Digikey - UK.

Arrived today in the post, a middling thick tome... Digikey-UK catalog, free shipping on orders over 100 pounds... Quite a lot of handy stuff that's been awkward to order from stock. :)

Yeah but NBG for the odd special item - £10 handling charge plus £12 delivery...

Geo

Have you seen their terms of sale?

18? for shipping, farnell and rs charge 7,5? 13? for orders less than 100?, farnell and rs no minimun. Then there's all taxes and customs rights added to your invoice.

I don't think it's cost-effective either for prototiping because of the minimuns, or for large orders where you can take advantage of the strong euro, and order directly from digikey US. Which is a shame really. Oh, and the catalog has only a fraction of the available products.

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Steve Sousa

I am convinced these companies have a kick-back arrangement with the freight forwarders. They are making a better profit on the freight than on the items they are sending, especially for small qty sales.

For instance, last week I ordered a USD12 switch weighing less than

100gm packed from a US company and UPS wanted USD65 to ship it to Australia. Luckily, the company supplying the switch bowed to my request and sent it via USPS for USD5.30. When I have tried to buy from Digikey (and others) in the US they absolutely refuse to send by anyone other than either Fedex, DHL, UPS or whoever they have a contract with and the freight costs are simply exorbitant.

Ross H

I saw the terms - and sure they are expensive for small prototyping, but in a unit with hundreds of 0402 parts, a few decent ICs (for example, look up the TI TL16C554 quad uart - Farnell wants about £15 in 1-9 qtys, Digikey will sell it for more like £5. For reference, TI shows budgetary pricing for this at just over $8 in 1k qtys) and other things, a £100 order is not that high. I'll put up with that order minimum and the time for prices like that for my protos (which have to go on PCBs, not breadboard, anyway)

For those things I need tomorrow, and can actually find, RS and Farnell (amongst some others) are fine, but there's just so much stuff they do not carry. Try getting standard (well, from the value list, anyway)

0402 resistors such as 402k, or a decent range of current sense resistors. My hope is that Farnell, RS and the others will upgrade their lines tout-de-suite in face of the competition.

It's not a panacea, but at least I can get the stuff I need, even though I may need to pad the order to make it financially worthwhile (although it should be said that on a tight development cycle, £100 or so is nothing compared to getting the product out the door).

Cheers

PeteS

delivery...

Not only that, but you can be sure that they'll attempt delivery when you are out - and if you want to pick it up from their depot, it will be at least 50 miles away.

Farnell has free delivery for orders over £20.

I'm still curious though. How did you get the catalogue ?

Graham

I got one as well. I was actually registered on their web site, and have actually placed an order with them and had it delivered. It was expensive, but Microchip wouldn't have the dsPIC chips I needed for some time and Digikey had them in stock.

Leon

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Leon Heller
http://www.geocities.com/leon_heller

The prices i mentioned were Euros, not UK pounds, sorry for the "?"

That was a surprise, it simply apeared at my door, i placed an order once in may 1999! Before i knew farnell existed and rs would only give me a catalog if i bought something, but i didn't have a catalog to look up something to buy!

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Steve Sousa

delivery...

I hadn't actaully checked out terms at the time I posted. Nasty.

You'd think they could get their shit together in one big daily parcel from digikey-US to digikey-UK, and just have a final packaging operation in the UK.

delivery...

It's a pity that they seem to only be pushing the fast delivery service (which is good), with no option for cheaper shipping - you can get a lot of components in a $5 USPS Global Priority flat-rate Envelope.

service (which is good), with no

USPS Global Priority flat-rate

I noticed that in the "International Shipping" of the Mouser catalog they say they'll ship international orders under 4 pounds for $12 via USPS Global Mail. That's not bad at all (but I'm sure it'll be surface mail and take weeks).

Tim.

Mouser send anything under total weight of 4lbs or less, think, by USPS Global Priority, I`ve ordered Sunday had it at U.K. door Thursday,in a small box, not USPS GP enevlope, for unobtanium parts from RS/Farnell delivered for 12 USD about 7GBP.

Digikey have a UK catalogue with pricing in GBP including VAT and brokerage.

Mouser will send you a printed copy of their USD priced catalogue on request, with low shipping, uninsured, on small orders.

Farnell now ask if you want to search Newark U.S. stock ,as well, on website.

For general bits kind of like Rapid:

Its a smaller world.j

Adam

You can add Newark items to a normal Farnell order, but there is an extra shipping charge - £12.95 I think.