General > General Technical Chat
Conrad Electronic to close all stores in Germany
TassiloH:
--- Quote from: janoc on April 16, 2022, 07:30:47 pm ---Speaking of - I have only moved to Germany last September, I would appreciate any tips from "locals" where to buy electronic components here for personal (not business) use in small quantities.
--- End quote ---
Free shipping for small orders will be difficult, you will be stuck with 6 or 7 EUR for shipping for most companies. My go-to list includes:
* Reichelt (reichelt.de) - prices are ok, good for standard semiconductors and passives (electrolytic caps are cheap), electromechanical stuff, networking stuff, cables, tools
* Voelkner (voelkner.de) - this IS Conrad (Voelkner = Re-In Retail = somehow part of Conrad group), same items shipping from same warehouse just with better prices for most items. They offer a flat-rate shipping program which one can sometimes score for free when buying a promotional item, otherwise it costs some 20EUR for a year and gives free shipping for each order above 10 EUR or so. Not so good for electronic components, but I buy electromechanics and various accessories, MeanWell power supplies, and the odd tool there. Of course they have all the consumer nonsense that Conrad has.
* TME (tme.eu, in Poland, but ships from Germany) - a real electronics distributor, decent but not comparable to Mouser or Digikey, but typically good prices
* Mouser/Digikey: If you don't get to the 50 EUR minimum order for free shipping, have a look at the German mikrocontroller.net forum, frequently some people organize a group order over there (but I don't have personal experience with that, I usually have a list of non-urgent stuff I might need from Mouser and Digikey to fill up an order to 50 EUR if something is needed quickly).
* Pollin (pollin.de) - originally a surplus dealer, now mostly sells a lot of cheap China imports, tools and stuff. Selection of hook-up wire is decent and cheap, sometimes a real surplus gem shows up, passive, electromechanical, and mechanical components are worth a look there, but never trust that you can order the same item again later. And never order something fragile together with any heavy item. The surplus stuff is sometimes broken, but typically they just give you the money back without much ado.
Messtechniker:
Fully agree with the above listing.
More here:
https://www.mikrocontroller.net/articles/Lokale_Elektroniklieferanten
Very long time ago I found Conrad to be only worthwhile for components and parts not available anywhere else. Otherwise C was simply too expensive. My last Conrad order was about 10 years ago.
jfiresto:
I have been purchasing from Reichelt since the late nineties, largely online but sometimes will call. I find they are generally quite good, especially for small quantities: for nearly all items, there is no quantity discount.
Generic items can be a guessing game. If Reichelt does not state who makes an item and you need to know, I would ask them.
They can also be reluctant to acknowledge mistakes, but perhaps that is in the past as the latest management no longer advertise an ISO-9001 rating.
KaneTW:
Distrelec and RS-Online are other, expensive options that might be worth it sometimes if they have a component in stock that no one else has.
janoc:
--- Quote from: TassiloH on April 17, 2022, 12:30:54 am ---
--- Quote from: janoc on April 16, 2022, 07:30:47 pm ---Speaking of - I have only moved to Germany last September, I would appreciate any tips from "locals" where to buy electronic components here for personal (not business) use in small quantities.
--- End quote ---
Free shipping for small orders will be difficult, you will be stuck with 6 or 7 EUR for shipping for most companies. My go-to list includes:
--- End quote ---
Not looking for free shipping (not like it really is free anyway), 6-7€ is a reasonable price. 20€ is not.
Thanks a bunch for the list, very appreciated!
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version