising material. Maplin is one them, wanting £5 for a
catalogue. RS are so stingy with their catalogues it's unheard of, you'd
think they'd be giving them away on every street corner when you see their
prices. After LOADS of arguing I lost interest, they sent them eventually
by UPS/TNT? to a rural country location taking 3-weeks of further
cock-ups,
such that I had absolutely no faith in anything I ever ordered getting to
me. The catalogues went in the bin.

Buy our products *AND* buy our sales merchandise. Use *OUR* delivery
service that *WE* have a cut price contract with, even if it'll never get
to
you because the drivers are too lazy to even bother.

This methodology wouldn't work at my local Indian Restaurant I'm sure.

To be fair to Maplin, they do give you vouchers whereby you can recover the
cost of the catalogue with your first purchase, unless you are just buying a
couple of tupp'ny resistors. RS are predominantly a trade supplier, and in
general run an excellent service, and have done for probably more years than
you've been alive. Their prices are no higher or lower than anyone else in
the trade component supply business. Their catalogue package is offered free
of charge to their trade customers, and in my experience always arrives next
day.

Any of us who are in business have to cover our costs, and that includes the
costs of advertising and catalogue producing. It's a fundamental tenet of
business practice, and if not observed, would soon lead to a company's rapid
demise in the market place. The cost of producing a catalogue package such
as RS or Farnell do, is huge, and I think that it is perfectly reasonable
for them to want to recover that cost. With trade purchasers who buy many
hundreds of pounds worth of stuff from them a year, then they do. With Joe
Punters who buy that one elusive component that they can't find anywhere
else, they don't.

PartMiner used to provide a very good free data service, and I guess that's
where most people on here knew them from. Obviously, the economics didn't
work out, so they had to start making charges for some of their services,
which moves them into a different client demographic. The bottom line is
that they are not some evil company out to screw everyone every which way.
They are just trying to stay in business and provide a service for the big
boys who need it.

Arfa

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

To be fair to Maplin, they do give you vouchers whereby you can recover the
cost of the catalogue with your first purchase, unless you are just buying a
couple of tupp'ny resistors. RS are predominantly a trade supplier, and in
general run an excellent service, and have done for probably more years than
you've been alive. Their prices are no higher or lower than anyone else in
the trade component supply business. Their catalogue package is offered free
of charge to their trade customers, and in my experience always arrives next
day.

Any of us who are in business have to cover our costs, and that includes the
costs of advertising and catalogue producing. It's a fundamental tenet of
business practice, and if not observed, would soon lead to a company's rapid
demise in the market place. The cost of producing a catalogue package such
as RS or Farnell do, is huge, and I think that it is perfectly reasonable
for them to want to recover that cost. With trade purchasers who buy many
hundreds of pounds worth of stuff from them a year, then they do. With Joe
Punters who buy that one elusive component that they can't find anywhere
else, they don't.

PartMiner used to provide a very good free data service, and I guess that's
where most people on here knew them from. Obviously, the economics didn't
work out, so they had to start making charges for some of their services,
which moves them into a different client demographic. The bottom line is
that they are not some evil company out to screw everyone every which way.
They are just trying to stay in business and provide a service for the big
boys who need it.

Arfa

Partminer bought the old CAPS database, and then offered free access
for a short while to get you hooked. Before long you needed to pay for a
subscription to access their horrible, crooked, low resolution scans of
older parts. The place I was working made the mistake of taking out a
subscription. The next thing you knew, they were constantly on the phone
trying to sell us something else. They got hold of my name during the
free period, when I did a search for an old data sheet to repair a
damaged test fixture. They called and asked for me about once a week,
till management had to tell them to stop.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

[larwe]

which moves them into a different client demographic. The bottom line is
that they are not some evil company out to screw everyone every which way.
They are just trying to stay in business and provide a service for the big
boys who need it.

The tactic they are now employing _IS_ screwing everyone every which
way.

 

[Bob Parker]

PartMiner used to provide a very good free data service, and I guess that's
where most people on here knew them from. Obviously, the economics didn't
work out, so they had to start making charges for some of their services,
which moves them into a different client demographic. The bottom line is
that they are not some evil company out to screw everyone every which way.
They are just trying to stay in business and provide a service for the big
boys who need it.

Arfa

I got the impression that from day 1 they intended to get people
hooked with their free access to data sheets, then start charging for
it. Maybe I was mistaken...

Bob

 

[Hal Murray]

PartMiner used to provide a very good free data service, and I guess that's

where most people on here knew them from. Obviously, the economics didn't
work out, so they had to start making charges for some of their services,
which moves them into a different client demographic. The bottom line is
that they are not some evil company out to screw everyone every which way.
They are just trying to stay in business and provide a service for the big
boys who need it.

I consider spammers to be evil.

It's perfectly reasonable to require reading ads in order to access
their data sheets. They could require joining an email list (for ads)
as long as the opt-out works and as long as they are up-front about
what the deal is. The magic word is informed consent.
They would have to specify something about how many and what
type of ads they were going to send.

It's not reasonble to sell/trade the email addresses they collect.
There is basically no way to opt-out from a system like that.
It is reasonable for them to forward ads for other people,
again, they have to be up front about how many/often and how big.

In theory, it might be reasonable (as in "informed consent") to
require an email address that will get sold, but I can't see
how to do that in practice. It would require that people sign
up with a disposable address. Would the advertisers accept their
end of that?

 

[Tom Lucas]

I know where you're coming from. My issue was more that RS insist on
using
a courier, and from the onset with RS it was just one big hassle.

But as for Maplin. They've become an overgrown toy store. What I do
have
here are the catalogues from 1988 thru 1992 and they're still useful,
hence
Being able to look up every 7400 device at a glance, and every
transistor package is just brilliant. It was like a total of about
20-pages
so I don't buy into their excuse today that they're too complicated to
list.
Too complicated for them today maybe....

I worked for Maplin in the Cardiff branch between '98 and 2001 while I
was at uni and got to watch the decline from the inside - it all started
with an over-eager purchasing manager who got promoted to where he could
do some damage. When I first started then the Cardiff branch was one of
the "old school" stores with a massive storeroom and a little shop at
the front mostly frequented by grubby fingered regulars or people
looking for something obscure that they couldn't get elsewhere. We were
even allowed to smoke in the storeroom - what luxury!

In '99 the shop was refitted and a large portion of the storeroom was
turned into shop space which meant that the building was full of the
stupid toys and trinkets that had become the latest rage and all there
was no room for the stuff people actually wanted. We lost nearly all the
regulars in a matter of weeks when we ended up continually being forced
to order in simple parts that always used to be carried in stock. In
fairness, the manager normally tried to get requested items carried as
stock but there was a limit to the amount of space available - which was
reduced from at least 40'x20' to 20'x10' shared with a sales counter.

It is a shame to watch it destroy itself when I used to have such a love
for the place. The Chatham branch is still one of the "old school" dingy
stores with a big storeroom but it increasingly becoming staffed by
muppets and children and they are beginning to discontinue the useful,
but obscure, bread and butter lifeblood. I lost count of the times that
someone would come in looking for a video drive belt and leave with a
bag full of other bits and pieces but, these days, they just leave empty
handed.

 

[JW]

I stopped using PartMiner years ago, when they closed down all free
access to datasheets.

Today I received an email from PartMiner which says, in essence, "our
core business model is unprofitable, so we are now professional
spamwhores. Your contact details are being sold to anyone we can find
who will pay us a nickel":


This "vendor" should be boycotted.

We stopped using them when we started getting forged semiconductors from
them. Buyer beware...

 

[Homer J Simpson]

It is a shame to watch it destroy itself when I used to have such a love
for the place. The Chatham branch is still one of the "old school" dingy
stores with a big storeroom but it increasingly becoming staffed by
muppets and children and they are beginning to discontinue the useful, but
obscure, bread and butter lifeblood. I lost count of the times that
someone would come in looking for a video drive belt and leave with a bag
full of other bits and pieces but, these days, they just leave empty
handed.

Pretty much what happened to Radio Shack in the US. Perhaps they are the
model - certainly their stock is now 1/4 of what it once sold for.

 

[CBFalconer]

Pretty much what happened to Radio Shack in the US. Perhaps they are the
model - certainly their stock is now 1/4 of what it once sold for.

I think they just laid off about 2000 employees. Virtually no
point in visiting their stores anymore. All they do is flog cell
phones.

--
Some informative links:
<<http://www.geocities.com/nnqweb/>
<http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html>
<http://www.caliburn.nl/topposting.html>
<http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html>
<http://cfaj.freeshell.org/google/>

 

[Joel Kolstad]

Pretty much what happened to Radio Shack in the US. Perhaps they are the
model - certainly their stock is now 1/4 of what it once sold for.

I think it's almost impossible to keep an electronic "parts" store open these
days, but that being said, Radio Shack was doing OK when they had a large mix
of consumer electronics and parts some 20 years ago. I think they became
greedy, by deciding to concentrate much more on the consumer electronics: Even
though the unit prices are higher, they could never compete on price with the
Big Box store for price nor selection. Their decision (pushing a decade ago)
to really concentrate on cell phones should have been obvious as a temporary
strategy -- the large layoffs this year were directly a result of the fact
that there's no longer any huge "untapped" market for cell phone users out
there -- sales today are 90+% people upgrading their handsets or new consumers
(kids!) slowly entering the market.

I'm certainly glad that Radio Shacks are still around, but -- like many
companies do over time -- the current management seems completely out of touch
with what made them so useful decades back; this leads directly to mediocrity
at best, at chapter 11 at worst.

 

[PeteS]

I think it's almost impossible to keep an electronic "parts" store open these
days, but that being said, Radio Shack was doing OK when they had a large mix
of consumer electronics and parts some 20 years ago. I think they became
greedy, by deciding to concentrate much more on the consumer electronics: Even
though the unit prices are higher, they could never compete on price with the
Big Box store for price nor selection. Their decision (pushing a decade ago)
to really concentrate on cell phones should have been obvious as a temporary
strategy -- the large layoffs this year were directly a result of the fact
that there's no longer any huge "untapped" market for cell phone users out
there -- sales today are 90+% people upgrading their handsets or new consumers
(kids!) slowly entering the market.

I'm certainly glad that Radio Shacks are still around, but -- like many
companies do over time -- the current management seems completely out of touch
with what made them so useful decades back; this leads directly to mediocrity
at best, at chapter 11 at worst.

I remember nipping down to the local Radio Shack in Riyadh about 25
years ago for the parts to make a simple RF field strength detector.
It's a shame you can't really do that nowadays.

Cheers

PeteS

 

[Homer J Simpson]

I'm certainly glad that Radio Shacks are still around, but -- like many
companies do over time -- the current management seems completely out of
touch with what made them so useful decades back; this leads directly to
mediocrity at best, at chapter 11 at worst.

The only decisions the shareholders get to make now are to approve or not
(it makes no difference) the latest complicated system for 'compensating'
the board members to 'motivate' them to do . . . . whatever.

All real decisions are made by them or elsewhere.

 

[Henry]

Well I am sad to say all the electronic components stores have left
our town and we are left with Radio Shaft.
So we are stuck with the giant mail order wharehouse venders with
there $25 or more, min order.
It's hard to predict what componenets you will need in the futere, so
you buy the most common parts to meet the min order and save that
$5.00 extra charge. Since companies are only going to make a limited
amount of certain models of electronics and discontinue it whithin a
year. You should be able to demand a schematic or service manual when
you purchase it! This is crap buying a bigscreen TV with a one year
warranty and it goes tits up eight months out of warranty and no
longer supported. All they are doing is filling our landfills and
forcing us to buy their new products on a regular schedule. Won't be
long before automobiles will follow!
Eighteen years in the electronic industry with nothing to fix.

 

[Homer J Simpson]

Well I am sad to say all the electronic components stores have left
our town and we are left with Radio Shaft.
So we are stuck with the giant mail order wharehouse venders with
there $25 or more, min order.
It's hard to predict what componenets you will need in the futere, so
you buy the most common parts to meet the min order and save that
$5.00 extra charge. Since companies are only going to make a limited
amount of certain models of electronics and discontinue it whithin a
year. You should be able to demand a schematic or service manual when
you purchase it! This is crap buying a bigscreen TV with a one year
warranty and it goes tits up eight months out of warranty and no
longer supported. All they are doing is filling our landfills and
forcing us to buy their new products on a regular schedule. Won't be
long before automobiles will follow!
Eighteen years in the electronic industry with nothing to fix.

If everything still used tubes we'd have run out of techs years ago, however
the pendulum seems to have shifted viciously in the opposite direction.

Even if we ordered the makers to support products for a reasonable lifetime
(25 years?) I suspect we would slow down the flood and not cure it. I
certainly think there should be some sort of compulsory return of dead
things to the vendor for safe disposal.

In the meantime I will try to Freecycle where I can.

--
http://freecycle.org/

or

http://www.craigslist.org/