How much discount do tradesmen get?

[alan_m]

For once I found Travis Perkins to be reasonable for a recent project when factoring the "free delivery" for multiple bulky items (order value was £190 incl VAT)

[Steve Walker]

Next day? I once paid (on expenses) £25 for a timer relay from R.S. and £90 for delivery, by a motorcycle courier, within an hour. A bakery production line was shut down waiting for it!

[Chris J Dixon]

They also had an interesting policy: if you ordered and there was no stock, that was the end of it, they wouldn't schedule subsequent delivery, they simply cancelled the order.

This meant that whilst they were very handy for getting stuff for immediate use, we were banned from ever using them for production orders.

Chris

[alan_m]

I worked for a Marconi company who were notorious for not paying bills until the last moment (plus some) and while Radio Spares were good for immediate delivery in a development environment when the bills were overdue all shipments stopped for a week or more. I do wonder how much money this actually cost the company with design engineers being more idle than necessary due to the lack of components, and with no prior warning about delays.

There was a time when we referred to Radio Spares as Reject Spares when when they over-wrote the manufactures identity and part number on the top of ICs with their own code number. Although their code number could be removed with a solvent cleaner it showed that the same RS part was assigned to chips from different manufacturers and with different specifications (speeds etc.) and in one case to the "same" generic IC from two different manufactures only one of which had a known bug with a documented work around.

[Chris Green]

RS used to be stupidly expensive, especially for small quantities and non-trade users (originally they wouldn't sell to retail customers).

However I think the likes of CPC, Rapid-Recall, Farnell (yes, I know they own CPC) and even Maplin forced RS to become cheaper and more 'user friendly'.

They're still usually a bit more expensive than the others but not always, for example they were cheapest for a Dymo Rhino label maker (some years ago now).

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

Maybe it was 2006 sand to start with, but newer as each lot was purchased. grin.... Brian

[Andrew]

A lot has changed in the 15 years since the original post (Read the date before replying).

80% markup seems typical for car parts too if my ex-MOT tester neighbour is anything to go by.

[Theo]

It is worth going via Topcashback, which can have quite generous cashback for the likes of RS, Farnell, CPC, etc.

We get a consortium discount on Farnell/CPC (it varies by line), but the cashback seems to work out at roughly the same discount for normal people making cash orders.

Theo