Digi-Key has changed and it is not very good

[460voltclub]

Digi-Key has started selling NTE junk and using suppliers I have never seen before, they are also is using Market Place to sell components. Depending on how you order, the shipping costs from different suppliers could be 30 to 50 dollars. I'm not sure what happened but if Mouser would accept PayPal I would dump Digi-Key in a heart beat.

[rsjsouza]

Mouser acceps Paypal...

[460voltclub]

The last time I talked to a Mouser rep she said they were working on adding PayPal but since I did not see the change in their terms and conditions (or whatever it was I looked at ) I assumed it hadn't happened.
Thanks for the update.

[james_s]

I absolutely hate the "marketplace" trend where you have to be so careful about who you are actually buying items from. I first noticed this with Newegg which has been my go-to for computer parts, you have to go out of your way to find stuff sold BY NEWEGG. I have not noticed this with Digikey yet but maybe it depends what you're looking for. The thing that does drive me nuts about Digikey is how they changed it a while back so that the parametric search parameters are hidden and I have to click Show More EVERY SINGLE TIME I search for a part, it's infuriating. I don't know what they were thinking, it's clear that whoever they had design their website is not an engineer and has no idea how engineers search for parts. It's not the same as shopping for a tshirt, ALL of the parameters matter, every time.

[rdl]

I have begun to avoid Newegg after almost 20 years of using them exclusively. They've started that crap of listing reviews for "similar" items along with the ones you really want. The last order I placed I could not log in without allowing JavaScript from Google. They've also added some other script site I didn't notice till I finally placed the order and never got to the confirmation part due to some endlessly spinning doodad. I had to re-log in and check my order history to know it it actually went through. Amazon's prices are just as good and their web site is somewhat less obnoxious.

[ataradov]

Yes, Digi-Key becomes worse day by day. You can clearly see that "effective mangers" took over the filtering in the search part. Now it is all flashy and JS-based, but totally unusable. Too bad. They had the best parametric search.

I had a custom blocking thing to have all the parameters always visible, but recent update broke that too, so I just don't care anymore. I'll probably just start using Mouser more.

[T3sl4co1l]

DK has a marketplace filter, easy.

I have the opposite opinion on the filtering: it's improved, most substantially in speed.  It's almost real time now.  A serious accomplishment over such a huge database.  The one downside is, the list boxes aren't list boxes as such anymore, so you can't navigate them by keyboard.  On the upside, you don't destroy your complex selection by accidentally clicking while not holding CTRL.

Still waiting on them to actually sort into e.g. Vin min/max so I don't have to do those fucking tedious selections...

Tim

[steenerson]

The Newegg we all know and love got bitten by the corporate zombie in 2016 and is owned by a Chinese tech conglomerate, it's not the same anymore.

I prefer Mouser over Digikey these days since most of their prices are a little cheaper, plus mouser's $7.99 2-day shipping always actually shows up 2 days later if the order is in before the cutoff, because they'll upgrade it to overnight as needed. Digikey is $10.99 and usually takes 3 days for me.

[georges80]

^ the Mouser shipping is not fixed pricing for 2 day. I was ordering stuff and saw the 2 day was about $16. I went onto chat and the rate is $7.99 until you order reaches something over $100 (can't remember the exact #) and then the shipping rate jumps dramatically. I complained bitterly as a several decade customer and they refunded shipping to bring it to the $7.99. I explained that they would lose customers with that crazy shipping scheme - the chat person said it was because ups/fedex's insurance rates - if that is true, mouser needs to re-negotiate their contracts.

And the whole order I was making was maybe 1/2lb in weight, so the ridiculous shipping was not due to weight/size.

cheers,
george.

[schmitt trigger]

As the leading online retailers become larger and more powerful, the smaller players have had to make a difficult choice: associate with them or slowly fade into the sunset.

For DK, the marketplace means extra revenue without the hassle of carrying additional inventory. And they got the smaller players held firmly from their nuts, so they won't stray away.

My opinion? I hope that I am wrong on this one, but if the strategy proves successful to DK as it has been to Amazon, Mouser soon will have to follow suit.

[rsjsouza]

...and that's why I will keep giving my money to Mouser. Well, that and their conveniently located warehouse in Fort Worth, which gives me the extreme convenience of having parts next day.

I had two or three bad experiences with Digikey, thus I haven't visited their website in quite some time.

[floobydust]

I strongly dislike Digikey's direction: now a bimbo website that looks pretty but bloated and slow AF with analytics and buggy Javascript that doesn't work well enough to even use the site many times. How's your mobile experience? Every week they mess around and cripple some aspect. Why waste so much money on web developers that don't even know or understand electronics, pico or micro? The Radix sort, the long columns with "5mm, 5.02mm, 5.05mm, 5.07mm, 5.12mm" are just stupid to click to death on when you simply want a 5mm part.

These small "marketplace" vendors I've never heard of are surely a backdoor for counterfeit or repackaged components. The whole reason to pay so much extra for Digikey is that the parts are authentic and traceable. If I want to buy cheaper, shady components I wouldn't bother with Digikey at all.
I think Supply Chain or Purchasers will be tempted to procure from Marketplace vendors because of the lower price or inventory (stock) they have, riding on Digikey's reputation or name as being OK. This is going to be another bombshell when Production calls and there are problems with the build. Who authorized the change?

Right now, Mouser's website is better for parametric searches most of the time. Although "sort by price" seems disabled?

[tszaboo]

Well, at least they now list all the packaging under one part so thats good. It was incredibly annoying that yo searched for a part number, and it listed like 24 different parts, 3 with different package 4 different packaging, two temperature range... At least this is now down to 6 part.

[rfdes]

Gee - I still like DigiKey very much.  I've used DigiKey since the '70s when their catalog was nothing more that a single sheet of paper folded into quarters, stapled and then mailed.  The back side of the sheet was the order form.

The clincher for me is  DigiKey's policy of FREE shipping if you mail them a check instead of charging.  They usually ship USPS but sometimes UPS.  I can order a single 0.10 resistor and get it shipped free.  The downside is that you have to wait for the mail service but that is typically not a big deal for me.

[KE5FX]

Right now, Mouser's website is better for parametric searches most of the time. Although "sort by price" seems disabled?

I've never had problems sorting by price on either site.  In general I still think DigiKey's search engine is a bit better than Mouser's.  They certainly haven't improved things with the recent "Whitespace everywhere, moar whitespace, yo guys, crank up the whitespace" facelift, but I wouldn't say it's horribly broken.  E.g., sorting by quantity available is among the more useful features of DigiKey's search engine and is still available.  Mouser has never allowed that column to be selected for sorting, which is a bummer.

If you have input to offer, be sure to provide (polite) feedback via the tab at right:



It's safe to say that they don't read EEVBlog for input, but they do pay attention to feedback provided from links on their own site in my experience.  If they're moving to an Amazon-style "Marketplace" model, that's a good reason to provide negative feedback, and plenty of it.  If they want to act like Amazon, why shouldn't I just use Amazon?

[james_s]

I've given feedback that having to un-hide the parametric search terms every single time is obnoxious and nothing has changed yet. They need to realize that their customers are not consumers, they sell primarily to engineers and the direction they've taken their website over the past couple of years screams that they, or the company they hire to maintain their website are completely clueless.

[T3sl4co1l]

I've given feedback that having to un-hide the parametric search terms every single time is obnoxious and nothing has changed yet. They need to realize that their customers are not consumers, they sell primarily to engineers and the direction they've taken their website over the past couple of years screams that they, or the company they hire to maintain their website are completely clueless.

You mean the sliding/stacked selection?  That drops every so often (cookies expire), you have to change the setting then activate a query on the same page.  You can't just switch it and click back to the front page.  Not sure if that still applies to the new format...

Hmm, there are a lot of cookies, none with an obvious key like "ViewSelectionSliding = true", I'd have to play around a bit to tell which one remembers that setting.

Tim

[ataradov]

You mean the sliding/stacked selection?

No, the part where you have to click "More Filters" every single time. I just want to see all the available filters. Especially given that the ones that are shown first are almost never the first thing I want to filter.

For instance, I always select mount type first to eliminate significant chunk of available parts, since in many cases this is the only thing I'm sure about and have no flexibility on. So literally every single time I need to  click "More Filters".

Previously I figured out a Stylish script that would remove that button and always keep the things open. But a recent update broke it.

And all their fancy filters look horrible for me since I force a fixed fond and a minimum font size. I do care about my eyesight and don't care for fancy new age fonts.

[Tony_G]

They certainly haven't improved things with the recent "Whitespace everywhere, moar whitespace, yo guys, crank up the whitespace" facelift, but I wouldn't say it's horribly broken.

Hey John,

I believe the rules for modern web dev can be described as follows:

1. There can never be too much whitespace
2. There is no feature of HTML that can't be re-implemented by including a 73MB JS library
3. Under no circumstances should your site work correctly with the back arrow
4. Scolling must be implemented using JS that calls the slowest possible web process for data
5. Videos should always be autoplay and have their volume turn on
6. Your layout must work on the latest iPhone but doesn't need to support increasing font sizes on the desktop
7. See rule 1

It's probably controversial but I believe that if the answer is JavaScript then the question must have been bloody stupid.

TonyG

[james_s]

Excessive white space is one of my biggest UI pet peeves. The trend for years has been a sprinkle of random UI elements floating aimlessly in a vast  sea of blinding white. A lot of basic functionality hidden in obscure little hamburger menus or sliding panes. I much prefer the airplane instrument panel design philosophy, all of the information laid out right in front of you, instruments and controls grouped by related functions, often cordoned off with lines, there is no digging needed, it's all right there where you can see anything you need at a glance. Then the latest crazy is "dark mode" which is just a band aid over piss poor UI design. If it wasn't barren and blinding white in the first place there would be no need for dark mode which is the opposite problem, everything dim and subdued floating in a sea of dark gray.

[ConKbot]

This marketplace stuff needs to fuck off and die. After seeing newegg marketplace being full of stuff with scam prices, and listings and direct import tat labeled as "equivalent" or "compatible" or other similar ways to weasel into search results, I want nothing to do with 3rd parties selling components.  If I wanted trash components labeled falsely, I'd stick with Amazon ebay or aliexpress.

[tooki]

I absolutely hate the "marketplace" trend where you have to be so careful about who you are actually buying items from. I first noticed this with Newegg which has been my go-to for computer parts, you have to go out of your way to find stuff sold BY NEWEGG. I have not noticed this with Digikey yet but maybe it depends what you're looking for. The thing that does drive me nuts about Digikey is how they changed it a while back so that the parametric search parameters are hidden and I have to click Show More EVERY SINGLE TIME I search for a part, it's infuriating. I don't know what they were thinking, it's clear that whoever they had design their website is not an engineer and has no idea how engineers search for parts. It's not the same as shopping for a tshirt, ALL of the parameters matter, every time.

At least Digi-Key’s marketplace seems to consist only of carefully curated vendors. DK has supported drop-shipping from manufacturers for a while, and DK itself handles logistics for some manufacturers’ own stores. (I ordered a TI book from the TI website, and while the name “Digi-Key” didn’t appear anywhere, it shipped in the same exact types of packing materials as DK (same slashed paper padding, blue zip bags, and label layouts), and shipped from Thief River Falls...)

I have nearly entirely stopped using Amazon because of the marketplace BS. (It’s maddening for Switzerland because FBA vendors cannot ship here, yet there’s no way to eliminate them from search. So other than for books, I’d say that these days, 90% of the search results on Amazon.de (the Amazon for Switzerland) can’t actually be shipped here.) IMHO they’re the poster child of marketplace done wrong. DK seems to choose carefully, and makes it trivially easy to exclude them, but I’ve never needed to yet, since only a vanishingly tiny percentage of DK’s SKUs are marketplace.

DK’s parametric search isn’t perfect, but it’s hands-down the best of any electronics distributor, and possibly the best I’ve ever seen anywhere, for any kind of product.

P.S. it looks like DK is testing the updated UI on US customers only. DK’s site for Switzerland, for example, is still using the old interface.

[460voltclub]

I could navigate the site very well and some patience went a long way. When I saw the Marketplace option and NTE products I knew I had just been thrust into China knock off land. I don't want substandard Chinese shit although you can't hardly get away from it. I want a supplier that cares about the quality of their products and screens out the crap but I think Digi-Key just fell off the cliff.

[floobydust]

If you have input to offer, be sure to provide (polite) feedback via the tab at right:

Several times I've reported website bugs to Digikey.
After my time and energy to take screen caps, write up an explanation, trying things on three different computers and different OS, the response is: "have you tried clearing your browser's cache?" 
At this point, it's just insulting because the support person doesn't know the difference between their search engine results and what a browser does. It's just a colossal time sink.

It's clear they've hired Zuckerburg's crew for website development/analytics and are copying Amazon because they are unoriginal. I don't see any forums there to rate/discuss/review the parts they sell.
Look ahead - Next are Digikey-brand components. What's a little CapXon with a red wrapper.

[tszaboo]

If you have input to offer, be sure to provide (polite) feedback via the tab at right:

Several times I've reported website bugs to Digikey.
After my time and energy to take screen caps, write up an explanation, trying things on three different computers and different OS, the response is: "have you tried clearing your browser's cache?" 
At this point, it's just insulting because the support person doesn't know the difference between their search engine results and what a browser does. It's just a colossal time sink.

It's clear they've hired Zuckerburg's crew for website development/analytics and are copying Amazon because they are unoriginal. I don't see any forums there to rate/discuss/review the parts they sell.
Look ahead - Next are Digikey-brand components. What's a little CapXon with a red wrapper.

Like Multicomp, RS-Pro and the others? I lost it completely, when all these adafruit and sparkfun boards statrted showing up in the search results.

Excessive white space is one of my biggest UI pet peeves. The trend for years has been a sprinkle of random UI elements floating aimlessly in a vast  sea of blinding white. A lot of basic functionality hidden in obscure little hamburger menus or sliding panes. I much prefer the airplane instrument panel design philosophy, all of the information laid out right in front of you, instruments and controls grouped by related functions, often cordoned off with lines, there is no digging needed, it's all right there where you can see anything you need at a glance. Then the latest crazy is "dark mode" which is just a band aid over piss poor UI design. If it wasn't barren and blinding white in the first place there would be no need for dark mode which is the opposite problem, everything dim and subdued floating in a sea of dark gray.

Oh don even let me get started on web development. So for the last two years, I cannot convince our software team, that dumb "let the computer decide" autoscaling on graphs is not good. We have vertical scales like "16.1 16.6 17.0 17.5" because how the data is, and rounding problems. And then we got this gift that keeps on giving, our new website designer. So this bliss, had the idea, that we will replace all fonts with this beautiful, corporate approved font. We have GPS coordinates, and complete excel sheet sized tables, that people work with. decided to use this unreadable font, that gave me complete dyslexia. It took us 3 months to convince her to only use these for the headlines.
Sometimes I thinkk we should just slap these designers back to the earth. We just want a usable, Web 1.0 website, that doesnt have like button and doesnt overwrite the scroll functionality. We dont need your creativity, we need a website. You can create a my little pony fanclub website on your own time, and be creative there.