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.

 

That's some of the best news I've had since I returned to the UK from
the states a year ago. Farnell and RS may be decent, but they've a long
way to go to match DigiKey.

Cheers

PeteS

 

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.

 

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

Geo

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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!

 

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.

 

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

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:

www.rapidelectronics.co.uk

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.