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Conrad Electronic to close all stores in Germany
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TassiloH:

--- Quote from: tooki on April 22, 2022, 04:51:43 am ---Error rate of what?

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I meant the frequency of wrong or damaged items (referring to jfiresto's post above). In the last couple of years with Reichelt I had one missing item, some extra items (the shipped several tool sets valued 20EUR each or so, so that I actually told them and sent them back), and a damaged item (crystal where they cut off a pin while cutting the tape). For comparison, with Digikey I had one wrong item (wasted quite some time on this, 10pF caps ordered but 1nF shipped in bag labeled with the 10pF part number, took me hours to figure out why the oscillator on a uC would not run - they actually had me ship back the capacitors worth $.50) and one damaged item (dual D-Sub connector, clearly damaged before shipping), and with Mouser had one missing item. I'd say that 3:2:1 ratio is about proportional to my order volume (by line count).


--- Quote ---FYI, the lists seem to retain the order (and you can change the order of items).
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Ah, thanks, that is useful, I never used the list when entering an order for immediate placement. I will try to use the list again the next time.
cdev:

--- Quote from: Neper on April 13, 2022, 01:46:28 pm ---There was a time, when every German town had a selection of electronics shops. Cologne had a good dozen of them. Great places where we would go to meet friends, exchange the latest gossip and spend our money.   

Then, in the mid 80s, Conrad Electronic, until then a mail-order business, opened big and impressive stores right in the centre of all major cities. They hired radio amateurs for their radio department, modellers for their modelling department etc. Within a few years, all other electronics shops were gone. Conrad picked out their best staff and hired them.

10 years later, they began to ask for customers' ZIP codes at the check-out. Soon after that, the impressive city-centre stores moved to some industrial estate way out of town. Gone were the highly qualified staff, replaced by the same kind that would be flipping burgers elsewhere. Eventually, the store in Cologne was one of the first to close altogether. That was about a decade ago. I haven't bought a thing from them ever since.

Now, Conrad have announced that they'll close all brick-and-mortar shops before the end of this year and concentrate on B2B.

Good riddance!

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I agree. Its interesting that you exposed the method behind their madnesss.. Good for you for saying it. People rarely do.
cdev:

--- Quote from: HighVoltage on April 13, 2022, 02:18:51 pm ---This was the writing on the wall for a long long time.

I could repeat almost all your points for Hamburg. As a student in the 1980s I probably visited a Conrad store once a week at least.  In the last few years I have not ordered anything from Conrad and also have not visited their stores anymore.

The quality of products went down every year.
The employees were less and less knowledgeable.
The one store in Hamburg had a very good and smart guy working there. After he retired 10 years ago, it was like the store changed and for me it felt like only idiots were working there.

I will not miss them!

This might be similar to the closing of Fry's in the USA.

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In the US corporations seem to want to make around 20% yield per annum or they are under pressure to go out of businesss..  Thats a lot of profit. More than many businesses are inherently able to support. Is that unreasonable?
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