Digikey vs Slow boat from Adafruit (you thought I was going to say china)

[DimitriP]

So... I order from Digikey, the order is shipped less than 70 minutes later and will be here in 2-3 days.
 
I order from Adafruit.............
Order is confirmed on Tuesday  Jan 12, 12:35 PM
..and theeeen
sometime later,  a label was magically created already   
January 13, 2016 , 6:53 pm  Shipping Label Created

and instantly the next day
January 14, 2016 , 11:21 pm Accepted at USPS Origin Sort Facility NEW YORK, NY 10013

and the next day after that
 January 15, 2016 , 12:36 am   Arrived at USPS Origin Facility NEW YORK, NY 10199

and less than 48 hours later it made it to California
 January 16, 2016 , 10:41 am  Arrived at USPS Destination Facility   

I don't know if this is a one time thing, or  Adafruit shipping is that convoluted

[free_electron]

well. digikey has a fully automated warehouse, employing 600 people wath a massive ERP system and contracts with UPS and fedex.
Adafruit is ran by a single person out of a garagebox ...

[rdl]

I'm not an expert on the USPS tracking system and its messages, but it looks to me like Adafruit took longer to get the order to the Post Office than USPS took to get it from New York to California.

[Nerull]

If getting something the same week you ordered it is "the slow boat", amazon prime has really spoiled people.

Newegg regularly takes a couple days to even ship, plus 3 days for UPS, for a warehouse a couple states away.

At my last job they were looking at moving shipping from Malaysia to the US from air freight to container vessel - ship times were going to go from about a week and a half to 3 months. That's the slow boat.

[rrinker]

 I live close enough to Newegg's NJ warehouse that my orders get to me in 2-3 days if it's in stock there, instead of say California - even with standard shipping and no rush. I don't think I've EVER had an order at Newegg take more than a day to ship, and I've never paid their 'rush' fee. I'm also careful to order only from Newegg, not their other vendors in their 'marketplace'. They don't have the control over it that Amazon has over their storefronts.
 Now Amazon - one of their warehouses is a 30 minute drive from me. My cable modem went on the blink Saturday, so I ordered a new one from Amazon. Normal Prime shipping I would have gotten it today, but they only wanted $3.50 extra for next day - heck yeah! And it was delivered yesterday - Sunday.
 What ticks me off about online ordering more than the delivery time (I remember ordering my first computer, back when I was in 8th grade, a kit from a company in California. Had to have my Mom write a check, we had no credit cards then, it took like 3-4 days for my order to get there, then a week for the check to clear, then another 2 weeks for the kit to ship) is the lack of a decent inventory system. Besides electronics, my other hobby is model railroading. There is a mail order place that is fairly close, just a bit too far to casually drive there and pick stuff up, but they have the world's best and most accurate inventory system - if I pick an item and put it in my cart, then open another browser window, I will see the inventory reduced by the 1 in my cart. I have never ever ordered anything only to later get the dreaded "sorry, one of your items is backordered" emails like the one I just got for the order I placed for diet shakes. In this day and age, how can these things not be kept accurately? Orders are pulled and barcode scanned, so there's no excuse for the inventory system to be out of date. This mail order hobby shop, in a large part because of their embrace of modern technology, has stayed open and probably sells far more than when they just had a storefront in the days before the internet. Unlike many places, they embraced the internet early on and have been selling online for years now, along with having a storefront. Too many companies in all sorts of lines of business just totally failed to change with the times and frankly, the deserve to fail. The internet and mail order shopping didn't kill these businesses, they killed themselves by refusing to adapt.

[helius]

I ordered roughly $100 of stuff from Adafruit and it arrived the next day, standard UPS ground.

[free_electron]

If getting something the same week you ordered it is "the slow boat", amazon prime has really spoiled people.

Newegg regularly takes a couple days to even ship, plus 3 days for UPS, for a warehouse a couple states away.

At my last job they were looking at moving shipping from Malaysia to the US from air freight to container vessel - ship times were going to go from about a week and a half to 3 months. That's the slow boat.

amazon prime : order before 10 AM , arrives at 4 pm. Same day prime ...

[JoeN]

I've endured some annoyances with them as well.  But I appreciate the libraries for sure.

[EEVblog]

I was of the understanding that Adafruit had a very automated and fast shipping department.
They seem to always tweet people crowing about the super fast delivery?

[EEVblog]

I ordered Element 14 yesterday, and it was in my hands in about 15 hours.
Granted, they are in Sydney.

[rdl]

Coast to coast in five days is really not that bad. Three to four days is about as good as it gets without paying for next day or 2nd day.

[DimitriP]

I try to order on Monday or Tuesday so I can be having fun "this" Saturday, not the next ...

So the good news is that "it can happen to anyone anyone and it's not a big deal".... as long as you don't get excited about anything arriving in time for the weekend.



 

[DimitriP]

I was of the understanding that Adafruit had a very automated and fast shipping department.
They seem to always tweet people crowing about the super fast delivery?

It's called "excellent online presence". I wouldn't be surprized if they ship  sooner/faster to people with twitter accounts because it creates a positive buzz. 

[Falcon69]

if it was ground shipping, coast to coast, in five days that is great!, but in this case, it appears usps flew it into Cali. 

Taking a couple days, even a few days, to prepare the order and then finally ship after a couple or even a few days (weekends/holidays not counted) for an IN STOCK item is unacceptable to me. Orders should be shipped the same day if orders are in before a certain time (like the time fedex or ups guy comes to business to pick up packages) and that time should be reflected on their website. If the order is placed after that time, then the next business day when the UPS/FedEX guy comes to pick up packages, it should be shipped then.

I don't believe that taking longer than that to ship is acceptable by any means.

I mean think about it...once the money leaves your account and into there's, the item is yours. Maybe if it was the other way around and payment was NOT received until the package has been picked up by USPS/FedEX/USPS (verifiable by tracking info), then just maybe these retailers would not wait forever to get around to shipping your item.  I encounter this problem ALOT when ordering from eBay especially.  It has been nearly 3 weeks sometimes before a seller even ships the item. 

In respect to eBay, even if I get my item (which sometimes I never do receive), I will NEVER leave a 5 star rating for them if I have noticed the package has NOT shipped within 36 hours.  Whether or not I receive the item in the allotted time the listing said I would.  There's no excuse for waiting so long to actually SHIP the item, and if there is, the seller should be notifying the customer QUICKLY so if they are on a time sensitive project, they can have the option to cancel the order and purchase somewhere else.  This, in my opinion, pertains to not just Adafruit and eBay, but to any business that ships ANYTHING out of their office.

I have a very small business, I ship maybe 4 or 5 items a year (yes, its very very small business, gives me something to do), and I NEVER wait so long to ship an item if it is in stock.  One day max, unless it is not in stock or the customer requires a bit of 'modification' to it before shipping to him/her.

Thank you for your post. This will make me think twice about purchasing something from said company. If I have to spend a couple dollars more buying from another company but KNOWING that I will receive the item a day or two or even 3 weeks earlier do to the fact the new company does NOT stall on shipping it out....I will do so.


EDIT:  I just re-read what I wrote, it sounded pretty harsh.  But in all seriousness, a reputable company like Adafruit taking longer then a day to ship your item, to me, is just unacceptable.

EDIT AGAIN:

Order is confirmed on Tuesday  Jan 12, 12:35 PM
..and theeeen
sometime later,  a label was magically created already   
January 13, 2016 , 6:53 pm  Shipping Label Created

and instantly the next day
January 14, 2016 , 11:21 pm Accepted at USPS Origin Sort Facility NEW YORK, NY 10013

It sounds to me like the USPS mail carrier picked up your package from them the following day you ordered it, if that is what they did.  Let's Say that the mail carrier's normal delivery/pick-up time is at 10:00 AM each day, you placed order after that at 12:35 PM.....so it would not have been picked up until the next day at 10:00 AM when the mail carrier comes around again (of course, Adafruit could have delivered the package in person that same day on Tuesday to the post office)....then the Mail carrier would not have gotten it to the Post Office until his route was finished, which means the package would not have been scanned into the post office until the evening of the 13th, (some mail carriers actually scan it in the second the pick it up and get back into their truck though).

HOWEVER - in this case, it looks like a shipping label was NOT even created until the next day, over 30 hours later when your order was purchased by you online. That shipping label should have been created within a couple hours of your order being placed, notifying USPS that there was a package ready to be picked up (or ready to be delivered by an Adafruit employee to the nearest USPS office). If Adafruit online has one person (doubtful, considering how big their online store is, I'm sure their sells volume is pretty high for a business like theirs), then maybe they should hire a single person (or more) to handle the shipping for them so everything is processed and out the door in a timely manner.

Just my 2 cents, they dropped the ball. Stuff like this lowers their potential sells volume, among other retailers who DO ship the same day.

/rant off

[coppice]

I ordered Element 14 yesterday, and it was in my hands in about 15 hours.
Granted, they are in Sydney.

Element 14 are in a number of places in Asia, but a lot of stuff is shipped from Singapore, which seems to be their main Asian base..

[miguelvp]

Fry's Electronics via Google Express, same day delivery

But I have not order anything from them, (yet) because I rather wait than pay overpriced premiums.
The thing is that I would be cheaper to order via Google Express than driving there since I'm in the city and they are in the suburbs.

[tggzzz]

but they should not pretend they have it in stock while not having them.

I had exactly that problem with Avnet, the one and only time I placed an order with them. Shipping date went from "now" to 4 months.

[EEVblog]

I was of the understanding that Adafruit had a very automated and fast shipping department.
They seem to always tweet people crowing about the super fast delivery?

It's called "excellent online presence". I wouldn't be surprized if they ship  sooner/faster to people with twitter accounts because it creates a positive buzz.

I greatly doubt that. They simply love to retweet praise. Given enouh custom you'll get a lot. You'll also get a lot of complaints, but you don't retweet those ones 

[sleemanj]

or ready to be delivered by an Adafruit employee to the nearest USPS office

You kind of give the impression that the second an order comes in, a klaxxon should go off, people should jump to attention, pack the order, print the label, stick it on, and sprint to the nearest post office to send the package.

Expecting more than once-per-business-day mail dispatch FOR POSTAL DELIVERY is completely ridiculous.

Yes it would have been better if they'd packed and labelled it before the cut off the next day so it could be with USPS then, but there are plenty of good reasons why that might not be able to happen.  You can hardly draw a conclusion from one single event when they are shipping tens of thousands of packages a month.  Maybe they had an unusually large number of orders come in that day and they couldn't all be done.  Maybe they prioritised packing of UPS ones first pushing USPS ones out to the next day.  Maybe their label printer broke down.  Maybe they had a staff member off sick.

They actually have an on-going blog post about USPS problems...
https://blog.adafruit.com/2014/03/14/usps-slowing-down-our-thoughts-on-the-postal-service-over-the-last-few-months-makerbusiness/

Maybe the USPS is a really wonderful super reliable extremely fast and crazy cheap service and it's just Adafruit drops the ball.... but if it's anything like NZ Post...

Want it faster, with more reliable tracking... use a courier service.

/my 2c

[klunkerbus]

The weekly video blogs from AdaFruit make it clear they HATE to ship USPS.  Maybe the Manhattan NY post office is the issue; I don't know.  EDIT: I figure they get a far better discount with UPS than they can with USPS... Fine.  But if I'm in a rush to order a single lightweight breakout board, I don't like paying the UPS minimum. 

I've also learned the hard way that ordering around mid-week from them almost automatically involves a delay, possibly caused by a surge of people applying the Wednesday night discount code provided in their weekly "ask an engineer" video. 

[JoeN]

The weekly video blogs from AdaFruit make it clear they HATE to ship USPS.  Maybe the Manhattan NY post office is the issue; I don't know.  EDIT: I figure they get a far better discount with UPS than they can with USPS... Fine.  But if I'm in a rush to order a single lightweight breakout board, I don't like paying the UPS minimum. 

I've also learned the hard way that ordering around mid-week from them almost automatically involves a delay, possibly caused by a surge of people applying the Wednesday night discount code provided in their weekly "ask an engineer" video.

This is one of the two reasons I have sharply curtailed buying from them.  I spent $2192.56 with them from May 31, 2012 to March 20, 2014.  (I know this because I keep a detailed spreadsheet of my purchases).  Nothing since then.  It's hard to believe they are getting "a far better discount" when the cheapest they can ship anything to me for is $9 when Digikey and Newark can do it for $4 and the general postage is about $3.50 for an eight ounce small parcel these days.