Something is wrong with mouser

[PartialDischarge]

The delays in mouser are not normal. They say its weather, transportation, covid,... but I don't think its true.
This morning I made a small purchase at digikey, 4 lines, in 2 hours it was completed and with UPS tracking number.

At mouser, I have a purchase pending shipment since the 10th, and 3 other small orders pending picking of the items.... These orders have all the items in stock and they are not huge orders.

[MarkF]

Mouser is in Texas.

Have you seen the weather reports in Texas?
Unusual snow and cold for them.  Their power grid has been down for days.
People are dying from the cold there.
Texas has been in the news for days here in the states.

My order has been delayed for days also.

The word of the day: "patience".

[PartialDischarge]

Ok, didn't know that, I'm in Europe. Since digikey was working fine I thought it was something else.

 I can relate, last month we had the snow of the century here, I couldn't drive my car in 5 days....

[PartialDischarge]

I can see it now!

[thm_w]

Its more than just the weather, although that is probably most of it. They clearly have some sort of staff shortage in the warehouse.

https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/usa/dallas/historic?month=2&year=2021

[TimFox]

If you check those news sources, you will see that the Texas power grid failed during the cold weather, as it had in 2011 in a similar weather circumstance, for various reasons (which are already a political football there).

[schmitt trigger]

Mouser is located in Mansfield, which is a part of the gigantic (by extension) Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex.

The DFW Metro area has perhaps the World's largest and most ubiquitous freeway system located within a major city. One has to actually have driven there to comprehend the system's magnitude.

One of its wonders it that it has hundreds of elevated sections and overpasses. That in a city which is woefully under-prepared for winter conditions. Which means that a significant portion of this wonderful system becomes dangerous and unusable due to black ice.

This black ice condition last week caused a massive 135 vehicle pile-up on Interstate 35W:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/investigators-in-fort-worth-still-picking-up-pieces-of-135-car-pileup/ar-BB1dDCmu

With the winter storm described earlier, people simply are staying put at their homes and not driving to work

[floobydust]

Before the "Texas Freeze" my Mouser order took over two days to fulfill at the warehouse. So they were slow. Order late Monday, get it Friday.

Today, I would not expect Mouser or FedEx to be doing well- rolling power blackouts, boil water advisory, people suffering cold and frozen plumbing. It's terrible.
Canada is supplying 2X the amount of natural gas to the US right now and power generation has not recovered in Texas.
I think it's Enron 2, deregulation has proven power producers just maximize their profit over maintenance or reinforcing infrastructure.
"...Spot prices for electricity in Texas passed the grid’s cap of $9,000 per megawatt-hour as an arctic chill raises the specter of blackouts."
"Wholesale power for delivery Monday traded at $9,009.40 a megawatt-hour in the West hub at 1 a.m. in Houston, a staggering 3,466% increase from Friday".

[SilverSolder]

Before the "Texas Freeze" my Mouser order took over two days to fulfill at the warehouse. So they were slow. Order late Monday, get it Friday.

Today, I would not expect Mouser or FedEx to be doing well- rolling power blackouts, boil water advisory, people suffering cold and frozen plumbing. It's terrible.
Canada is supplying 2X the amount of natural gas to the US right now and power generation has not recovered in Texas.
I think it's Enron 2, deregulation has proven power producers just maximize their profit over maintenance or reinforcing infrastructure.
"...Spot prices for electricity in Texas passed the grid’s cap of $9,000 per megawatt-hour as an arctic chill raises the specter of blackouts."
"Wholesale power for delivery Monday traded at $9,009.40 a megawatt-hour in the West hub at 1 a.m. in Houston, a staggering 3,466% increase from Friday".

Idiots turning basic services into a money game.

[jmelson]

The delays in mouser are not normal. They say its weather, transportation, covid,... but I don't think its true.
This morning I made a small purchase at digikey, 4 lines, in 2 hours it was completed and with UPS tracking number.

Mouser is in Texas.  UPS sent out a message that ALL pickup and delivery service in I think 9 states are suspended for the next several days, including Texas.

Digi-Key is in Minnesota, where they know how to deal with snow.

Jon

[bdunham7]

I think it's Enron 2, deregulation has proven power producers just maximize their profit over maintenance or reinforcing infrastructure.
"...Spot prices for electricity in Texas passed the grid’s cap of $9,000 per megawatt-hour as an arctic chill raises the specter of blackouts."
"Wholesale power for delivery Monday traded at $9,009.40 a megawatt-hour in the West hub at 1 a.m. in Houston, a staggering 3,466% increase from Friday".

It is exactly Enron 2 and it isn't just deregulation, it is the specific system of eliminating long-term contracts or payments to generators for availability.  Greed and stupidity, but mostly stupidity. 

[JohnnyMalaria]

Before the "Texas Freeze" my Mouser order took over two days to fulfill at the warehouse. So they were slow. Order late Monday, get it Friday.

What shipping were you paying for? 3 days (since I read late Monday as Tuesday) from TX to Canada seems reasonable.

This week is the first week Mouser has notified me of a delay and it was obvious why. Indeed, I forwent faster shipping because I knew this was coming. However, last week, I ordered an item using UPS Ground. As with every order before it, Mouser upgraded me to 2nd Air and then, because of weather delays last week, upgraded me yet again to Priority Overnight.

I've always been impressed with Mouser and enjoyed watching a video about their operation. I hope they are all okay. I used live a couple of hours from Dallas/FW and understand this is quite unprecedented. We get ice storms and days of outages in NC so I can relate.

[SilverSolder]

I think it's Enron 2, deregulation has proven power producers just maximize their profit over maintenance or reinforcing infrastructure.
"...Spot prices for electricity in Texas passed the grid’s cap of $9,000 per megawatt-hour as an arctic chill raises the specter of blackouts."
"Wholesale power for delivery Monday traded at $9,009.40 a megawatt-hour in the West hub at 1 a.m. in Houston, a staggering 3,466% increase from Friday".

It is exactly Enron 2 and it isn't just deregulation, it is the specific system of eliminating long-term contracts or payments to generators for availability.  Greed and stupidity, but mostly stupidity.

When parasites get greedy to the point of killing the host, I guess stupidity is the only thing that remains...

[floobydust]

Before the "Texas Freeze" my Mouser order took over two days to fulfill at the warehouse. So they were slow. Order late Monday, get it Friday.

What shipping were you paying for? 3 days (since I read late Monday as Tuesday) from TX to Canada seems reasonable. [...]

FedEx shipped from Texas to Canada in an incredible 18hrs, so I got the parts Friday afternoon. UPS is not liked in Canada over their brokerage fees (on other shipments) and poop coloured trucks.
It was the two days waiting for the Mouser warehouse to fill the order, online chat assuring me it would go out that day, that was not so great. I guess order Monday to get stuff Friday is the expectation.
In the order I got a few Murata watch batteries that are dead too, shorted out somewhere in a bin I guess.

[james_s]

I think it's Enron 2, deregulation has proven power producers just maximize their profit over maintenance or reinforcing infrastructure.
"...Spot prices for electricity in Texas passed the grid’s cap of $9,000 per megawatt-hour as an arctic chill raises the specter of blackouts."
"Wholesale power for delivery Monday traded at $9,009.40 a megawatt-hour in the West hub at 1 a.m. in Houston, a staggering 3,466% increase from Friday".

It is exactly Enron 2 and it isn't just deregulation, it is the specific system of eliminating long-term contracts or payments to generators for availability.  Greed and stupidity, but mostly stupidity.

Jeez, silly me for assuming they had done something to prevent another Enron incident. If I had to pay $9k/MWh I'd shut off the utility power and run my gasoline backup generator. Too bad I'm not a little closer to Texas, this would probably be a good time to sell my extra one.

[floobydust]

One Texas Resident Still Has Power, but His Bill Is Now Over $8,000
"... Texas resident owes power company, Griddy, $8,162.73 for his electricity use in February. The total was a steep increase compared with his bill for his two-story home last month, which was $387.79"

Maybe only residential customers got this kind of Wall Street treatment "Greed is good, greed is legal". Hopefully Mouser and other businesses aren't going to get hit like this?
Critical infrastructure in the hands of corporations always fails - they only want max profit.

[olkipukki]

Mouser is in Texas.  UPS sent out a message that ALL pickup and delivery service in I think 9 states are suspended for the next several days, including Texas.

Mouser has postponed all deliveries until the next week, so more than 1+ week delay overall

Digi-Key is in Minnesota, where they know how to deal with snow.

DK didn't accept any orders at all on a few occasions, asked 'Contact Us' to discuss or 3-5 days delay "due to COVID"

[TimFox]

In the US, there are three major power grids:  Eastern, Western, and Texas.  See  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmission_grid
Apparently, Texas didn't want intrusive Federal regulation of their power, which might require extra investment to ensure reliability in extreme conditions.
One of many news articles about the politics around the Texas grid:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/02/16/ercot-texas-electric-grid-failure/

[VK3DRB]

Privatising vital utilities such as power is very bad policy. Vital utilities should be owned by the people for the people. Texas is a basket case. An Australian bank owns chunk of Texas's enegry supplies and has profited from misery...
https://www.afr.com/companies/financial-services/macquarie-jacks-up-profits-on-texas-big-freeze-20210222-p574jo

[SilverSolder]

Privatising vital utilities such as power is very bad policy. Vital utilities should be owned by the people for the people. Texas is a basket case. An Australian bank owns chunk of Texas's enegry supplies and has profited from misery...
https://www.afr.com/companies/financial-services/macquarie-jacks-up-profits-on-texas-big-freeze-20210222-p574jo

It's amazing how self-harming people can be, once they get infatuated with an ideal -  in this case, "free" markets.

[dbctronic]

Mouser shipping staff may also be doing a lot of hair-tearing if they deal with the US Postal Service.

I just sent somebody a check via Priority Mail ($7, not the $26 Express service from Indiana to Georgia on Feb 6. Just arrived today! 

[james_s]

It's amazing how self-harming people can be, once they get infatuated with an ideal -  in this case, "free" markets.

Idealism of any sort is a recipe for failure and disaster in a world where nothing is ever ideal. The fact that no real-world component or system is ideal should be obvious to an engineer but I think a lot of people don't really grasp this.

The concept of a free market works quite well I think, within certain limitations. Like damping of a control loop, you need some mechanisms to keep things within reasonable bounds and prevent wild swings due to unexpected changes in the input. What we are seeing with the energy prices in Texas is essentially a loop with very high proportional gain and no derivative.

[SilverSolder]

It's amazing how self-harming people can be, once they get infatuated with an ideal -  in this case, "free" markets.

Idealism of any sort is a recipe for failure and disaster in a world where nothing is ever ideal. The fact that no real-world component or system is ideal should be obvious to an engineer but I think a lot of people don't really grasp this.

The concept of a free market works quite well I think, within certain limitations. Like damping of a control loop, you need some mechanisms to keep things within reasonable bounds and prevent wild swings due to unexpected changes in the input. What we are seeing with the energy prices in Texas is essentially a loop with very high proportional gain and no derivative.

Positive feedback, even.  Just like the stock market...  GameStop anyone?

Positive feedback isn't bad per se, but it can be tricky to control!

[rsjsouza]

Privatising vital utilities such as power is very bad policy. Vital utilities should be owned by the people for the people. Texas is a basket case. An Australian bank owns chunk of Texas's enegry supplies and has profited from misery...
https://www.afr.com/companies/financial-services/macquarie-jacks-up-profits-on-texas-big-freeze-20210222-p574jo

The infrastructure is well regulated and in the hands of a few companies with a lot of oversight. The issue is with the "middle men" named "electricity providers" that are simply financial companies that provided services such as flexible payments and other financial advantages disguised as utilities. This is a well known fad from the 90s called unbundling. 

The concept of a free market works quite well I think, within certain limitations. Like damping of a control loop, you need some mechanisms to keep things within reasonable bounds and prevent wild swings due to unexpected changes in the input. What we are seeing with the energy prices in Texas is essentially a loop with very high proportional gain and no derivative.

The free market works well with oversight and accountability. Too many examples to count, being 2008/2009 housing crisis one of the most widespread ones.

However, in this case the issue is very limited to a portion of customers that used these particular variable rate "middle men" utility providers - just like in 2008/2009, where variable interest rates were the demise of many families. For people that did not survive through hyperinflation or in countries with very "creative" economy policies, it is very hard to grasp the concepts of "value of goods", "value of money" and "economic instability".

[SilverSolder]

[...]
The infrastructure is well regulated and in the hands of a few companies with a lot of oversight. The issue is with the "middle men" named "electricity providers" that are simply financial companies that provided services such as flexible payments and other financial advantages disguised as utilities. This is a well known fad from the 90s called unbundling. 
[...]

Using these middlemen can be a good way of cutting the bills, but you have to keep switching providers since they only give a good price for a shortish period.

One of the providers I was using went bust...   and they sold my email address (along with other customers' of course) to spammers...  I know, because I give each company an individual email address to detect this kind of abuse and now I keep getting bounces from some of the spam victims who are no longer valid email addresses...

It is a filthy industry.   Why not just give people decent prices in the first place, so this kind of insanity becomes unnecessary?   Too simple, too "commie"?