Bit of a Mouser rant

[georges80]

So, I've been a Mouser (and digikey) customer for a few decades. Bought several 100's of thousands of $ of stuff over that time. Generally a good experience.

Now they have managed to piss me off.

Quick history:
- Needed 2500 pieces of a part, found Mouser had 870 in stock (some kind of magic # it turns out).
- Order 870 pieces and happy to at least got some of the needed 2500. Paid 500 piece pricing (next break at 1000 and next after that at 2500).
- Go back the next day just to see and again 870 pieces in stock. Huh? Get onto online chat and inquire about how 870 pieces are in stock even though I ordered all 870 pieces the day before. Well, Sir, we have 870 in stock. Fine I say, I need a total of 2500 and if order these 870 will another 870 appear tomorrow? No Sir, we only have 870 left.
- Next day go back and look and yes, another 870 in stock. Online chat and complain that I was told there was only 870 in stock yesterday, when clearly there were more and I could have ordered all (870+760) to get to my 2500 AND get the 1000+ piece pricing. In fact, I complained that I didn't get the 2500 piece pricing. Sorry Sir, nothing we can do about that... Order the 760. And yes, next day 870 in stock...

So, email customer support directly and get this great response - obviously a canned response:

Per Mouser's policy "Mouser reserves the right to limit or cancel any
order, and has sole discretion, to allocate sales, limit quantities of
selected products and limit selected products to its customers. Mouser
reserves the right to reject any order or any part of an order. Product
Specifications and availability are subject to change without prior
notice".

==
I email back that the point is I've had to order 3 times and I've got the 500+ piece pricing and ended up paying about $380 more than if I could have ordered 2500 in one go. Even asking their online chat about quantity in stock.

Canned response comes back:

Mouser reserves the right to limit the quantities sold per order per Mouser's sales terms and conditions.
Please let us know if we can be of further assistance.
Have a great rest of your week.

==

Wow - that's what I call pathetic customer service with no attempt to deal with the issue that they have created. No attempt to at least provide 1000+ piece pricing. Customer loses, Mouser wins.

cheers,
george.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Not seen that one, but on some lines, they are limiting how many you can purchase within 30 days, shown when you add to basket.

[perdrix]

Escalate to 3rd line management

[SilverSolder]

Wow.   I guess they are fighting against scalpers?  - if so, unfortunately affecting "real" customers...

[PartialDischarge]

Yes they are doing that, showing less inventory than they really have. I applaud it since they are preventing big purchasers to take everything and allowing small dev teams and manufacturers to buy 20..100 units without a problem.

Given the current speculation situation I’d say thanks to them

[tom66]

I guess there doesn't appear to be much difference between a scalper and someone who needs a larger order, at least in terms of data, so this is the way they fight the process.  Might be a little bit more painful but if it limits how much the scalpers can gobble up I'm in favour of it.

And missing the price break sucks but think about it this way: if it was 0 in stock instead and you had to go greymarket or even choose another part or scrap a design altogether, would that cost more than $380?  I would suggest so.

870 is a weird breaking point though, I wonder if it's based on average daily sales or something like that.

[PartialDischarge]

I guess there doesn't appear to be much difference between a scalper and someone who needs a larger order, at least in terms of data, so this is the way they fight the process.  Might be a little bit more painful but if it limits how much the scalpers can gobble up I'm in favour of it.

And missing the price break sucks but think about it this way: if it was 0 in stock instead and you had to go greymarket or even choose another part or scrap a design altogether, would that cost more than $380?  I would suggest so.

870 is a weird breaking point though, I wonder if it's based on average daily sales or something like that.

Exactly, also maybe Mouser is not the place to go for 2500 parts, go to the official distributor (Avnet...) . Mouser and Digikey are there for small runs and development time.

[georges80]

Yes they are doing that, showing less inventory than they really have. I applaud it since they are preventing big purchasers to take everything and allowing small dev teams and manufacturers to buy 20..100 units without a problem.

Given the current speculation situation I’d say thanks to them

Yes, I see you point if I was ordering in huge volume. Well, in larger volume (100k+) I'd go direct to the manufacturer anyway.

But their 'scheme' didn't prevent us getting the 2500 pieces we needed (as a small/tiny manufacturer trying to survive by building product we can sell), BUT my real gripe is that we had to pay for 500 piece pricing versus 2500 piece. Even when I inquired whether more stock was available (twice!) to get the higher volume pricing I was told the stock didn't exist, when clearly it did. So, the end result is we have to charge our customers more to cover these artificial price increases. The only winner is Mouser in this case.

For small development/protos, we would just approach the manufacturer for samples. They generally have parts stashed away for sampling, even if their main channel has zero stock.

cheers,
george.

[Selectech]

My recent Mouser experience is 1284 parts available, bought them. Next day there's 634 parts, bought them, next day there's 330 parts, bought them, next day there's 130 parts, bought them. Wait a couple of days, then there's 1200 available again.
A different part is 3K every 30 days.

[thm_w]

My recent Mouser experience is 1284 parts available, bought them. Next day there's 634 parts, bought them, next day there's 330 parts, bought them, next day there's 130 parts, bought them. Wait a couple of days, then there's 1200 available again.
A different part is 3K every 30 days.

Be glad they haven't figured out Amazon pricing, every time you buy the price would jump up.

[floobydust]

It looks like profiteering keeping quantities below the higher price break 

If Mouser was trying to prevent hoarding, they would limit the same-part purchase quantity from a single account, or company in the case of a brigade trying to work around that.

No distributor is committing to shipment dates right now. Digi-Key has zero advice of when they might come in, unlike Mouser which is really nice knowing is it 3 months or 18 months etc. Parts appear to trickle in sooner.

[tom66]

Digi-Key does have shipment dates for some parts, but it seems to be very vendor-dependent.  Xilinx, for example, have dates for most parts, whereas TI do not.

[snarkysparky]

Same experience with ATSAMD51N19A.

114 in stock.  We bought them and still 114 in stock.

I like that they are limiting bulk purchases so everyone has a chance to get a few parts.

[voltsandjolts]

But their 'scheme' didn't prevent us getting the 2500 pieces we needed (as a small/tiny manufacturer trying to survive by building product we can sell), BUT my real gripe is that we had to pay for 500 piece pricing versus 2500 piece.

Yes, we had same experience here ordering from UK. Their policy helps and hurts in equal measure.
At least nobody can buy all stock in one hit - it gives other folks a few chances to get what they need, if you see what I mean.

[cortex_m0]

I don't see a problem. You agreed to pay the 500 piece price. They charged you the 500 piece price exactly as advertised.

Your regret for paying the 500 piece price a few days later isn't their problem.

Customer support probably could have been better but meh.

[Siwastaja]

Needless rant.

Obviously, they are limiting how much a single customer can buy, to prevent hoarding parts and worse, gray market shitheads from buying all the stock just to sell it at 10x the price for those who actually needs the part.

So they are doing the good thing. Thanks to the policy, you were able to get at least some of the parts and keep some level of production going.

I have had to answer questions to Digikey about the end customer, volumes, drop dead dates etc. Providing this information, I was able to get some parts a year earlier.

This is the times we live in. Part hoarding and gray market is a huge issue.

[georges80]

I don't see a problem. You agreed to pay the 500 piece price. They charged you the 500 piece price exactly as advertised.

Your regret for paying the 500 piece price a few days later isn't their problem.

Customer support probably could have been better but meh.

Bottom line:

The only winner here is Mouser. I still got all 2500 parts and the increased production cost gets passed on to our customers. I guess you're ok with the stuff you buy going up in cost while some distributor makes increased profit?

cheers,
george.

[cortex_m0]

The only winner here is Mouser. I still got all 2500 parts and the increased production cost gets passed on to our customers. I guess you're ok with the stuff you buy going up in cost while some distributor makes increased profit?

Correct. I do not object to Mouser making an extra $380 off of you.

Passing on added cost to your customers is your company's choice. I'm willing to be the increased cost was significantly more than the $0.14 per unit Mouser took.

[TimFox]

Supplies are short.  Rationing is one way to cope, and it might increase profit.  Why should one person get all the cookies?

[MikeK]

I can understand the rationing, but if he's ordering 2500 across three days how is that any different than 2500 at once?  They should remove the upper bulk discounts from showing then.

[james_s]

Yeah that's the issue, if they're going to ration then they should have an inverted price structure so the cost increases for buying larger quantities, not just lie about the quantity in stock.

[Siwastaja]

I can understand the rationing, but if he's ordering 2500 across three days how is that any different than 2500 at once?

It's different because most do not do this, because they don't know about the mechanism. OP found about it by coincidence. Most customers either do not order at all, seeing they can't get the amount they need, or then they just order 870pcs and forget about it. Maybe they look back after a month and order 870 more then. Perfectly feasible way of rationing, and it works best when you don't disclose what's happening to your customers. Yeah, of course it sucks.

Distributors probably won't make any extra profit from this. Number of small orders, just barely above free shipping, increases. More work, more shipping costs. Besides, actual cost of shipping has skyrocketed.

[Geoff-AU]

I've had similar with Coilcraft direct.  8 transformers in stock? I wanted 10, but I can live with 8.  Buy them, stock available goes down to zero.  Next day, back up at 8 again.

Not quite sure what the answer is.  There probably isn't an answer that keeps everyone happy.

Perceived shortage means people try and stockpile (guilty!) to mitigate project risk - nothing worse than having a design and being ready to fill a board and then you can't get several of the components for it.  Some things can be multi-sourced, other things (like transformers) are kinda niche and the rest of your design hangs off 4-5 parts that aren't easily replaceable without significant gnashing of teeth.

I would be happy to know what the lead time is for the distributor getting stock refresh.  Digikey does this, an ETA on their orders.  I'm happy with that, at least I can see if it's 52 days or 52 weeks and that removes the urgency factor.

[boB]

Did you try to call them on the phone ?

You might get a real person ?

boB 🌜

[Jeff eelcr]

Order all 2500 and tell them to ship when compleat.
You get your price when they want to ship.
Jeff

[hans]

Well, inventory stock also seems like a magic indicator.. but I agree it's probably engineered.
I ordered 5 STM32H725 chips just the other week from Mouser, because they had like 12 in stock. So I did, a little while after my order I got a shipment notification and saw the stock dropped back to 7. Makes sense..
Then later that night I checked back, and the stock increased again to 10. Someone's order cancelled? Payment that didn't go through? There 3 extra chips in the warehouse when at some qty, a recount was needed? Or this shadow restocking? Who knows.. All I know is that the next day the chips were sold out, and now it says not in stock, leadtime 45 weeks.

But I agree this business is starting to look a bit shady. If you click on the availability column of a part in the search list, it will send Mouser a shadow event so they can track how often people do that. They obviously will also know if that part is available, when it is expected, etc., so I'm sure ecommerce team are making elaborate reports on which combination of information displayed results in the highest sales.
 
It seems like they recently also adjusted how the "In Stock" checkbox worked. It used to display a huge amount of results of parts that were on order, but many of which have no ETA shipment date. The ST part I ordered was therefore hard to find, because it also had no parametric information filled in on their site website.. (e.g. if you only want to prototype QFP packages) so it was buried somewhere after a dozen pages for keywords "STM32H7". I use a uBlock CSS filter that removes all non-stock items without ETA to make this tedious process a lot quicker to do manually. I would love to have scraped the website for automatic mail notifications, but their site is pretty well protected against it.

Anyway, the uBlock filter for anyone interested:

Code: [Select]

mouser.com###SearchResultsGrid_grid > tbody > tr:not(:has-text(/Expected/)):not(:has-text(/In Stock/))(May require translation for local websites)

[Kjelt]

I understand you feel ripped.
But in reality it could be worse.
A small business I visit regularly was quoted over $35 for a jelly bean rs485 TI transceiver normally costing $0,85. Two parties in asia quoted the same price.
No stock anywhere and the parties that do have them ask insane prices. Those same parties make sure nowhere new stock is available they buy it up immediately.
It could well be a defensive move from Mouser to block those practices, yes hurting trusted customers as yourself but spreading the pain everyone in the industry suffers at the moment.

[SilverSolder]

I suspect things are not going to go back to normal any time soon - "they" want a much higher price level for electronics and what we are seeing is how that is being implemented.

Perhaps this will eventually tempt new companies to begin manufacturing electronic components? - after all, jellybean electronic components are not exactly rocket science to manufacture...

[Kjelt]

after all, jellybean electronic components are not exactly rocket science to manufacture...

Nothing to do with rocketscience everything to do with owning your own fabs or be in line for some fab to produce your dies. Waiting time at this moment three+ years.

[SilverSolder]

after all, jellybean electronic components are not exactly rocket science to manufacture...

Nothing to do with rocketscience everything to do with owning your own fabs or be in line for some fab to produce your dies. Waiting time at this moment three+ years.

So....  how did they do this in the olden days?  -  to make the simpler parts, is there room for someone to be creative?

[TimFox]

In the olden days, some parts such as wirewound resistors, wound capacitors, or even vacuum tubes required only mechanical tooling for fabrication (plus vacuum pumps).

[SilverSolder]

In the olden days, some parts such as wirewound resistors, wound capacitors, or even vacuum tubes required only mechanical tooling for fabrication (plus vacuum pumps).

It's good that we have a fallback position, lol! 

[Someone]

after all, jellybean electronic components are not exactly rocket science to manufacture...

Nothing to do with rocketscience everything to do with owning your own fabs or be in line for some fab to produce your dies. Waiting time at this moment three+ years.

So....  how did they do this in the olden days?  -  to make the simpler parts, is there room for someone to be creative?

Many more companies owned and operated small fabs. But even that wont help you as its not the primary constraint.

Shortage right now, wafers ready to process:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-09/key-supplier-of-wafers-for-chips-says-it-s-sold-out-through-2026

the market for 300 mm semiconductor silicon wafers saw demand for both logic and memory applications greatly exceed supply

In the market for wafers of 200 mm or smaller, as well, supply and demand remained tight

Consolidation of the supply chains with fewer competitors and high utilization (keeps shareholders happy) made for a fragile market.

[SilverSolder]

after all, jellybean electronic components are not exactly rocket science to manufacture...

Nothing to do with rocketscience everything to do with owning your own fabs or be in line for some fab to produce your dies. Waiting time at this moment three+ years.

So....  how did they do this in the olden days?  -  to make the simpler parts, is there room for someone to be creative?

Many more companies owned and operated small fabs. But even that wont help you as its not the primary constraint.

Shortage right now, wafers ready to process:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-09/key-supplier-of-wafers-for-chips-says-it-s-sold-out-through-2026

the market for 300 mm semiconductor silicon wafers saw demand for both logic and memory applications greatly exceed supply

In the market for wafers of 200 mm or smaller, as well, supply and demand remained tight

Consolidation of the supply chains with fewer competitors and high utilization (keeps shareholders happy) made for a fragile market.

It sounds a lot like the baby formula scandal in the US, where it turns out there is a massive dependency on a single manufacturing site....   a situation brought about by lax anti-trust enforcement, among other failings.

[julian1]

Ignoring the demand side for a moment. Did companies like AD shut down fabs to consolidate resources when they acquired LT, and Maxim?

I found this list of semiconductor sites, but it's not clear how up to date it is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants

One would think that industry/finanical analysts would know what gets made where, and using what processes, in order to provide  company valuations which are public record.

[David_AVD]

I've noticed a few things on Digikey that show good stock in the parametric list, but zero when you go into the actual part page.

[tooki]

Ignoring the demand side for a moment. Did companies like AD shut down fabs to consolidate resources when they acquired LT, and Maxim?

I found this list of semiconductor sites, but it's not clear how up to date it is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants

One would think that industry/finanical analysts would know what gets made where, and using what processes, in order to provide  company valuations which are public record.

Assuming it’s reasonably current and complete, the number of fabs ever closed is less than 10% the number of the fabs currently in use, and the list of operating fabs shows many fabs changed hands multiple times (sometimes even back to a company that once sold it! 😂). Given that chip demand hasn’t ever really dropped, it makes sense to keep fabs open or upgrade them, since consolidation suggests overcapacity, but I don’t think the mergers have ever actually resulted in overcapacity in the market as a whole.

[TimFox]

A general comment on supply and demand in economics:
The basic rule that prices go up when demand exceeds supply and go down when supply exceeds demand was known to farmers in antiquity.
However, the result that farmers'  income goes up in times of low supply (e.g., drought), and down in terms of high supply (good weather) became obvious much later.

[SilverSolder]

A general comment on supply and demand in economics:
The basic rule that prices go up when demand exceeds supply and go down when supply exceeds demand was known to farmers in antiquity.
However, the result that farmers'  income goes up in times of low supply (e.g., drought), and down in terms of high supply (good weather) became obvious much later.

That's how the whole financial industry around commodity futures and options got started...  to even these fluctuations out.

Another issue is that the laws of supply and demand assume a free market of buyers and sellers.  Unfortunately, in the real world, people generally hate free markets and we can usually find all kinds of both government and private actor manipulation going on if we look under the covers...