Author Topic: Farnell / CPC utter incompetence (Read 14202 times)

voltsandjolts · « **Reply #50 on:** November 04, 2018, 12:51:49 pm »

Seems to happen to me after a minute browsing their site - please get your act together Farnell.

HwAoRrDk · « **Reply #51 on:** November 04, 2018, 01:55:21 pm »

You know, it really is getting ridiculous that this issue seems to be widely affecting a large number of people, and yet still persists after quite some time.

On a whim, I thought I'd take a quick Google search for "farnell access denied", and came up with a number of threads on the Element14 community forums:

https://www.element14.com/community/thread/65053/l/cat-access-element14-sg-store
https://www.element14.com/community/thread/65271/l/access-denied-on-newark-store-server
https://www.element14.com/community/thread/65266/l/access-denied-farnell
https://www.element14.com/community/thread/65307/l/access-denied
https://www.element14.com/community/thread/65284/l/firefox-issue
https://www.element14.com/community/thread/48076/l/access-denied

Judging by the responses to those posts, it seems Farnell/Element14 support staff are well aware, and yet can't seem to find the root cause.

I'm wondering what the contributing factors are here. For all the people here that have experienced this problem, can we get a quick poll regarding the following two things?

- What browser are you using? (e.g. Chrome, Firefox, etc.)
- Do you use an ad-blocker or other anti-tracking/privacy/content-manipulating measures? (e.g. AdBlock, uBlock, PrivacyBadger, Ghostery, Pi-Hole, etc.)

Using Chrome with no browser extensions loaded, I spent about 10 minutes clicking around without hitting the error, whereas with Firefox or Chrome with ad-blocker enabled, it only takes a couple of minutes of activity to get the error.

ocset · « **Reply #52 on:** November 04, 2018, 05:14:50 pm »

thanks, i cant answer yet as its the computer at work where i search farnell.....but my home computer is slow aswell on farnell.
I use chrome but how do i know if i have extensions loaded?

Macbeth · « **Reply #53 on:** November 05, 2018, 02:25:25 am »

Yes, I found I get this error with Chrome + uBlock.

I resort to using Edge which I haven't interfered with, total virgin setup, has no extension stuff and have no problems.

Mustakari · « **Reply #54 on:** November 06, 2018, 08:20:29 am »

Using Edge is totally unacceptable for many of us as it's non-free on a non-free os.
Farnell has lost two orders now in a week because of this.
This is getting a bit silly.

bd139 · « **Reply #55 on:** November 06, 2018, 08:34:16 am »

In my case it’s because Edge sucks

Chrome and ublock here.

r0d3z1 · « **Reply #56 on:** November 06, 2018, 09:09:33 am »

Quote from: Macbeth on October 27, 2018, 03:52:09 pm

Yes, I constantly get the Access Denied when using Chrome. It persists like this until I clear cookies or and/or use incognito mode. However after a few searches the bug returns.

I switched to using Edge and didn't have any problem.

It happens also to me quite often, usually clear the cookies solve the problem in my case.

TERRA Operative · « **Reply #57 on:** November 06, 2018, 09:24:09 am »

I wonder if by using an adblocker, a request which is denied by the adblocker keeps attempting to ping and eventually an anti-DDOS mechanism kicks in and blocks any further access?

If anyone is finding they are blocked and are using an adblocker, try disabling it for Farnell and try again without changing anything else.

AndyC_772 · « **Reply #58 on:** November 06, 2018, 11:13:56 am »

Surely the point of the ad blocker would be to prevent the request from being sent at all?

I've had the same problem with Farnell recently. Several orders have gone elsewhere as a result of 'access denied' errors, which is a shame as they're usually my first choice supplier.

Ad and script blocking are completely standard components of a business PC. No valid reason exists for a B2B web site not to work with them.

HwAoRrDk · « **Reply #59 on:** November 06, 2018, 11:38:11 am »

If there is a correlation between this issue and running an ad-blocker, and that clearing cookies seems to (at least temporarily) resolve the problem, I would suspect that one of the blocked requests is perhaps resulting in a cookie either not being set or not being updated at some point, and this omission results in client requests being flagged as 'bad' and access being blocked.

MK14 · « **Reply #60 on:** November 06, 2018, 12:07:55 pm »

At https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Reviews/Premier-Farnell-Reviews-E10150.htm
there seem to be a number of employee reviews and stuff.

A number of them are being rather rude about the company, and painting a bad picture of the competence of the IT department.

Examples:

Quote

Data Architect Interview
Anonymous Employee in Leeds, England
Accepted Offer
Negative Experience
Easy Interview
Application

I applied through a recruiter. The process took 5 weeks. I interviewed at Premier Farnell (Leeds, England) in July 2011.

Interview

Had three interviews. Mostly with the VP of IT at Leeds. what a joke. I didn't know much yet he knows less than me on project management, the president is even worse. GIS is run by idiots. If they were in my previous company they would be making he tea.

Interview Questions

There weren't any, very predictable interview
Answer Question
Negotiation

Easy, this is wha I want, take it or leave it. hate to think what the VP and President are on for being idiots.

Quote

"Management Maybrook"
Former Employee - Anonymous Employee
Doesn't Recommend
Negative Outlook
No opinion of CEO
I worked at Premier Farnell full-time

Pros

Non - canteen is even abissmal.

Cons

Worst place I’ve ever worked by a country mile.
I’m an experienced middle/senior manager who doesn’t need guidance which is a good job as I was provided with little to No direction from director level. I would be constantly be littled when challenging the status quo and when the director did actually turn up to meetings he would pick faults with everything. I think he though that was him doing a good …
Show More

Advice to Management

Listen to your people, have an acceptance of your current capabilities with your current infrastructure and team leaders. A lot of dead wood to go. Poor grading system and wide margins in terms of pay banding without any defined criteria to reference. A lot of work to do here. Glad I’m out of there.

Quote

"Management are a shambles - Such a shame"
Former Employee - Anonymous Employee in Leeds, England
Doesn't Recommend
Negative Outlook
No opinion of CEO
I worked at Premier Farnell full-time

Pros

Nice people on bottom level

Cons

Shift Managers and above have no backbone, they'll agree with problems and do nothing about it. They only listen to their own. If you have a good idea it's dismissed then they come up with it a month later! One particular shift manager (heard is leaving) is so unprofessional it's unbelievable how he's managed to stay there that long. They all lie, kiss each others backsides, sweep stuff under the carpet then wonder …
Show More

Advice to Management

Don't pretend you can manage, if you really deep down know that you can't, then leave! Stop making every other poor buggers life hell! Put higher management on shifts, what's good for the goose is good for the gander!

Quote

"So bad it was almost funny"
Former Employee - Programmer in Leeds, England
Doesn't Recommend
Negative Outlook
Disapproves of CEO
I worked at Premier Farnell full-time (Less than a year)

Pros

Being able to finish early in a Friday after doing half an hour over Monday To Thursday. The canteen was good as well and there was a really nostalgic arcade machine that brought back a lot of memories!

Cons

Where do I start?! This company is full of incompetence. Departments work against each other, requests to grant you access/software, that your manager states you need to do your job, are ignored or blocked with no good reason. The standard practice is to block everything and if you really need it you have to fight.
There is a really depressing atmosphere in the offices, which in themselves are run down and a …
Show More

Advice to Management

Move offices and move towards getting departments to work together - not against each other. Have a clear out of the incompetent dead wood.

bd139 · « **Reply #61 on:** November 06, 2018, 12:15:45 pm »

LOL it's amazing how transparent companies are these days thanks to things like Glassdoor.

Wilksey · « **Reply #62 on:** November 06, 2018, 12:36:25 pm »

Sounds familiar.

I found out that a company I worked for got someone to leave many false positive reviews on GlassDoor under different accounts to counteract the negative (real!) reviews.

Management are a joke, I.T are useless, and some staff are oxygen thieves, standard Corporate outfit then!

HwAoRrDk · « **Reply #63 on:** November 13, 2018, 03:48:37 pm »

Well, they seem to have solved the 'Access Denied' problem - no issues browsing around the website today.

But just when you thought things were looking up... this happens:

Oh, and B+ for irony, an error from their error-handling page.

bd139 · « **Reply #64 on:** November 13, 2018, 03:53:47 pm »

Also -99 clue points for websphere. I suppose that explains a lot really.

Whales · « **Reply #65 on:** November 13, 2018, 07:57:45 pm »

*Looks up websphere*

Oh god.

IBM? I can't find any info on it newer than 5 years, but I presume the "ancient versions of java" bit still holds.

bd139 · « **Reply #66 on:** November 13, 2018, 08:20:16 pm »

Websphere is current and up to date. You just dont hear anything about it because everyone who uses it is chained to a desk somewhere in Mumbai now somewhere behind several layers of IBM consultants and management. These poor buggers are basically forced to use the lowest possible efficiency path (the entire Rational suite) to generate hundreds and hundreds of thousands of pages of XML and documentation to describe a trivial system at great cost. This is then knocked up in one of IBM's international sweat shops, deployed to some expensive IBM kit that the client didn't need and then the client is NDA'ed into submission.

I can lay the same turd down for 100x less cost or something that works for 50x less cost

mk_ · « **Reply #67 on:** November 13, 2018, 08:32:04 pm »

Well.... Avnet....

an other story of incompetence during the last weeks:

MOQ for an evalboard (400 USD) is 200pcs...
I mean... 2 ist ok - but twohundred? I don`t want to evaluate UPS or DHL, I need to evaluate a special component...

bd139 · « **Reply #68 on:** November 13, 2018, 08:37:26 pm »

LOL that's stupid

HwAoRrDk · « **Reply #69 on:** November 13, 2018, 08:50:42 pm »

Also LOL-worthy is something else I noticed earlier... Has anyone clicked on the 'Our Web Journey' link that now appears in the page header?

It leads you to a page where they wax lyrical about how great their website is and how much it has improved over the last few months. Granted, it has improved in some of the areas claimed, and well done to them on that, but then they go and include this nugget:

Quote

Faster Website
Over 98% of customers now receive good consistent performance from our website.

bd139 · « **Reply #70 on:** November 13, 2018, 08:55:33 pm »

That also means "1 in 50 customers treated like shit"

station240 · « **Reply #71 on:** November 14, 2018, 06:02:45 am »

I read it as "Up to 2% of customers still receive bad inconsistent performance from our website."

tom66 · « **Reply #72 on:** November 14, 2018, 07:08:22 am »

Farnell's website is trash.

I know an ex-employee of the web development team, he agreed with me.

The problem is management is focused on chasing after all those Web 2.0 trends that were great but we still have internet connections with ping time of 50ms so the more resources you stuff onto a page, the slower it gets. The website is full of back-and-forth server requests for almost everything, unoptimised Javascript and uncompressed images. I did a comparison a while ago - results attached - which show that Digikey is almost 3x faster to load. That's a lot of time when you're constantly browsing for parts.

Because of this, I pretty much only use Digi-Key. I know my employer buys a lot of things from Farnell, they are our main supplier, and they order magnitudes more than I ever do... so perhaps Farnell don't care about the average engineer, although their investment into things like Element14 and Ben Heck would seem to disagree.

mk_ · « **Reply #73 on:** November 17, 2018, 12:44:11 pm »

btw:

I received finaly an answer from someone from Farnell DE saying that the website is known not working with firefox, I should give it a try with chrome. A nogo here at my office.

Well, they are loosing business not I. Seems that they don`t care about that.

AndyC_772 · « **Reply #74 on:** November 18, 2018, 08:53:23 am »

New PC with Windows 10, Firefox, Ghostery and NoScript here.

With no special permissions set, the Farnell home page loaded OK but was missing some active content. Fair enough.

Set farnell.com to be 'trusted' and I immediately get:

Access Denied
You don't have permission to access "http://uk.farnell.com/" on this server.

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Author Topic: Farnell / CPC utter incompetence (Read 14202 times)

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