I needed to replenish my resistor supplies, so I placed my first order with Newark ('Canada')last week.
Opened the package tonight.
I thought :"I'll take a couple of minutes to put these in the parts bins."
I was surprised to find no part description on the parts bags.
😱
See attached pics.
Even discounting the very high shipping cost (double the competition) and slow delivery, that would have made my 'future shopping' decision easy!
🙂
"fool me once, etc etc...."
Opened the package tonight.
I thought :"I'll take a couple of minutes to put these in the parts bins."
I was surprised to find no part description on the parts bags.
😱
See attached pics.
Even discounting the very high shipping cost (double the competition) and slow delivery, that would have made my 'future shopping' decision easy!
🙂
"fool me once, etc etc...."
Attachments
That's a bit unhandy, but it's not so difficult to guess from the manufacturer's part number that it's a 470 kohm +/- 5 % resistor.
In that specific case maybe....for me, there are no excuses. Such information is mandatory on a label, once placed the data field in that printing program it doesn't cost a dime anyway.
To the defense of Newark, these orders are overwhelmingly for customer purchase departments. Those people are not necessarily interested in what it is, probably wouldn't recognize a transistor from a power supply. All they need to know is if the order code has come in for project XYZ, and the manufacturer needs to know which code part has to be inserted in which position on a board.
If you have ever outsourced board assembly, you know this.
The extra info that Mouser and Digikey give is a nice gesture to the hobbyist (I appreciate it too!), but no more. It all costs money, setting up and maintaining a cross reference list between manu code and actual name/value etc for a million parts, linking data bases, verifying merge fields, that kind of stuff. If they think it doesn't lead to more sales, why spend the money?
Jan
If you have ever outsourced board assembly, you know this.
The extra info that Mouser and Digikey give is a nice gesture to the hobbyist (I appreciate it too!), but no more. It all costs money, setting up and maintaining a cross reference list between manu code and actual name/value etc for a million parts, linking data bases, verifying merge fields, that kind of stuff. If they think it doesn't lead to more sales, why spend the money?
Jan
That's a bit unhandy, but it's not so difficult to guess, unless you are color blind, that Yellow Violet Yellow Gold is a 470 kohm +/- 5 % resistor.
It goes either way, there's quite a few parts which would have almost the same descriptions but absolutely aren't substitutes - dual transistors in different layouts for example.
Not all customers are hobbyists or big manufacturing companies.
There are also thousends of R&D labs who do not have sophisticated ERP software and warehouse.
Also, the cross reference is already there....look at the description in the catalogue:
https://www.newark.com/c/passive-components/resistors-fixed-value/through-hole-resistors
There are simply no excuses, sorry.
Newark US has two labels. One is an internal routing label as you show. The other shows the vendor part #, their part #, and a short description. About one part out of 100 misses the part # label on my shipments.
I find Newark US UPS charges half what mouser charges. Usually about $6.80 for the 500 miles there. I guess they get a bigger volume discount from UPS. Mouser is never less than $12, perhaps because they are 1000 miles away. Then if I order from Mouser on Thursday they send it 2nd day air for UPS surface rate so it gets here on Monday. USPS priority would have delivered on Saturday for free, but Mouser doesn't allow that.
If you can wait a day or two, specify Royal Post shipment. Newark has the option. USPS is sometimes cheaper than UPS ground. Definitely if you're 1000 miles away, because UPS has a distance charge and USPS doesn't. If your location is coded as a residence, UPS & FedEx have residence charges, USPS doesn't. Probably Royal Mail doesn't either. My house is coded business UPS, residence by FedEx. Two FedEx surface trucks will pass my house before the special residence truck gets here about 1700. Digikey tried to force me to FedEx last week with an alleged $7.99 flat rate. I've been hit with the residence surcharge before after being quoted great FedEx prices, so I specified USPS. It got here the 2nd day at 0930, which never happens with UPS surface rate because of their morning truck special charge. UPS is always after 1500 on the 2nd shift truck.
I find Newark US UPS charges half what mouser charges. Usually about $6.80 for the 500 miles there. I guess they get a bigger volume discount from UPS. Mouser is never less than $12, perhaps because they are 1000 miles away. Then if I order from Mouser on Thursday they send it 2nd day air for UPS surface rate so it gets here on Monday. USPS priority would have delivered on Saturday for free, but Mouser doesn't allow that.
If you can wait a day or two, specify Royal Post shipment. Newark has the option. USPS is sometimes cheaper than UPS ground. Definitely if you're 1000 miles away, because UPS has a distance charge and USPS doesn't. If your location is coded as a residence, UPS & FedEx have residence charges, USPS doesn't. Probably Royal Mail doesn't either. My house is coded business UPS, residence by FedEx. Two FedEx surface trucks will pass my house before the special residence truck gets here about 1700. Digikey tried to force me to FedEx last week with an alleged $7.99 flat rate. I've been hit with the residence surcharge before after being quoted great FedEx prices, so I specified USPS. It got here the 2nd day at 0930, which never happens with UPS surface rate because of their morning truck special charge. UPS is always after 1500 on the 2nd shift truck.
Last edited:
Almost the same number: This is how, expecting some specific data receiver, I badly needed on the field, I received a "adder carry look ahead"😡. Cost me an extra week delay waiting for the right stuff.
Not taking sides, just curious: can you please post a scan of the actual bill?
I guess items are separated there, each line reading something like
Yes, slightly more inconvenient than "just reading it on the bag" but not necessarily a deal breaking problem.
Please do.
I guess items are separated there, each line reading something like
the bill part code matching the one on the bag.
Yes, slightly more inconvenient than "just reading it on the bag" but not necessarily a deal breaking problem.
Please do.
Last edited:
Sure; see attached.
I'm a 'retired guy who is a hobbyist', but even for me I'm not interested in spending time matching codes between shipping lists and plastic bags (or reading the resistor colour codes through the package) when I could be spending time doing something more productive or amusing.
You would think that the people who make these decisions - to deliberately NOT print part descriptions on the bag labels- would 'check out the competition'......
I'm surprised nobody -yet- has pointed out that it's better than just getting one bag with all the components mixed together.... 🙂
Attachments
Well, it was different in my shipment.
Even though the order was placed through a 'Newark Canada' website, the components were shipped from Newark in Gaffney, SC.
Each bag had the uninformative label I showed in my picture, and on the other side of the bag, a large label with a very large bar code and even less text. There was no 'short description' of any kind. Completely different from Mouser and Digikey.
You are lucky!
Mouser and Digikey are 'not typical' of US companies in their shipping to Canada - they charge very reasonable rates - either free shipping or $20 or less, depending on the order size.
I wasn't paying attention on the Newark order; I hit 'confirm order' without paying attention to the shipping charge.
My fault.....
The next morning I followed up the automated reply from Newark with a 'cancel my order' email, complaining about the shipping cost but received no reply.
The shipping fee was $40 for a medium size padded envelope with some resistor packets. Please see the picture attached.
Live and learn.
Never again.
Since I'm in Canada, I wasn't presented with that option...we just recently stopped being a British colony.🙂
I chose the cheapest shipping offered - but I must have overlooked the pricing.
Attachments
A very productive and amusing thread.😀
Yup-
I'd rather rant here than sort parts bags, for sure!😀
Your brain is better than mine!
Or, 'different' anyway!🙂
You forgot the wattage....
Part number is PR01000104703JR500
Yup-
Aside from the fact (already pointed out) that it wouldn't cost Newark anything extra to print a text description on the label.....
Newark is definitely adopting a "why bother?" attitude.
I don't have any idea how large a purchaser would have to be to have an automated parts receiving system to handle those Newark labels, but my guess is that somewhere along the line a human would be involved in sorting the parts.
And there's a cost to that.
I also appreciate that for many people, it's no trouble at all to sort parts like this. For me, it is, so I'll stick to Mouser and Digikey.
Parts bags are labelled with text
Shipping is fast
Shipping charges are reasonable
They reply to emails.
Four 'Fails' for Newark.
I just started this post to help others avoid the same 'customer experience'; hopefully it will do that.
I've gotta go and sort some resistors.🙂
It ALWAYS costs money to do something extra. If only because you need an extra clerk to sort out the 0.1% of the orders where there are errors and customers complain on the phone.
BTW, if you are all so fed up with Newark, why do you still order from them? How come they aren't bankrupt yet ? ;-)
Jan
Just adding a recent experience I had with Element14 - AFAIK same company as Newark (Premier Farnell, which again is owned by Avent). A friend got 8 x 33000uF electrolytic capacitors from them and upon opening the package he found that they had packed 8 of these hefty capacitors without any individual wrapping/protection in one padded envelop, and the capacitors had some physical damage (like dents and puncture marks from probably physical contact with one another within the envelop), and were wet from a fluid/liquid (leaking?).
Element14 took back the product and promptly refunded. But the whole episode indicates a lack of care in the process, and is disappointing. Hope they will learn from the experience but who knows, such a big company...
I got some big caps from RS Online and Mouser - RS Online caps came in nice individual bubble wrap packets, and Mouser caps were tightly packed in several layers of bubble-wrap.
Element14 took back the product and promptly refunded. But the whole episode indicates a lack of care in the process, and is disappointing. Hope they will learn from the experience but who knows, such a big company...
I got some big caps from RS Online and Mouser - RS Online caps came in nice individual bubble wrap packets, and Mouser caps were tightly packed in several layers of bubble-wrap.
I am primarily using Mouser, very happy with them. They have an office/warehouse in Germany for European customers.
Jan
Jan
- Status
- Not open for further replies.