RS Components new crappy webiste

[mc172]

That has annoyed me in the past as well when I've tried to reorder something I know I've ordered recently by looking at past orders. It becomes a bit of a mission because when you click the part number it pops up in a window rather than just taking you to the part. A bit like the annoying eBay links from Google that take you to a stripped down version with no way of even getting to the full page... But even more shit.

Yes there's a "reorder" button but I just want to go to the bloody item!

[Cerebus]

RS components invoices are of the shite.

The website has manufacturers part numbers and a description. The invoice only states RS order codes and a descriptions which doesn't match the description on the website. It would be practical if they put the part numbers on the invoice.

Another way of thinking about that is "Invoices are for accounts, who gives a ****?" or "Invoices are for accounts, I don't want them micromanaging what I buy without it being hard work for them.". 

The manufacturer's part number and description DO appear on the delivery note - although the descriptions can sometimes be terse to the point of being useless.

[Zero999]

The pictures are as good as a bad dating site. I know it says image "representative of range", but they shouldn't bother with photographs, if they're completely different.

[Simon]

Their voltage regulator section is now a mix of linear, LDO and SMPS controllers. What a mess, if you select LDO and Linear you don't get any output voltage results.

I have now gone to Farnell. RS seem intent on destroying themselves. Last remaining british wholesaler, oh yea, that must be the problem, bristish - otherwise known as suicidal!

[Cerebus]

Their voltage regulator section is now a mix of linear, LDO and SMPS controllers. What a mess, if you select LDO and Linear you don't get any output voltage results.

I hit that a few weeks back when I found myself out of small 3V3 LDOs. Finding that I couldn't select regulators by voltage was a real WTF moment.

The fact that a number of people have clearly tried to get RS to fix some of their basic problems, like inputting/storing the same technical value like the resistance of a resistor in several different ways, and have failed is inexplicable. If it were a person exhibiting self-destructive behaviour at that level we'd try and persuade them to get some professional help. I can see why it might happen if the head of IT was the CEO's nepotistically employed son-in-law or something like that, but I can't come up with any rational explanation.

RS's corporate website has a "Five key reasons to invest" page. One of the reasons given as  "MARKET SHARE GAINS DRIVEN BY BEING FIRST CHOICE" includes this choice kant:

MARKET SHARE GAINS DRIVEN BY BEING FIRST CHOICE
>2x market growth rate target
We aim to grow at greater than two times the market, driving share gains by:

• Growing customer count
  
  • Become first choice; grow promoter base
  • Drive more traffic to websites
  • Increase online conversion by improving experience

The conversation here indicates they are doing a good job of creating detractors not promoters, if they do drive more traffic to their websites it's gonna run away even faster once it's tried them, and every change they make to their website worsens experience not improves it.

[BradC]

This, coupled with their persistent reduction of in-country stock and the removal of the free delivery for anything under $70 has just pushed me over to Digikey. Digikey is faster to arrive than most RS "global stock" (4 days vs 5-7), and their shipping is free over $60 (vs $70+GST). Then of course the massive advantage of a significantly larger product range.

RS were "good enough, fast enough and cheap enough". They no longer tick any of those boxes.

[Zero999]

Yes, it's extremely frustrating, when they have the same category listed more than once, with a slightly different format.

I often click the feedback button, to tell them what a load of old pants their website is and I suggest everyone should do the same. Hopefully they might listen, if they get enough complaints.

[Simon]

I think the complaints form is pointless. ring them and email them. This morning I sent them a link to this thread tagged onto the emails I have had about them with the website. Expect a marketing drone speaking crap to turn up, or to be totally ignored again.

The incredibly stupid thing is that I drive past these assholes twice a day on my work commute! I could drop in on the way in and pick stuff up as I actually pass Corby at their opening time so the extra time it takes me to get to work would be on work time anyway. So if we needed something really urgent - perfect. But then when I get to their website I can't use it to order anything so I do what I did today after speaking to an idiot on the customer care team who was adamant they had no bad feedback about the website. I went to mouser and found with easy what I wanted.

It is easier for me to buy from a company half way around the world than it is one who's doorstep I pass daily. so much for saving the planet. The time it takes to arrive from texas in the US I may have found something on the RS webshite!

[Simon]

This, coupled with their persistent reduction of in-country stock and the removal of the free delivery for anything under $70 has just pushed me over to Digikey. Digikey is faster to arrive than most RS "global stock" (4 days vs 5-7), and their shipping is free over $60 (vs $70+GST). Then of course the massive advantage of a significantly larger product range.

RS were "good enough, fast enough and cheap enough". They no longer tick any of those boxes.

In the UK businesses get free delivery, but that has turned to shit as Parcel Farce (force) have become hopeless. I was desperately in need of parts that went from AM delivery to PM delivery to me standing outside work after work waiting for a driver that was a 5 minute walk around the corner. I then spent the next morning trying to find out where my goods were. So that was the loss of the last incentive for using RS, they used to deliver at 8:40 am next day, then it became the day after next - some time, when we can be arsed.

[MrMobodies]

In the UK businesses get free delivery, but that has turned to shit as Parcel Farce (force) have become hopeless. I was desperately in need of parts that went from AM delivery to PM delivery to me standing outside work after work waiting for a driver that was a 5 minute walk around the corner. I then spent the next morning trying to find out where my goods were. So that was the loss of the last incentive for using RS, they used to deliver at 8:40 am next day, then it became the day after next - some time, when we can be arsed.

There was one time I was repeatedly lied to by ParcelFarce for failing to deliver a 40x40mm? fan in 2014 with all sorts excuses and then saying after the final delivery attempt that no one was in in despite being in all day with the door opened, and workmen digging the ground outside to run new water pipes. I was told by RS on the phone that they had GPS records from ParcelFarce to show that the courier did stop there and according to the driver no one answered and it won't redeliver. At this point I was so infuriated I didn't realize that I was sounding aggressive and the lady warned me that she'd hang up but advised me that if it was a business address they would have to turn around and redeliver. She she took my complaint, refunded me including the delivery (I think was next day) and I ordered it again to be delivered to a business address where I was working at and it came on time and they had camera's there just incase.

I don't think I had any problems with ParcelFarce after that.

I remember this ParcelFarce Twitter account I once came across and still seems to be there.
https://twitter.com/parcelfarce?lang=en

I still like this one:

Parcel Farce Jul 24, 2012
We are widening the definition of "Neighbour" to include the local depot.

[Simon]

They have done it again. Just found this part on the analogue devices website then found it on RS via findchips: https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/instrumentation-amplifiers/7798978//?cm_mmc=aff-_-uk-_-findchip-_-7798978&utm_medium=buyNow&utm_source=supplyFrame

So I thought OK, not the cheapest, now I know what category they are usually in lets see what else there is on offer..... oh..... it's in the instrumentation amplifier section... OK, yes they are technically instrumentation amplifiers but i assume there is now a parameter selection for the type of instrumentation amplifier function. Oh don't be silly, It's RS. LT parts are great but expensive, I am sure another so called distributor other than RS has these sorts of things and they will have correctly categorized them!

[Cerebus]

Another classic RS fuckup. I took a look at the table Simon indirectly refers to above and found this:



Now, I'm looking at the whole "Instrumentation Amplifiers" table and there is one part they are holding a "Maximum Voltage Gain" parameter for, and that 'gain' is 0.172 dB (I suspect that it would be completely lost on the folks at RS that a gain of 0.172dB is obvious an error figure of some sort.*). Just one part, it's blank for all the others. The part, if you select on that field, is an AD8221, which actually has a maximum voltage gain of 1000, aka 60 dB, not 0.172 dB. Don't worry though, that's only wrong by a factor of 1000, what's that amongst friends?

What the fuck do they think they are doing?. They waste screen and database space to hold a selection parameter for one part and one part only, failing to populate it for the other 341 parts in that table. Then they even get the value stored there completely wrong. To put it in terms that the folks at RS might understand, suspecting that electronics specific stuff confuses them, it's like having a box for 'colour' on a page where you're buying t-shirts and then filling it in with 'white' for one product which happens to be a black t-shirt and leaving the rest blank. All having that parameter selectable can do is make it harder to find a suitable part. It doesn't merely fail to add value from their service, it actually takes it away!

* Perhaps this is why they do so badly at website design, they've go a metric somewhere that tells them how many customers they have gained and every time they make a website change the number goes up. Only they have failed to notice the minus sign at the front of it, 'sums' being hard and all that.

[Simon]

They did one better than that for filling wrong numbers in. I bought £32k of stock off them for a mere tenner! yup! and I ordered in two batches. Cleared them out just to teach them a lesson. I even emailed them about a month later offering to sell them back to them as "I no longer needed them/bought in error". I did not even get a reply. When a couple of months later they got more in they increased the price by a about £2, so I reasoned that in volume this stuff is worth £8'500. Yup, instead of doing a deal with me and I would have happily taken say 50p a piece for them to have them back in stock days later at a cost of a little over £2'000 they paid £8'500 for more to arrive 3 months later and put the price up to be more than what say Farnell or anyone else charge for the same price thus making themselves uncompetitive. they really could not care less. They probably don't even know about websites like findchips and octopart, well they do, they just rely on company buyers buying into their "come to us, do enough business and we will give you a discount". one day when say in 10 years they go bust they might figure out that it was the engineers that were picking the parts, no that no one is making that stuff that is 10 or more years old no one is ordering from them because 10 years ago they made life impossible for the engineers that kept them in business.

I am constantly finding replacements for parts our assembler cannot get. The BOM was made out with Farnell numbers. the buyer sends me the problem parts and naturally unless RS just happen to have the identical manufacturers number I go to Mouser or Digi Key as to find an otherwise compatible but not the same part I need a parametric search that works.

Hopeless absolutely hopeless. Like you say, if it was an individual we would be very worried about their suicidal nature and trying to get them professional help. But it's OK, it's only several hundred individuals jobs and more than one may be suicidal when they loose they jobs and realize what a stupid employer they worked for. The last remaining British owned supplier is putting itself out of business. I suppose they can at least say they are only as bad as other incapable British business's.

I suspect the web developers are the ones with the most secure jobs, we seem to keep going round in circles with RS, they fuck it up, then sort of fix it, then fuck it up again, then eventually sort of fix it and so it goes on perpetually gradually getting worse and worse. Bit like company IT departments who most of the time just make life impossible for everyone else and at the end of the day the only skill they have is to punch in a password so that they can do for you what you could have done yourself without it taking 4 times longer.

[Cerebus]

As of this morning, the RS website seems to have reverted to the former version. Went looking for solder, suddenly realised that I was not looking at the even more horrible new site, just the horrible old site.

[BradC]

Unfortunately it's still "new and awful" here.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Another classic RS fuckup. I took a look at the table Simon indirectly refers to above and found this:



Now, I'm looking at the whole "Instrumentation Amplifiers" table and there is one part they are holding a "Maximum Voltage Gain" parameter for, and that 'gain' is 0.172 dB (I suspect that it would be completely lost on the folks at RS that a gain of 0.172dB is obvious an error figure of some sort.*). Just one part, it's blank for all the others. The part, if you select on that field, is an AD8221, which actually has a maximum voltage gain of 1000, aka 60 dB, not 0.172 dB. Don't worry though, that's only wrong by a factor of 1000, what's that amongst friends?

What the fuck do they think they are doing?. They waste screen and database space to hold a selection parameter for one part and one part only, failing to populate it for the other 341 parts in that table. Then they even get the value stored there completely wrong. To put it in terms that the folks at RS might understand, suspecting that electronics specific stuff confuses them, it's like having a box for 'colour' on a page where you're buying t-shirts and then filling it in with 'white' for one product which happens to be a black t-shirt and leaving the rest blank. All having that parameter selectable can do is make it harder to find a suitable part. It doesn't merely fail to add value from their service, it actually takes it away!

* Perhaps this is why they do so badly at website design, they've go a metric somewhere that tells them how many customers they have gained and every time they make a website change the number goes up. Only they have failed to notice the minus sign at the front of it, 'sums' being hard and all that.

Parametric data at distributors except Digikey has always been, and likely always will be poor, as the only way to do it right is to have people that understand what the numbers mean do the data entry, and that's expensive,
I accept that it's unrealistic to fix this, so for me the most important thing is to be able to search in a way that avoids missing potential parts. i.e. very quick and easy ways to select multiple options, and quickly view a large number of parts to scan through visually. One of the most annoying ways that RS obstructs this is that they don't show stock levels in search results.

[mikeselectricstuff]

They did one better than that for filling wrong numbers in. I bought £32k of stock off them for a mere tenner!

ISTR a while ago Dave had a sideline in buying a particular Fluke meter from RS listed at an incorrect price and reselling on Ebay....

[Cerebus]

Unfortunately it's still "new and awful" here.

Different time zone and they probably do re-deploys in the wee small hours. Or it's a nation by nation thing and they have decided to make you continue to suffer.

[Zero999]

Unfortunately it's still "new and awful" here.

Different time zone and they probably do re-deploys in the wee small hours. Or it's a nation by nation thing and they have decided to make you continue to suffer.

I'm in the UK too and also get the new crappy webside. Perhaps the old one is still up and you got to it using an old bookmark or link? If so, please post it. I'd love to use their old, slightly less crappy site!

[Cerebus]

Parametric data at distributors except Digikey has always been, and likely always will be poor, as the only way to do it right is to have people that understand what the numbers mean do the data entry, and that's expensive,
I accept that it's unrealistic to fix this, so for me the most important thing is to be able to search in a way that avoids missing potential parts. i.e. very quick and easy ways to select multiple options, and quickly view a large number of parts to scan through visually. One of the most annoying ways that RS obstructs this is that they don't show stock levels in search results.

I think you're cutting them too much slack. If they sold cheese you wouldn't expect a Stilton to be listed as Roquefort, or either to be listed as rind washed cheeses, or one of them to be the only cheese of the 150 blue cheeses that they stock that pops up when you ticked 'blue cheeses' in a parametric search, or to have pack sizes variously listed in inconsistent units such as 0.2kg, 200gm, 200g etc. They sell electronic components, it is not too much to expect some domain expertise, just as it would not be to expect it from a seller of cheese.

If it costs money to use someone with a reasonable amount of domain expertise to compile your catalogue then that is a cost one has to bear if one wants to be a seller in any specialist domain be it electronic components, cheese, paper, mechanical fasteners, or wet fish.

[Cerebus]

Unfortunately it's still "new and awful" here.

Different time zone and they probably do re-deploys in the wee small hours. Or it's a nation by nation thing and they have decided to make you continue to suffer.

I'm in the UK too and also get the new crappy webside. Perhaps the old one is still up and you got to it using an old bookmark or link? If so, please post it. I'd love to use their old, slightly less crappy site!

I did nothing more than type "uk." into my browser's address bar and let it fill in the rest of the URL. Hold on ...

That causes a remembered "uk.rs-online.com" to come up (no bookmarks for RS). Hit return I get to "uk.rs-online.com/web" and I get ... the new site. Ah, but hold on, I was actually getting an order ready earlier. Ah, if I log in I get the old site.

So, it seems I only get the old site if I'm logged in. Curiouser and curiouser.

[Simon]

I "used", ok visited their webshite this morning and it was still unusable. Fortunately I only needed to see if the do any 24V 3A mains adapters so that was a fast simple one.

[Zero999]

Try their export site. It's not so bad. More like their old site and can display 60 hits per page, rather than 25.
https://export.rsdelivers.com

[Refrigerator]

I tried navigating through RS and get two different versions of the website.
If i go through the region select page (with the map) to the UK website i get (what i assume is) the new website and only get 20 results per page with no option to change the number of results.
But if i go to the Lithuanian website i get a different website that lets me select between 20, 40 and 60 parts per page.
The pictures also look lower resolution in the LT version.
Also in the LT version i get this "digital transistors" section with only 4 parts (pic included), which is not present in the UK or the export versions.
ahem..."You wouldn't download a transistor" ....yeah i'll show myself out. 
I've only been to RS a couple times, a long time ago, so i don't really remember what it was like.

Ps: the descriptions above each section are so unbearably cringe.

[Simon]

RS has been taken over by assholes that think they are selling t-shirts to teenagers.

Oh look, you are looking at this semiconductor, well, other people that bought this semiconductor, also bought these fasteners, why don't you buy both too.......

The website is so cringy but this latest iteration has just killed off RS a supplier for me as I have better things to do. As great as the digi key site is it took me 3 days to find a chip I could use due the supply situation, I did not even bother with RS.