Digi-Key has changed and it is not very good

[SilverSolder]

I guess the "Supplier" column doesn't do it for you?


NO it does not ...that is the component supplier the digikey parts dont' say Digikey...they say different suppliers  (for example littlefuse,  Belden ,wire, texas Inst)  They make no indiscation who is a "marketplace"

Yes, they say "supplier" but in the past it often meant "manufacturer".   

This needs to be expanded - maybe another column - to indicate Marketplace or Digikey.   How hard can that be?   ....   

[ataradov]

This needs to be expanded - maybe another column - to indicate Marketplace or Digikey.   How hard can that be?   ....   

Very hard, actually. You want to do as much as possible to hide the scam when you are scamming. If you make it too obvious, people may not get tricked into getting transistors in a bag.

[dnwheeler]

Digkey isn't some brand new company that didn't exist on the internet for the past 20 years, they certainly know who buys their components....or do they?

They do, but the web designers probably don't. Like many companies, I suspect Digi-Key contracts out their web development to someone who doesn't understand their business or customers. The contractor then treats the project like other similar projects they have done in the past. In this case, the project fit into a generic "e-commerce website" model with (in their mind) overly complicated filtering criteria.

Also, in the case of the results grid (which includes sorting, column widths, etc.) they probably used some pre-existing generic grid control rather than writing one the better meets the needs of their customers.

[tooki]

  We understand the pain points.    The best place to give us feedback or report bugs is the feedback tab
That's a rather pathetic response...it shows quality control at Digikey is non-existent, or the people who made the site are incompetent & should be sent packing.
Doesn't anyone there pay attention AT ALL to  what is being rolled out?

People will quit using digikey & go to Mouser or elsewhere & the end of Digikey.   Now they want to allow others to come to some new marketplace--maybe to to mix in & sell gray/suspect chips there.  There are so many problems it is hard to fathom or even to list them all.
Apparently nobody at digikey bothered to even try their own website.   

Search for a part where you want to only see cut tape, since that is what you are going to be ordering....instead the results are 3-4 times as long. Why?  Because now it ignores the request to show cut tape parts & also shows 3 or 4 other types.  So the listing is 10 miles long because the FILTER DOES NOT WORK.

Ask for pricing at 1000...it may give  it to you or it may not.  Half the time is does not work.  Sort by price, the prices will be out of order.
A part search will be display a part with a unit price of 0.07 cents....click on the provided link & it inconsistently shows a unit price of 0.25 !! 

The pricing information sometimes appears under the  supplier name!!!

You can't see part info on the screen anymore, since the columns are so wide, many of them are not being displayed.

One pic  shows sorted prices are out of order (I've seen some where they are heavily scrambled), then after some scrolling the prices don't even appear under the correct column!!

The list of problems goes on and on and on and on.   This has been happening for weeks.   There seems to be no accountability at Digikey.

Oh my god, take a chill pill before you have a stroke and die on us!

The list is not showing you parts that aren’t cut tape — they’ve finally concatenated different packaging of the same PART into one line item, so you’re simply seeing that other packaging exists. It’s not a part for which no cut tape exists!

As for the price: as I said above, ENTER YOUR QUANTITY on the product page. The price shown at the top is the price for the quantity entered. The price breaks are in a tabbed section farther down.

This needs to be expanded - maybe another column - to indicate Marketplace or Digikey.   How hard can that be?   ....   

Very hard, actually. You want to do as much as possible to hide the scam when you are scamming. If you make it too obvious, people may not get tricked into getting transistors in a bag.

There’s no evidence that DK is allowing alternative suppliers of the same parts. Accusing them of scamming is a serious allegation, and there is zero evidence of this.

“Bag”, aka “bulk” packaging. Nothing to look at here.

I guess the "Supplier" column doesn't do it for you?


NO it does not ...that is the component supplier the digikey parts dont' say Digikey...they say different suppliers  (for example littlefuse,  Belden ,wire, texas Inst)  They make no indiscation who is a "marketplace"

Clear the “Marketplace product: include” checkbox and they’re gone.

[ataradov]

Probably because nothing you’ve searched for has any marketplace vendors. There is VERY little marketplace product in DK right now. You can easily verify this by clearing the “include marketplace” checkbox and noticing that the number of results remains unchanged.

The transistors shown above have 2 non-DK items. Can you easily spot them? Not really. You can if you are very familiar with the way DK names their parts. Like all transistors always start with "TRANS". But if you are not familiar with the naming scheme, you are screwed.

They are clearly doing the marketing thing where they pretend that the shitty behavior that will generate them some money is actually good. They clearly default to the settings that will show the most products regardless of where that what people actually want.

Also, what do you mean by this:

There’s no evidence that DK is allowing alternative suppliers of the same parts. Accusing them of scamming is a serious allegation, and there is zero evidence of this.

Again, look at those transistors, there are 2 different alternative suppliers.

And if I wanted to buy from NTE, I would buy from NTE. What is even the point of this whole thing? I can understand vendors selling unique parts that DK will never carry on their own. This would be actually cool. But why add other distributors?

[tooki]

Ok, I figured out the sorting issue. The parts that are sorted out of order because they sort by MOQ price no matter the quantity entered. So in case of 1111 pcs, they take the price of 1000 pcs as it is the closest price break. And what they show you in the list is the price for 1000 pcs. But the final order will also include 111 parts at a higher price.

So instead of completely removing the listings for items that don't fit the search criteria, they do this mystery math.

I don’t think so, since that’s not how price breaks work. Something in the algorithm seems to get confused when items are either normally stocked but currently not in stock or third-party (both resulting in the “active @ qty” instead of “price @ qty”), when the part status is obsolete or discontinued. It’s not a “mystery algorithm”, it’s a bug.

While I think the tone in this thread has become far too antagonistic and aggressive, especially since we already got a nice reply from a DK employee showing that they want to listen*, I do agree with the sentiment that this interface update was released prematurely. It definitely needed more testing, both fundamental usability testing as well as pure bug testing.


My last job before beginning my electronics training was in usability. Trust me, if a company is saying “we’d love to do 1 on 1 usability testing with you”, they’re interested in getting it right. It’s not an empty “we take it seriously (but actually we don’t give a shit)” response.

[ataradov]

I don’t think so, since that’s not how price breaks work. Something in the algorithm seems to get confused when items are either normally stocked but currently not in stock or third-party (both resulting in the “active @ qty” instead of “price @ qty”), when the part status is obsolete or discontinued. It’s not a “mystery algorithm”, it’s a bug.

Yes, it is a bug. The issue is the same with 1000 qty.

got a nice reply from a DK employee showing that they want to listen*

We had so many good replies from Autodesk people before they completely gutted and killed Eagle. This is a very old story. Nothing will change, since engineers are not actually in charge of anything, they will do as told, even if they care (I have no doubt about that at all).

A simple thing that will resolve the whole marketplace issue is a setting in the profile to set the default state for the "Include" checkbox.  This is trivial to implement if you actually want to be helpful.

[tooki]

Probably because nothing you’ve searched for has any marketplace vendors. There is VERY little marketplace product in DK right now. You can easily verify this by clearing the “include marketplace” checkbox and noticing that the number of results remains unchanged.

The transistors shown above have 2 non-DK items. Can you easily spot them? Not really. You can if you are very familiar with the way DK names their parts. Like all transistors always start with "TRANS". But if you are not familiar with the naming scheme, you are screwed.

They are clearly doing the marketing thing where they pretend that the shitty behavior that will generate them some money is actually good. They clearly default to the settings that will show the most products regardless of where that what people actually want.

Also, what do you mean by this:

There’s no evidence that DK is allowing alternative suppliers of the same parts. Accusing them of scamming is a serious allegation, and there is zero evidence of this.

Again, look at those transistors, there are 2 different alternative suppliers.

And if I wanted to buy from NTE, I would buy from NTE. What is even the point of this whole thing? I can understand vendors selling unique parts that DK will never carry on their own. This would be actually cool. But why add other distributors?

FYI, I changed the first section of text you replied to while you were replying, after checking it with that specific example. I agree, it’s impossible to see which are marketplace vendors. But at least it is trivially easy to exclude them from the results altogether. (Now they just need to let me set that as a search default, since for me, there is never a situation where I will want to order from a marketplace vendor, due to obnoxious Swiss customs fees.)

What I meant by no suppliers of the same part is that they aren’t allowing additional suppliers of the same SKU (the way Amazon does). Taking the 2N3904 example, if we restrict to “active” parts only, the only exact duplication of manufacturer part number is “2N3904”, once for NTE (which is simply using the generic base part number) and some company selling bare dice as special order.

I am in 100% agreement with you about the “what is the point of this?” issue, as evidenced by me saying pretty much exactly the same thing in my feedback email to Digi-Key: I go to a vendor website because I want to order from them, not someone else. If I wanted to do a multi-vendor shopping comparison, I would have gone to a multi-vendor comparison site like octopart!

[tooki]

got a nice reply from a DK employee showing that they want to listen*

We had so many good replies from Autodesk people before they completely gutted and killed Eagle. This is a very old story. Nothing will change, since engineers are not actually in charge of anything, they will do as told, even if they care (I have no doubt about that at all).

A simple thing that will resolve the whole marketplace issue is a setting in the profile to set the default state for the "Include" checkbox.  This is trivial to implement if you actually want to be helpful.

While your fears are certainly justified, given how many companies have done just that, I think we should be fair and give them a chance to get it right before bringing out the pitchforks. I don’t like how this thread is quickly going in the direction of an angry mob. We certainly won’t get taken seriously if we come across as a horde of irrational, implacable banshees.

[eevcandies]

What I meant by no suppliers of the same part is that they aren’t allowing additional suppliers of the same SKU
Oh is this what you mean???  Keep dreaming
       Once approved, you are given access to your own supplier portal. You determine the products you sell, you determine your price, you set up your shipping, and once a customer orders your product
       from digikey.com you ship directly to them.

The list is not showing you parts that aren’t cut tape — they’ve finally concatenated different packaging of the same PART into one line item, so you’re simply seeing that other packaging exists.
You miss the point entirely...when I select the FILTER cut tape, the ONLY parts that should show are cut tape.  If you are looking at a potential ist of 300 cut tape choices, having  4 other categories (full reels, digireels (lacking prices), etc) included, makes the list 4 times longer and more importantly each screen can then only only show 1/3 to 1/4 as many parts able to be compared due to all of the wasted lines...NOT good.

This has been brought up fpr several weeks and nothing has been done.

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.
   So far it's been a good trip downhill with their webpage.

[tooki]

What I meant by no suppliers of the same part is that they aren’t allowing additional suppliers of the same SKU
Oh is this what you mean???  Keep dreaming
       Once approved, you are given access to your own supplier portal. You determine the products you sell, you determine your price, you set up your shipping, and once a customer orders your product
       from digikey.com you ship directly to them.

You don’t seem to know what a SKU is... on DK, third party items (even if it’s a part DK sells itself) are assigned  their own SKUs.

DK even uses separate SKUs for the same exact item for external stock. For example, DK carries practically all Texas Instruments parts and stocks most of them. But for many TI products, they also have the ability to grab from TI’s private stock (TI uses DK for the logistics of their own parts store, it seems). But it’s at different prices and with different availability, so it shows up as a different SKU.

In contrast, on Amazon, if a third party seller offers an item whose UPC or ISBN is already know to the system, it gets concatenated into the same item. (In fact, if you use Fulfillment by Amazon, when you shop your stock to them, they commingle it with their own and every other FBA sellers’!)

The list is not showing you parts that aren’t cut tape — they’ve finally concatenated different packaging of the same PART into one line item, so you’re simply seeing that other packaging exists.
You miss the point entirely...when I select the FILTER cut tape, the ONLY parts that should show are cut tape.  If you are looking at a potential ist of 300 cut tape choices, having  4 other categories (full reels, digireels (lacking prices), etc) included, makes the list 4 times longer and more importantly each screen can then only only show 1/3 to 1/4 as many parts able to be compared due to all of the wasted lines...NOT good.

This has been brought up fpr several weeks and nothing has been done.

You said it “ignores” the selection. It doesn’t, it’s just not designed the way you want. Fact is, if a product only comes packaged in, for example, trays, and you select “cut tape”, it won’t show up. Now that they are (finally) not making whole separate products out of different packaging of the same exact part, the list shows the part, and within the part’s line, it shows the available packaging. I think there is a strong argument for leaving that information out of the list altogether in most situations. But the way it is now is not broken just because it doesn’t work the way you want. I fully appreciate that this design wastes space, and actually agree with you on this aspect. But I take issue with the rabid, imprecise way you express your displeasure.

[eevcandies]

It doesn’t, it’s just not designed the way you want.

Perhaps you are not familiar with filters...have been filtering by voltage range, current limit ohms, cut tape, in stock, active, ect for years with no problem.  Now it is failing to properly do so.  If we want to see other options, like reels, bags, busloads, whatever, then we will select those & expect to see them.
If you select to show only 100 ohm and 488 ohm resistors, you should not see 345 ohm resistors appear.

You don’t seem to know what a SKU is  You don't seem to be investigating ...there are only digkey numbers and manufacturer numbers listed & where does it say they are limiting anything regarding sku's?   What limits digi from  selling a  LM947AA-XP3-2N  and also littlebug from selling a LM947AA-XP3-2N  (from who knows where)  ...nothing that is apparent.

As another example of the layout mess...where they need to have some width, they don't provide it & force the listing to waste 6 lines.  Yet where they don't need the width   they give 2x or more than what is needed, just to waste screen space.

[KE5FX]

If you select to show only 100 ohm and 488 ohm resistors, you should not see 345 ohm resistors appear.

That actually got me a while back, although I don't recall if the culprit was DigiKey or Mouser.  I flamed them to a crisp for it, albeit politely.     Something along the lines of, "Hello?  You are not eBay.  If I enter explicit part values into a search field, do not return parts with any other values, ever."

Come to think of it, I flamed eBay (politely) when they started pulling that crap, and it didn't help.  Maybe I'm just too polite...

It goes back to the unfortunate observation made earlier in the thread that (working) engineers have no role to play when these in-house decisions are made.  Companies like DigiKey and Mouser are great, but they don't eat their own dog food, and that means that when they screw up, you have to provide what amounts to free consulting to set them back on the right path.  Otherwise, they will make your job harder over time and render their own business less competitive without realizing it.

Here's another unfortunate move I've seen lately.  This time there's no question about the identity of the perpetrator:



Yeah, thanks, guys, I'm sure I'll have no difficulty remembering that "821XGLB" means "820 nH."  And I can't think of any scenarios in which this kind of product label might cause confusion (or worse) at the EMS facility. 

[Bud]

I think part of the problem with the sick web pages layouts are the "modern" imbecilic web platforms frameworks. Not everything may be in control by web site designers, they may be limited by the the tools/APIs and built-in design elements.

[rdl]

I don't see the problem with that label. 0603LS-821XGLB is the manufacturer's (Coilcraft) part number. Mouser just adds a prefix.

...
Yeah, thanks, guys, I'm sure I'll have no difficulty remembering that "821XGLB" means "820 nH."
...

[KE5FX]

I don't see the problem with that label. 0603LS-821XGLB is the manufacturer's (Coilcraft) part number. Mouser just adds a prefix.

The component value is nowhere in sight!

[tooki]

It doesn’t, it’s just not designed the way you want.

Perhaps you are not familiar with filters...have been filtering by voltage range, current limit ohms, cut tape, in stock, active, ect for years with no problem.  Now it is failing to properly do so.  If we want to see other options, like reels, bags, busloads, whatever, then we will select those & expect to see them.
If you select to show only 100 ohm and 488 ohm resistors, you should not see 345 ohm resistors appear.

Of course I know how filters work, as I use them on a daily basis. What surprises me is how confidently condescending you are, despite continuing to demonstrate that your understanding is rather weak.
You keep insisting it's showing items that do not meet the criteria, but it's not. I'll come back to this later.

You don’t seem to know what a SKU is  You don't seem to be investigating ...there are only digkey numbers and manufacturer numbers listed & where does it say they are limiting anything regarding sku's?   What limits digi from  selling a  LM947AA-XP3-2N  and also littlebug from selling a LM947AA-XP3-2N  (from who knows where)  ...nothing that is apparent.

Aaaand you just confirmed that you do NOT know what a SKU is! "LM947AA-XP3-2N" is the model number, aka (manufacturer) part number, NOT the SKU. The SKU (short for "stock keeping unit") is what DK calls the "DK part number". It is common for there to exist multiple SKUs for the same part number, due to packaging options and the like.

Let's leave aside electronics components for a quick second and pretend we are talking about pencils. Suppose the pencil's model number is "123HB-Y", for pencil style 123 with HB lead, painted yellow. And the manufacturer sells them in blister packs of 6, boxes of 12, and boxes of 100. The manufacturer assigns each a SKU: "123HB-Y-6B", "123HB-Y-12", and "123HB-Y-100", respectively. A retailer can order them from the manufacturer only in those package sizes, by ordering with the manufacturer's SKU. They can sell them however they want, so suppose the retailer also wants to sell individual pencils, so they create four retailer SKUs. Let's call them "PencilCo 123HB-Y-1", "PencilCo 123HB-Y-6", "PencilCo 123HB-Y-12", and "PencilCo 123HB-Y-100". When you order a "PencilCo 123HB-Y-1" (i.e. qty 1), you don't care whether the retailer obtained it from a manufacturer pack of 6, 12, or 100, because once removed from the packaging, a "123HB-Y" pencil is the same. Make sense so far? Do you see how the model number, the manufacturer SKU, and the retailer SKU are different things? Additionally, we could also say that the 123HB-Y is a "yellow HB pencil", because in many situations, the manufacturer doesn't matter, as long as the pencil is yellow and has HB lead.

FWIW, the UPC barcode is the retail industry's attempt at unifying manufacturer SKUs and retailer SKUs.

Back to component filtering: In the past, DK always treated each package size as its own SKU. But as the buyer, ultimately what you're after is the model number (i.e. manufacturer part number). In the past, this led to DK results listing many SKUs for the same manufacturer part number unless you went and filtered out the packaging you didn't want. Now, they concatenate it down to the manufacturer part number — it's one line item now, not 3, for the typical SMD part available in whole reel, cut tape, and digireel. They just show you the available packaging within the line item. When you filter for parts (manufacturer part numbers) that are available as cut tape, it will eliminate parts that are not available as cut tape, and shows you only the ones that are, even if they have other available packaging as well. But the list of parts does indeed only contain parts that are available as cut tape. You literally can just ignore the fact that they display the availability of your part in other packaging. (As already said, the part of your criticism that I agree with is that displaying it isn't that useful, and consumes space. But it's NOT showing you parts that do not exist as cut tape, as you keep insisting.) If you have filtered by cut tape, and you choose one of the parts in the list, you WILL be able to order it as cut tape. And that's what it's all about.

When it comes to third-party, DK does not appear to allow multiple suppliers for the same DK SKU (DK part number) the way Amazon does. So if DK has LM947AA-XP3-2N sourced from the manufacturer, and so does littlebug sourced from wherever, they may share the same manufacturer part number, but they won't have the same DK SKU, so when you go to order, and you filter to not include marketplace vendors, you cannot get the littlebug stock by mistake. DK doesn't group third-party stock into a manufacturer part number the way they do for packaging alternates.

Nor could they, since manufacturer part numbers aren't globally unique. For example, a Keystone Electronics "3534" is a PCB connector, while a Pomona Electronics "3534" is a BNC adapter. So you can't just say "oh, the manufacturer part number is 3534 so they are the same thing". They're unique only within a manufacturer. DK treats a third-party supplier as a different manufacturer, when it comes to grouping.

As another example of the layout mess...where they need to have some width, they don't provide it & force the listing to waste 6 lines.  Yet where they don't need the width   they give 2x or more than what is needed, just to waste screen space.

You already said this yesterday, and I already responded yesterday: clearly, the column widths are being automatically sized to fit the column name. Clearly NOT set by hand, since the widths are being set to µPx resolution, which no human would do.

[eevcandies]

But it's NOT showing you parts that do not exist as cut tape, as you keep insisting.)
  ...you need to look again, as I have never mentioned anything along that line.  Here it is, in case it was forgotten:
Search for a part where you want to only see cut tape, since that is what you are going to be ordering....instead the results are 3-4 times as long. Why?  Because now it ignores the request to show cut tape parts & also shows 3 or 4 other types. 
So not sure where you came up with that statement.

 It fails to limit to only the cut tape selections when requested.  If you request to see only smd parts & it also shows through hole parts as well, that would be a similar failure.   The various filters are there to reduce the size of the generated listing from 10'000 of  thousands of parts, to maybe a few hundred or dozens.

When one selects to show only cut tape parts, those are the only package style that should be seen.  If you select TO-220 transistors, you should not have TO-92 in its column as well. 

  for example you see an lm324 offered the following ways, with 3 different digikey numbers for 3 different packaging options:
   
LM324MX/NOPBTR-ND      ....Tape & Reel (TR)
LM324MX/NOPBCT-ND  ....Cut Tape (CT)
LM324MX/NOPBDKR-ND    ...Digi-Reel®

When cut tape is selected that is the packaging desired, so which of the above make easy sense to include in the generated listing?  This is where it falls apart.

LM324MX/NOPBCT-ND   ....Cut Tape (CT)  should appear in the listing & the others shouldn't, because those are not cut tape.  ...however the others are not being filtered out, adding to the clutter & length of the listing, requiring more scrolling.

How is it impossible to show only: LM324MX/NOPBCT-ND   ....Cut Tape (CT)  when the cut tape filter is selected???   
It is no more impossible than showing only 100 ohm resistors when that 100 ohm filter is selected !!

If you wanted to see cut tape OR tape and reel in the list, then you would simply select both of those options.

As far as other suppliers having their own numbers, that may be fine, however most purchasers won't even look at the digikey numbers or other supplier numbers. So they may order a 1N914B with an easy chance for mistakes to happen.

[SilverSolder]

I don't see the problem with that label. 0603LS-821XGLB is the manufacturer's (Coilcraft) part number. Mouser just adds a prefix.

The component value is nowhere in sight!

That would be too simple, and against all modern design principles!!! 

[Marco]

That, tied to some browser changes in the action of the backspace key (which acts as a "Back" shortcut) is infuriating when typing on forms in certain pages.

Created for compatibility with internet explorer, the amount of people in the history of the internet who find this an useful shortcut can be counted in the single digits ... still the default. You can change it though for Firefox.

[rdl]

You can't really expect the distributors to fix all the problems with manufacturer's part numbers and rewrite the descriptions. There are probably tens of thousands of them. These are issues that need to be corrected at the source.

I don't see the problem with that label. 0603LS-821XGLB is the manufacturer's (Coilcraft) part number. Mouser just adds a prefix.

The component value is nowhere in sight!

[ataradov]

You can't really expect the distributors to fix all the problems with manufacturer's part numbers and rewrite the descriptions. There are probably tens of thousands of them. These are issues that need to be corrected at the source.

DK puts their own description on the label, which mentions the value even if it is not obvious from the part number. This does not come from the supplier, of course, so errors are possible, but it it still better than nothing.

[magic]

Yeah, thanks, guys, I'm sure I'll have no difficulty remembering that "821XGLB" means "820 nH."  And I can't think of any scenarios in which this kind of product label might cause confusion (or worse) at the EMS facility. 

That's surely a lame lack of effort from Mouser, but I think I would be able to remember it somehow

[james_s]

You can't really expect the distributors to fix all the problems with manufacturer's part numbers and rewrite the descriptions. There are probably tens of thousands of them. These are issues that need to be corrected at the source.

DK puts their own description on the label, which mentions the value even if it is not obvious from the part number. This does not come from the supplier, of course, so errors are possible, but it it still better than nothing.

It's a nice convenience that DigiKey provides this information on the label. It's simple enough to do, I mean the data is all there in the database, the system just has to be programmed to include the description as well. When I order from Mouser I often grab a Sharpie marker and write the component value on the label as I unpack the order. It's a bit of a hassle but it saves me a lot of trouble down the road. If I'm digging through a box of spare components looking for a specific value resistor or something I really don't want to have to look up the part number of each and every one to figure out what it is.

[rdl]

I also re-mark all pertinent info with a Sharpie. Partly because I've had the distributor's labeling fade badly in the past, sometimes to the point of being unreadable (maybe this problem has gotten better?), but also because I keep parts in the original packaging and store them in plastic boxes. My big, hand written descriptions make it easy to find what I'm looking for when digging through the box.