Yet another reason to avoid PartMiner

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...

Reply to
David R Brooks
Loading thread data ...

"Aly" wrote in news:7qOdnUV snipped-for-privacy@bt.com:

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.

Reply to
Lostgallifreyan

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!!!!!!

Reply to
Aly

David R Brooks wrote in news:451ef3eb$0$15669$ snipped-for-privacy@per-qv1-newsreader-01.iinet.net.au:

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.

Reply to
Lostgallifreyan

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)

Reply to
Aly

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 c*ck 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. :-(

Reply to
Aly

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

Reply to
Arfa Daily

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.
 Click to see the full signature
Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

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

Reply to
larwe

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

Reply to
Bob Parker

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?

--
The suespammers.org mail server is located in California.  So are all my
other mailboxes.  Please do not send unsolicited bulk e-mail or unsolicited
 Click to see the full signature
Reply to
Hal Murray

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.

Reply to
Tom Lucas

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

Reply to
JW

"Tom Lucas" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@demeter.uk.clara.net...

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.

Reply to
Homer J Simpson

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:
Reply to
CBFalconer

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.

Reply to
Joel Kolstad

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

Reply to
PeteS

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.

Reply to
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 t*ts 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.

Reply to
Henry

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
 Click to see the full signature
Reply to
Homer J Simpson

ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.