I was on an engineering team in college that built full-size racecars (the competition was called Formula SAE). Digikey offered us a 10-15% discount, depending on the parts we were buying, and Mouser offered a 3% discount (at that point, why even bother?). Digikey's discount was easier to use too. Occasionally Mouser had something that Digikey didn't but I tried to order from Digikey as much as possible.
Why I'm done with Mouser Electronics
91–100 of 179 posts
Re: Why I'm done with Mouser Electronics
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
3 weeks? You would have gotten them faster directly from China and probably for a lot cheaper. The only reason for me to order from a US based company is faster shipping.
What's the best place to order form china?
lcsc.com. But keep in mind that their prices for Western companies ICs is often worse than DigiKey/Mouser. The passives and connectors are a lot cheaper.
Re: Why I'm done with Mouser Electronics
#93Wow I am going through the same thing as the author right now. I recently placed an order with Mouser doing side by side comparison shopping with Digi-Key. The last time I used Mouser was 12 years ago in my college days. I thought hey they were good back then let me just compare the prices and Mouser came ahead this time due to the shipping cost. I am just ordering replacement capacitors for an old PC motherboard tha…
It’s funny, when I was randomly picking a parts website in school (electrical engineering), Digikey gave me much better vibes. I mean look at their websites! One is clearly the result of getting a handful of hardware engineers in a room and telling them “we need to put our catalogue online!” The other looks like it has been infected by “UI” and “design” and other non-engineering concepts.
Can you offer some examples? I just went to each site, and compared their home page, product listing table, and product page. They are so comparable in design/UI (to the point that it feels like any time one makes any change, the other probably follows suit) that I have no idea which one you consider to be afflicted.
Re: Why I'm done with Mouser Electronics
#94Experience from irregular customer (hobby and education) is that Mouser has not been so bad here in Europe. At least not yet. Haven't used Digikey much because it meant dealing with customs. Haven't checked lately if this has been changed. I've worked professionally with Arrow and it has been nightmare. China just isn't worth of effort – dubious quality with long shipping times. But probably most of the time I've use…
Digikey also ships DDP, they do the customs for you.
Re: Why I'm done with Mouser Electronics
#95Trying to buy from either Mouser or Digikey from Europe is very misleading. They have European shops in European domain. But when you are going to pay. You get smashed with a ridiculous delivery price and the uncertainty of how much customs will charge you... Wish we had a good alternative rather than having to get components in ebay/aliexpress.
When ordering from Mouser I didn't need to do anything with customs, and VAT is included during checkout. I suppose DigiKey works the same.
Re: Why I'm done with Mouser Electronics
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you have the money, and you're going to use the tools regularly, it's often worth the 'buy once, cry once' premium. One of my cats passed away last year, and before I realized he was having kidney problems he'd taken to dusting a closet in a spare room. I tried and tried with my old carpet cleaner (10y+ old upright thing) and just could not make progress even with nature's miracle enzymatic shampoo/etc. I recently…
The problem now is the harbor freight ones are too good and basically will never break; so if you don't know what you're missing, you never find out.
Is that a bug or a feature?
Re: Why I'm done with Mouser Electronics
#97Trying to buy from either Mouser or Digikey from Europe is very misleading. They have European shops in European domain. But when you are going to pay. You get smashed with a ridiculous delivery price and the uncertainty of how much customs will charge you... Wish we had a good alternative rather than having to get components in ebay/aliexpress.
I've ordered from both to EU in the past year and haven't had issues like that.
Re: Why I'm done with Mouser Electronics
#98Wow I am going through the same thing as the author right now. I recently placed an order with Mouser doing side by side comparison shopping with Digi-Key. The last time I used Mouser was 12 years ago in my college days. I thought hey they were good back then let me just compare the prices and Mouser came ahead this time due to the shipping cost. I am just ordering replacement capacitors for an old PC motherboard tha…
It’s funny, when I was randomly picking a parts website in school (electrical engineering), Digikey gave me much better vibes. I mean look at their websites! One is clearly the result of getting a handful of hardware engineers in a room and telling them “we need to put our catalogue online!” The other looks like it has been infected by “UI” and “design” and other non-engineering concepts.
> One is clearly the result of getting a handful of hardware engineers in a room and telling them “we need to put our catalogue online!” The other looks like it has been infected by “UI” and “design” and other non-engineering concepts.
1. I'm not sure why you think UI and design are not engineering concepts. If people can't figure out how to use your product then it's useless.
2. These sites are almost exactly the same
https://www.digikey.com/en/products
The home pages have a search box & drop down menus at the top, product menu on the left, carousel in the middle. Then some featured products, some featured manufacturers and a footer.
https://www.mouser.com/c/electromechanical/relays-contactors...
https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/solid-state-relay...
A product category has a bunch of combo boxes for filtering plus a table showing results. The results tables are almost exactly the same except Mouser freezes the left columns. Both have a lightbox popover for the product image.
https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Omron-Electronics/G3VM-...
https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/panasonic-electri...
Product pages both have photo, specs, number in stock and pricing. The only thing possibly offensive about Mouser's is that the sections on the pricing page are collapsed.
Re: Why I'm done with Mouser Electronics
#99Trying to buy from either Mouser or Digikey from Europe is very misleading. They have European shops in European domain. But when you are going to pay. You get smashed with a ridiculous delivery price and the uncertainty of how much customs will charge you... Wish we had a good alternative rather than having to get components in ebay/aliexpress.
Farnell has warehouses in Europe and they say on every item where it will ship from.
No idea what's really available though, I only buy vert rarely what some pros tell me to for work purposes.
Re: Why I'm done with Mouser Electronics
#100It would seriously disappoint me if Mouser or Digi-Key went downhill. I settled on Mouser for my business years ago because they had more "consumer electronics" stuff, e.g., audio connectors and potentiometers. To the point where I designed my products around parts that they were the exclusive distributors for.
So I'm hoping these are one-off issues and not trends. So far I've had no issues myself.
A bigger problem has been the general scramble for available chips of some specialized types. I appreciate why the engineers prefer designing around generic parts when possible.