Digi-Key has changed and it is not very good

[james_s]

I beg to differ. They have it in their privacy policy.
https://www.digikey.com/en/help/privacy

on that page you can find this:

Information that we obtain from third party sources

Our website may contain links to third party websites, embedded content that comes from or relates to third party websites and services, and buttons from third party websites and services (such as social media sharing buttons). From time to time, we may receive personal information about you from third party sources.

In short, it means they advertise on social media, and may get affinity data and click/view metrics from the social media services they advertise on in order to determine the efficacy of their ad campaigns. In other words, they do what pretty much every single other company in the developed world does, and they are kind enough to inform you. If you don't like this, don't use the internet.

[Zoli]

I beg to differ. They have it in their privacy policy.
https://www.digikey.com/en/help/privacy

on that page you can find this:

Information that we obtain from third party sources

Our website may contain links to third party websites, embedded content that comes from or relates to third party websites and services, and buttons from third party websites and services (such as social media sharing buttons). From time to time, we may receive personal information about you from third party sources.

In short, it means they advertise on social media, and may get affinity data and click/view metrics from the social media services they advertise on in order to determine the efficacy of their ad campaigns. In other words, they do what pretty much every single other company in the developed world does, and they are kind enough to inform you. If you don't like this, don't use the internet.

Alternative(what I do):don't be part of any anti-social network.

[St66666]

An update...
Finally an explanation I can accept:

I was contacted by a DK rep and the explanation was that my account was classified as a dealer/reseller and was re-classed to repair.
Everything now looks like is back to normal.

[KE5FX]

That's actually good news, then.  It suggests they are taking concrete action against predatory brokers.

[tooki]

An update...
Finally an explanation I can accept:

I was contacted by a DK rep and the explanation was that my account was classified as a dealer/reseller and was re-classed to repair.
Everything now looks like is back to normal.

While I am happy about the outcome, I can’t help but think you would have gotten your answer much sooner, and with fewer stomach ulcers, had you taken a different approach.

[EEVblog]

An update...
Finally an explanation I can accept:
I was contacted by a DK rep and the explanation was that my account was classified as a dealer/reseller and was re-classed to repair.
Everything now looks like is back to normal.

When I order stuff from Digikey, one of the questions is along the lines of "will you be reselling these parts?"
When you sell countless products into practically every country in the world the amount of red tape catgegories you must have would be be astronomical.

[St66666]

An update...
Finally an explanation I can accept:

I was contacted by a DK rep and the explanation was that my account was classified as a dealer/reseller and was re-classed to repair.
Everything now looks like is back to normal.

While I am happy about the outcome, I can’t help but think you would have gotten your answer much sooner, and with fewer stomach ulcers, had you taken a different approach.

How?
This was an ongoing problem for me for at least a few months. I tried to find out why a while ago through a live chat.
With these diodes it was too obvious something is not right.
I wrote 4 or 5 emails and nobody bothered to check?

[tooki]

If those emails were written in the tone you shared and used here, then you came off as an argumentative crank. But you also tend to whine without actually asking specific questions.

[KE5FX]

It's reasonable for a customer to be upset when they are refused service for undisclosed reasons, particularly on an order this small. 

I'm all for DigiKey restricting sales to scalpers, but scalpers aren't going to order four or five pieces at a time, as St66666 did.  Those safeguards should kick in when someone with little/no customer history orders hundreds or thousands of parts at full-retail prices.

[floobydust]

Digi-Key's website focus is on analytics - not common sense or what customers really need. For years now.

[Zeyneb]

Digi-Key's website focus is on analytics - not common sense or what customers really need. For years now.

How do you know? What sources can you share to back up this claim.

[floobydust]

Look at your web browser's load of the Digi-Key home page. But I believe you have the Data Protection Law GDPR which we don't have in North America.
I can see some of sites are all about analytics for tracking, others for security/fraud prevention and content providers, some are legit.

akamaiedge.net
analytics-egain.com
evgnet.com
go-mpulse.net
google.com
googleoptimize.com
mktossl.com
sift.com
tiqcdn.com
trustwave.com
youtube.com
...
If the staff and labour costs associated with analytics could be instead used to make the website a better experience, that would be great.
Who has access to the data mined, including scalpers, we don't know- as if it's private 

[EEVblog]

I'm all for DigiKey restricting sales to scalpers, but scalpers aren't going to order four or five pieces at a time, as St66666 did.  Those safeguards should kick in when someone with little/no customer history orders hundreds or thousands of parts at full-retail prices.

Err, what's wrong with someone purchasing something in bulk at full retail price from a company who's entire business model is bulk component supply?

[thm_w]

I'm all for DigiKey restricting sales to scalpers, but scalpers aren't going to order four or five pieces at a time, as St66666 did.  Those safeguards should kick in when someone with little/no customer history orders hundreds or thousands of parts at full-retail prices.

Err, what's wrong with someone purchasing something in bulk at full retail price from a company who's entire business model is bulk component supply?

Nothing inherently wrong or not wrong, digikey is prioritizing long term business over short term profits.
Mass component scalping of new parts will end, eventually, and at that point scalpers disappear and you're back to your regular customer base. Some of us regular customers remember how we were treated.

Same sort of issue with Nvidia and GPU miners. Crypto GPU mining is essentially dead at this point, so catering to that transient market could have been a bad idea long term.

[KE5FX]

Nothing wrong with it, except at some point you'll get a better price from a manufacturer's rep.

Just pointing out that somebody buying 4 pieces is probably not a broker or a reseller, while somebody buying 4000 might be.  Suspecting/flagging/accusing small-time buyers of being a reseller is not good business.

[floobydust]

When Digi-Key started in the 1970's they catered to the small orders, the hobbyists. They had the highest markups and highest level of service.
This made the company, I guess people were willing to pay extra for service (well, along with some surplus cool NS clock modules like MA1010, MA1012 they sold as bait lol).

1-100 lot are stupid expensive now, those markups have increased, and bigger production quantities Purchasing depts are always using other distributors, unless they are forced to use Digi-Key as a source because their prices are silly high. So going after the big fish, selling to manufacturers to hit the bigger volumes- I'm not sure will work because the company was not built on that. Prove it by running your BoM through other distributors and comparing prices.

Whether that reel of parts ends up in communist weapons systems, or a scalper's shelf, or at another competing distributor, or some lowly hobbyist/repair shop, they can't control any of that.
Why are they following some myth of being able to control who their customers are?

[tooki]

Whether that reel of parts ends up in communist weapons systems, or a scalper's shelf, or at another competing distributor, or some lowly hobbyist/repair shop, they can't control any of that.
Why are they following some myth of being able to control who their customers are?

1. Because suppliers and government regulations require them to restrict things.
2. To maintain a better customer experience for their own customers overall.

[magic]

An update...
Finally an explanation I can accept:

I was contacted by a DK rep and the explanation was that my account was classified as a dealer/reseller and was re-classed to repair.
Everything now looks like is back to normal.

While I am happy about the outcome, I can’t help but think you would have gotten your answer much sooner, and with fewer stomach ulcers, had you taken a different approach.

Or if DK weren't assholes and informed about the situation sooner. Or if anyone there took initiative and realized that somebody ordering four diodes and complaining about it not working perhaps is not a scalper.

It's becoming standard practice in online businesses (and most businesses are becoming online) to treat customers like shit and then hide behind clueless, powerless and overworked support reps who can't help you even if they had time for that, and don't have time to help even if they wanted to, and possibly don't even want anything more than their paycheck at the end of the day.

And if God forbid you get pissed off then you are a crank, thank you for your concerns dear valued customer, goodbye. Of course you can vote with your wallet and take your business elsewhere, rinse and repeat.

It always takes licking the ass (as we say here) of a bunch of people before they finally connect you with somebody who can actually resolve your problem.


And then some people even think it's normal, maybe they got so fluent in navigating this byzantine mess that they believe it's them who are being clever, nevermind the time they are regularly wasting writing all those polite and constructive emails

[rsjsouza]

I tend to agree with magic here. The (claimed) amount of time and back-and-forth communications since the beginning of problems was caused by an error on the supplier side, which probably led to their operators/reps to discredit any claims of problems and de-prioritize any communications. We all know how this goes: due to the high volume of requests, the operators probably have a customer screen with various flags that characterize its activities, etc. Once the flag "scalper alert" was lit/checked, the level of engagement in subsequent actions were proportional to the quality of responses received by the customer. That also ties directly with floobydust's post regarding the quality of small customer engagement.

Funny how the world works these days: the customer only got his plea heard after making a stink in a popular website that probably has someone from the supplier monitoring it. What in the past was done only locally with a megaphone, nowadays is done using the keyboard. 
 

[thm_w]

Or if DK weren't assholes and informed about the situation sooner. Or if anyone there took initiative and realized that somebody ordering four diodes and complaining about it not working perhaps is not a scalper.

It's becoming standard practice in online businesses (and most businesses are becoming online) to treat customers like shit and then hide behind clueless, powerless and overworked support reps who can't help you even if they had time for that, and don't have time to help even if they wanted to, and possibly don't even want anything more than their paycheck at the end of the day.

And if God forbid you get pissed off then you are a crank, thank you for your concerns dear valued customer, goodbye. Of course you can vote with your wallet and take your business elsewhere, rinse and repeat.

It always takes licking the ass (as we say here) of a bunch of people before they finally connect you with somebody who can actually resolve your problem.


And then some people even think it's normal, maybe they got so fluent in navigating this byzantine mess that they believe it's them who are being clever, nevermind the time they are regularly wasting writing all those polite and constructive emails

No one here was "treated like shit" lol
Shitty treatment would be an outright ban of him as a customer.

Ordering four diodes probably did not label them as a scalper, whatever actions they took prior to that purchase likely flagged them and prevented purchase of any quantity of specific items.

[St66666]

Or if DK weren't assholes and informed about the situation sooner. Or if anyone there took initiative and realized that somebody ordering four diodes and complaining about it not working perhaps is not a scalper.

It's becoming standard practice in online businesses (and most businesses are becoming online) to treat customers like shit and then hide behind clueless, powerless and overworked support reps who can't help you even if they had time for that, and don't have time to help even if they wanted to, and possibly don't even want anything more than their paycheck at the end of the day.

And if God forbid you get pissed off then you are a crank, thank you for your concerns dear valued customer, goodbye. Of course you can vote with your wallet and take your business elsewhere, rinse and repeat.

It always takes licking the ass (as we say here) of a bunch of people before they finally connect you with somebody who can actually resolve your problem.


And then some people even think it's normal, maybe they got so fluent in navigating this byzantine mess that they believe it's them who are being clever, nevermind the time they are regularly wasting writing all those polite and constructive emails

No one here was "treated like shit" lol
Shitty treatment would be an outright ban of him as a customer.

Ordering four diodes probably did not label them as a scalper, whatever actions they took prior to that purchase likely flagged them and prevented purchase of any quantity of specific items.

Only ordering parts what I need. Roughly 3 or 4 times a month. I don't waist time talking to them or writing emails if there are no issues. The truth is that their web site sometimes has glitches and does not work correctly.
I put up with the issue for months until it became too obvious that there is something wrong.
All I wanted is equal treatment and some answers.
What exactly do you suspect I did?

[thm_w]

Only ordering parts what I need. Roughly 3 or 4 times a month. I don't waist time talking to them or writing emails if there are no issues. The truth is that their web site sometimes has glitches and does not work correctly.
I put up with the issue for months until it became too obvious that there is something wrong.
All I wanted is equal treatment and some answers.
What exactly do you suspect I did?

No idea what you did, nothing intentional of course.
Maybe refresh the page too many times, ordered a specific item, quantity, etc.

BTW recently tried to order a UV LED and would not add to cart, asked support and they said it was not allowed to be shipped to Canada. So they don't have a built in error message for that, for whatever reason, it just blocks the cart.

edit: here is the part https://www.digikey.ca/en/products/detail/luminus-devices-inc/SST-10-UV-A130-G385-00/9749623 385nm LED

[james_s]

BTW recently tried to order a UV LED and would not add to cart, asked support and they said it was not allowed to be shipped to Canada. So they don't have a built in error message for that, for whatever reason, it just blocks the cart.

That's bizarre. Why on earth would they not let a UV LED be shipped to Canada? It would be trivial to get someone in the US to send one, no way customs would know there was anything special about it.

[tooki]

Could be something as trivial as exclusivity agreements between the manufacturer and local distributors. (E.g. manufacturer has given exclusivity in Canada to a Canadian distributor, so manufacturer tells their non-Canadian distributors they may not ship it to Canadian addresses.)