Who to order electronic components from?

[alan_m]

and often dodgy fake capacitors etc.

[Robert]

My RS account seems still live even though I havent used it for several years.

[Fredxx]

I only use mine one a year or so. Most old catalogue companies now charge delivery for small orders so the advantages of an account are much less than they used to be.

[Brian]

I tend to use EBay and hunt out places with free P&P.

[Joe]

Farnell is currently charging £2 + VAT for small orders, which I think is cheaper than CPC, while CPC parts (from its much smaller range) are usually cheaper.

Farnell and RS deliver next day, apart from weekends. Most companies charge quite a lot more for next-day.

[David Wade]

A few I have used....

on e-bay

and

the last one also has a web site, but ordering from them on E-Bay seems to work better

Dave

[Animal]

A good last resort, but not recommendable due to the high level of scamming, fake parts etc etc

[Animal]

A lousy idea that was - once you built something it then had to be pulled apart. I also remember S-DEC.

[Joe]

I didn't have one of those, I had a later T-Dec. Still have it, in fact, though the same kind of thing is now very cheap in comparison, and I have a few larger ones.

Microcontroller manufacturers often produce 'demo' PCBs at reasonable prices. I have several Microchip boards, mostly TQFP44, that I use for surface-mount breadboarding. Though it is possible to split Veroboard tracks and use SOIC chips that way. Just tedious.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Not arf as dodgy as China... The transistors I bought from there would have made even Clive Sinclair blush. They all blew within minutes of switch on.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I have had pretty good experience with ebay. And some of the other firms, but they all charge massive handling fees.

[Chris Green]

RS are much 'friendlier' than they used to be in accepting anyone as a customer and having reasonable delivery costs for small quantities. I've been surprised recently to find thay are cheaper for some things than the rest (i.e. CPC/Farnell, Rapid, etc.).

[David Wade]

I would say several reputable suppliers have E-Bay shops. In the past I have order from JabDog on both their web site and E-Bay shop. The web site is often out of date and delivery times interesting. On E-Bay the shop is always up-to-date and delivery times realistic. I assume this is because will reduce their vendor reputation if things don't work smoothly.....

Dave

[Ian <$]

I generally use Farnell for most parts, though for non-account customers the delivery proces are a bit steep:

£40 and above (Exc. VAT) - Online orders FREE £0.01 - £19.99 (Exc. VAT) - Online orders £9.95 £20 - £39.99 (Exc. VAT) - Online orders £5.95

(The £2 delivery for small orders is only for account customers)

I fell out with RS as a student, thanks to the snotty attitide of their sales rep. Didn't think students were worth talking to, and absolutely refused to let us have a catalogue. Around the same time Farnell happily set me up with a trade account and sent regular catalogues for many years. Should have known students grow up (sometimes!). Haven't knowingly put a single penny in RS's pocket since then. Farnel has had many K's of personal business, plus a significantly larger amount via company orders...

[Fredxx]

Interesting, I have a long standing company account and I'm being charged the non-account customer delivery charges.

Funny, once I setup a company I had no problem with RS. They also have a Direct Debit facility to pay off your monthly account. Farnell have been promising the same feature for 20 years or so but it's never come into fruition.

My issue with Farnell was I had a small amount owing of £4 and they stopped the account without telling me. I ordered components and they never came, I even got an email they being sorted and packed. But no notification of a hold or they wouldn't be sent.

So I was a well and truly pissed off customer. That was a long time ago.

[Fredxx]

I take that back. I wasn't logged in. There is a £2 fee, that is referred to as s handling charge.

[Brian]

I’ve not had issues with ordering components off EBay.

The odd error - eg 5.5 x 2.1 sockets sent rather than 5.5x 2.5 but the seller simply sent the correct ones and told me to keep the others.

[Animal]

I've never found RS prices to make sense. Their only strength has been more extensive specs.

[Animal]

IMLE with ebay electronic bits, if you're willing to accept binning a %age of stuff and the resulting delays & need to test, then they're as cheap as it gets, unless of course you buy direct from china. But by the time someone has the skills to test everything, we don't want to.

[alan_m]

Radio Spares, now rebranded as RS, was always expensive but for development work next day morning delivery was the bonus. You cannot have design engineers just sitting on their arses doing nothing waiting for parts to turn up.

In the past the RS catalogues detailed the fairly large discounts they would give if the total spend by a company over a fixed period of time was in the tens or hundreds of thousand pounds.

With the company I worked for, the job got charged the price in the RS catalogue and the holding company head office kept the discount money.

At one time became known a Reject Spares. They over "painted" their own catalogue numbers on top of the manufacturers numbers. The paint could be removed to find that the 10 off IC you had ordered were from a variety of manufactures and with different speed ratings etc.