Farnell

[Wilksey]

Hi,

What has happened to Farnell?! (Element 14 if you are not in the UK)

I have been looking on Ebay at some components and I usually check the likes of Farnell and CPC (Sometimes CPC is cheaper than Farnell, yet it's the same company...?!) and even the now quite expensive Amazon, and a few months ago Farnell's prices were quite high, not as high as RS on some things, but they were quite high nonetheless, the last 3 or 4 searches I have done for packs of 100 or even single IC's and demo boards, Farnell has actually been cheaper than Ebay.  For example, something I was looking at, adding all the tax and crap as you do to Farnell the price is £11.70, on Ebay the cheapest you can buy it for is £15.

For those, like myself who always assumed that Ebay was cheaper than the main distributors might want to check before clicking on 'Buy it now', this is probably common practise for most of you, but I expect there might be quite a few who don't check the main distributors.

[Christopher]

It's so easy to buy one-offs from Farnells, I normally send a £20-30 order daily for just the odd chip and other bits.

Gets a bit pricy in bulk, I need 100 relays that are £3 ea on farnell, mouser do them for £1.50. But it's more hassle raising the paperwork and getting approvals & ultimately saving my company money than it is to just use farnells 

[nanofrog]

Since Farnell and the like are authorized distributors, you don't have to worry about authenticity either, like you do from sources like eBay. 

[Wilksey]

All valid points.

From a company point of view I can get discount on Farnell, but I was speaking from a personal point of view as an individual who has to pay VAT and carriage etc.

But as a company we have to fill out new supplier forms and get it approved by 3 people before we can place an order! There goes your £1.50 per relay saving! Arguably once you have done it once then you don't need to fill in the forms etc again, but Farnell's customer service so far has been amazing, we have had several items gone wrong and we just send them back to Farnell they send us a new one and the old one goes back to manufacturer.

Authenticity is a big factor also, you can find genuine bargains on Ebay, I bought 40 Altera CPLD's for £15 (free shipping), still packaged in the Farnell wrapping, even at the lowest break point I would have paid about £40 for them (plus VAT), but I will definitely be looking at the source before looking on auction sites now they seem to be a bit more competitive.

[artag]

Farnell, RS Components and Rapid are all fighting for customers at the moment. Rapid are often cheaper but they don't have quite as large a range (though it's improving). This may have led to some price reductions.

However, I think the main thing is rising pricing on eBay. There seem to be a number of vendors selling things at arbitrarily high prices , presumably in the hope that buyers wil just assume eBay is cheaper. In general, it's the local sellers - there are still plenty of cheap chinese sources, though with the usual risk.

There's one that I think, from the range and the prices he offers,  doesn't keep anything in stock but just orders it from farnell on next-day delivery when he makes an ebay sale. He'd still make a profit.

[Precipice]

However, I think the main thing is rising pricing on eBay. There seem to be a number of vendors selling things at arbitrarily high prices , presumably in the hope that buyers wil just assume eBay is cheaper.

There are a couple of sellers who've evidently built code to scrape the farnell website onto ebay, with a healthy markup. They simply drop-ship (which Farnell allow you to), so once he's set up the code, he just plugs ebay's ordering into Farnell's, and collects the difference (less ebay fees).
Very annoying, in that they pollute my searches, but Farnell seem relaxed about it - I guess it's a sale, and the customer gets the product in a Farnell bag, with Farnell paperwork, so might go direct if they want more.

[Rufus]

Very annoying, in that they pollute my searches, but Farnell seem relaxed about it - I guess it's a sale, and the customer gets the product in a Farnell bag, with Farnell paperwork, so might go direct if they want more.

ebay are also relaxed about it. I requested they provide an ignore seller feature to be able to avoid that search pollution. I was told my request had been forwarded to the development team (which is probably an alias for /dev/nul).

edit: thought I would check again and found this http://www.ebay.com/gds/How-to-Block-a-Sellers-Listings-/10000000006694277/g.html which may be slightly helpful.

[Bored@Work]

with Farnell paperwork, so might go direct if they want more.

No, because in several countries Farnell refuses to sell directly to individuals. You have to be a VAT-registered business or they won't talk to you. In other countries you have to go via Farnell's export department. Farnell's export department's way of making sure you only do that once is, among other things, to have insane shipping costs.

[Precipice]

So are these tossers violating export regs? Do Farnell dropship to arbitrary countries, passing the export buck to the purchaser?
I hadn't considered this aspect, I'll admit.

[Bored@Work]

So are these tossers violating export regs? Do Farnell dropship to arbitrary countries, passing the export buck to the purchaser?
I hadn't considered this aspect, I'll admit.

No they don't. For whatever reasons Farnell refuses to sell to individuals also within some European countries. Last time I looked Farnell had Austria, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Portugal, Belgium, and the Netherlands blacklisted in Europe (the list might have changed, I can't be bothered to regularly check). The tosser here is Farnell. The eBay guys just serve markets that are beneath Farnell.

[David_AVD]

I bought 25 x ATXMEGA8E5 chips from E14 they other day and am pretty sure they were cheaper than Digikey / Mouser.

[Psi]

Farnell, RS Components and Rapid are all fighting for customers at the moment.

yeah, ive noticed that. Ive gotten two calls from farnell just to checkup and see if there is anything i want. lol.

They also gave me free shipping on any value order for 1 month and a 1-off 10% discount code.
I forgot to use it so they called me up again and extended it for another month.