Digi-Key has changed and it is not very good

[SVFeingold]

That's pretty interesting. I appreciate the perspective. As far as I can see Digikey isn't demanding your "professional services," unless taking 15 seconds to say "hey there's a typo" once or twice a year is what you consider worthy of a 6-figure salary. A completely voluntary report at that: they're really not asking anything. They have a voluntary bug reporting feature, like most software. Where's the fire?

If a friend asks me if a shelf they hung is level I don't skip right to "Sir! I did not spend 15 years working hard to gain my engineering skills just to give away my professional services for free! If you want my professional opinion you will pay for it."

Seems a lot easier to just say "yeah man looks fine." I suppose when everything has to be "about the principle of the thing" the world looks different.

[james_s]

Some of you guys are taking my cynical comment way too seriously. It's not like I'm completely unreasonable, I'm just annoyed that they took something that was working fine and "fixed" it until it was broken. It's one of my pet peeves and they are FAR from the only company that has done it. If I spotted a typo I might let them know, but I'm not going to go too far out of my way to report all the self inflicted issues that are going on which I see as the direct result of half-assed "we'll just fix that later" "Agile" web development. I can't turn off the testing thing, I find bugs in everything and it's one reason I came back to QA more than once despite taking my career in other directions at times. At one point I really thought I'd enjoy EE as a job but I very quickly realized that I don't want to turn something I really enjoy doing for fun into work that I HAVE to slog through to hit deadlines.

[SVFeingold]

When you put it that way then yeah, I agree. Certainly I'm not gonna probe their site for bugs. Truthfully I've never reported a single one (never really thought to) because I just assume nobody reads them, but if they do maybe I'll reconsider for things that are quick.

I'm an ME by degree and title, EE only sometimes. But in both realms, the number of times I've seen software teams try to apply "agile" thinking to hardware (and struggle or fail) is too many. They're not always accustomed to thinking that "recompiling" a hardware product will take 3 weeks and $50,000, to give one example.

At the end of the day we're all friends here.

[rsjsouza]

I see as the direct result of half-assed "we'll just fix that later" "Agile" web development. I can't turn off the testing thing, I find bugs in everything and it's one reason I came back to QA .

I can truly relate to that. Too much "post release" mess is the tone in several places. A true "scorched earth" approach; nuke the previous thing with a half baked idea or implementation to replace it.

[bombledmonk]

When you put it that way then yeah, I agree. Certainly I'm not gonna probe their site for bugs. Truthfully I've never reported a single one (never really thought to) because I just assume nobody reads them, but if they do maybe I'll reconsider for things that are quick.

Just as an FYI,  every single comment submitted on the Digi-Key website is read by multiple people.  Things like incorrect data are usually corrected within a day or two and requests for missing parameters help in planning additions/refinements.  Search specific comments are read by the people responsible for development, new features and future road mapping, and are also actively pushed to all management.    Volume of specific comments and standout detailed comments do help us to prioritize and more effectively address issues like those stated here. 

I'll also make the offer again.  If anyone would like to rant at a live person, I'd love to set up a session with anyone who would like to have a conversation.  The people who have responded thus far have been incredibly helpful and had an outsized impact on our ability to focus our resources on what matters. PM me if that's of interest.

[tszaboo]

Ah great, now it's giving me 403 error.
Probably because I was browsing on the website looking for a component, and "clicking too fast".

[SilverSolder]

When you put it that way then yeah, I agree. Certainly I'm not gonna probe their site for bugs. Truthfully I've never reported a single one (never really thought to) because I just assume nobody reads them, but if they do maybe I'll reconsider for things that are quick.

Just as an FYI,  every single comment submitted on the Digi-Key website is read by multiple people.  Things like incorrect data are usually corrected within a day or two and requests for missing parameters help in planning additions/refinements.  Search specific comments are read by the people responsible for development, new features and future road mapping, and are also actively pushed to all management.    Volume of specific comments and standout detailed comments do help us to prioritize and more effectively address issues like those stated here. 

I'll also make the offer again.  If anyone would like to rant at a live person, I'd love to set up a session with anyone who would like to have a conversation.  The people who have responded thus far have been incredibly helpful and had an outsized impact on our ability to focus our resources on what matters. PM me if that's of interest.

Unfortunately, the red "Feedback" tab on the right or the bottom of the page does exactly nothing when I click on it!

Not sure how to make you aware of that...   

[Mark19960]

I'm loving Digi-Key at the moment.
It's dreadfully slow and it's throwing a 404 when I click on any category....

Then it throws 500s when searching.
Lovely!

They really need to get a handle on this website of theirs.

[james_s]

Unfortunately, the red "Feedback" tab on the right or the bottom of the page does exactly nothing when I click on it!

Not sure how to make you aware of that...   

I noticed exactly the same thing recently with my bank website, which has also been turning from a functional site into a hot mess. If you click on the section to transfer funds and pay bills the page is a completely different style, "modern" flat look, everything huge so I have to zoom out to 80% and still scroll to see what should easily fit on a single screen with room to spare. Then if you click any of the dropdowns instead of just popping open they SLOOOWLY slide down, taking a full second or more to open. Doesn't sound like much but it adds up and is completely superfluous. Then there is a feedback link that doesn't work at all.

[SilverSolder]

To their credit, Digikey is following up on the non-working feedback link issue.

[bombledmonk]

To their credit, Digikey is following up on the non-working feedback link issue.

 

This was resolved on Friday, but it was still making it through CDN caching so I avoided posting until I was sure.  Thanks for helping resolve it SilverSolder and dcarr.

[ataradov]

I just got email from DigiKey in Chinese. It does not look like spam, and looks legit.

From:Oscar Wong <oscar.wong@e.digikey.com>
Subject:为贵公司特设的优惠价

It has a bunch of links that eventually lead to digikey.cn, which appears to be a Chinese version of the DigiKey site.

I don't read Chinese and I'd prefer my email not used for spam. But it looks like new style of doing business continues.

[floobydust]

No- that's your free Digi-Key coffee cup or ruler or t-shirt you get for pointing out their website's design mistakes.
Every 1,000 mistakes and you qualify for some free bling. Although, it might just be a fortune cookie 

[TheSteve]

I just got email from DigiKey in Chinese. It does not look like spam, and looks legit.

From:Oscar Wong <oscar.wong@e.digikey.com>
Subject:为贵公司特设的优惠价

It has a bunch of links that eventually lead to digikey.cn, which appears to be a Chinese version of the DigiKey site.

I don't read Chinese and I'd prefer my email not used for spam. But it looks like new style of doing business continues.

I received it as well.

[Daixiwen]

It looks like everyone received it I got it on both my personal and my professional email adresses.
The DKIM signature is verified, so it did come from Digikey's servers, or at least one approved by Digikey.

[Tomorokoshi]

It looks like everyone received it I got it on both my personal and my professional email adresses.
The DKIM signature is verified, so it did come from Digikey's servers, or at least one approved by Digikey.

I got it also on two email accounts. I was going to report it to Digi-Key, but I couldn't find a spoof or spam receiver email, so I checked here first.

[james_s]

It looks like everyone received it I got it on both my personal and my professional email adresses.
The DKIM signature is verified, so it did come from Digikey's servers, or at least one approved by Digikey.

I didn't, at least I don't think I did. I don't recall ever receiving spam from any of the major suppliers.

[ataradov]

It was sent by DK, there is no question about it. Or someone figured out how to spoof DKIM signatures. But if so, it would be stupid to redirect people to the vendor web site.

Why would independent spammers what us to go to digikey.cn?

It was probably a mistake, of course. Or some over-zealous marketing people.

[floobydust]

Digi-Key, your "applied filter" is broken, example I select three resistance values 4.961k, 5k, 5.369k and the search results are including the wrong values such as 10k, 100k, 330k, 47k, 30k etc. This is also occuring for many different types of parts, like capacitors.
I also clicked on "In Stock" but "0 - Immediate" shows up for many items. If I sort by "Stock" column, the zero's (stock) items disappear.
If I sort by "Resistance in Ohms @ 25°C" column, then out of range value parts disappear.

Why STILL can't I enter a range for parameters? Nothing happens when I click on "Search Filter" and type to enter a number.
You want me to click the zillion check boxes for a range from say 2k-4k?

I tried to find parts under 20mm height and I laughed so hard at your website dumbness, and then ordered from Mouser because it took seconds to find short parts.

[cortex_m0]

I was shopping for resistors today, and I found something curious: Resistors with 25 significant figures in their resistance, apparently manufactured by Vishay Dale. Good work, Vishay  The Voltnuts will go wild to get their hands on these!

(obvious sarcasm, resistors do not have anywhere close to that kind of precision, I suspect this is IEEE-754 problems)

[SilverSolder]

I was shopping for resistors today, and I found something curious: Resistors with 25 significant figures in their resistance, apparently manufactured by Vishay Dale. Good work, Vishay  The Voltnuts will go wild to get their hands on these!

(obvious sarcasm, resistors do not have anywhere close to that kind of precision, I suspect this is IEEE-754 problems)

OMG! 

[james_s]

 

And you STILL have to click the stupid thing to show more parameters, and the stupid checkbox to exclude marketplace items EVERY SINGLE TIME too. 

[floobydust]

They fixed problems I had with the Applied Filters, which is nice but they worked a while back so how do they break that and not notice it in test?
It's been along time and the website is still terrible. I guess it keeps a bunch of people employed, when I submit component errors, there's literally a person per part lol.

Let's compare superior Mouser website technology lol. You are granted the right to search by range. Instead of being held hostage to dumbness. Click click click click....
Their Web Committee is very stubborn it seems.

[Daixiwen]

I want my cap to be 1.09mm high, not that 1.10mm rubbish.
I'm using a lot the different ranges in the Mouser search, but each time I click somewhere it seems that there is a delay where any other click is ignored, so when I need to select a range, I need to wait several seconds between each click. Is it only me?

[ataradov]

Nah, Mouser too was programmed by typical web programmers. I think there is some check box you can click to disable smart filtering or something like this. I think it is supposed to help with that. But there are a million different ways it is slow, so it is hard to tell which of those ways the checkbox prevents.