RS-Components and UK resellers after Brexit: should I worry?

[janoc]

Like BD139 says, they are expensive, and don't hold as many things others.
But when I'm in a hurry, they will deliver stuff in 48h to my door.

For me RS beats Farnell, Mouser and others in many cases, simply because of the free shipping over weekends. Farnell charges around 7 euro, Mouser charges 20 euro unless you reach some minimal value of the order. Which is a pain when I need only a few chips or something like that every once in a while.

But I am only a small fish, if you are ordering components every week and making orders for at least 50-60 euro every time, the mathematics can well be very different.

[olkipukki]

But when I'm in a hurry, they will deliver stuff in 48h to my door.

How long delivery from Mouser or DigiKey as example?

[Cnoob]

I use Farnell and CPC- Farnell who sent me a 2000 page catalogue.

Farnell for free delivery in UK is minimum order of £20 ex-vat and they use UPS to deliver. I can order on Friday and I expect the delivery on Monday. They also show their in stock quantities for both UK and Liege (Belguim) where I have had Pace soldering bits/sticks flown over so they can meet their delivery promises.

CPC minimum order is £8 (was £5) for free delivery and they use Royal Mail and their delivery takes about a week.

[janoc]

They also show their in stock quantities for both UK and Liege (France) ...

Liege is in Belgium, actually closer to Germany than to France

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Li%C3%A8ge,+Belgium/@50.4493044,4.6069265,7.5z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x47c0f74b8eacfcfb:0x40099ab2f4d6b40!8m2!3d50.6325574!4d5.5796662

[2N3055]

But when I'm in a hurry, they will deliver stuff in 48h to my door.

How long delivery from Mouser or DigiKey as example?

Mouser takes 4-5 days but no import procedure, they pass it through EU subsidiary . I don't use Digikey. With them it is always import procedure from a country outside EU. That adds a day or two (or three) on top of few days of delivery in a first place. And also I have to deal with import declarations...

[Cnoob]

Sorry my Mistake corrected country.

[SilverSolder]

The company I work with has established a foothold inside the EU, so any Brexit problems will be limited to occur only when trading with British people or companies.  This seems to be pretty much par for the course as far as Brexit planning goes, whether in electronics, finance, or whatever, that I have seen so far. 

[janoc]

But when I'm in a hurry, they will deliver stuff in 48h to my door.

How long delivery from Mouser or DigiKey as example?

Mouser takes 4-5 days but no import procedure, they pass it through EU subsidiary . I don't use Digikey. With them it is always import procedure from a country outside EU. That adds a day or two (or three) on top of few days of delivery in a first place. And also I have to deal with import declarations...

Digikey is actually "funny" here in France - they pretend to have a French website, it shows as the contact their Dutch office (with a Dutch phone number & French fax number - go figure). But when you order from them, everything comes from the US (Digikey doesn't have any EU stock, AFAIK) and while you usually don't pay any customs charges, UPS will send you an invoice for about 20 euro for doing the customs declaration - for every order. Even though filling the customs declaration is the sender's responsiblity and not yours (Digikey apparently couldn't be bothered/doesn't pay for it - so UPS will charge the recipient for it instead!).

However, when you raise a stink, since wtf are these charges about when they weren't mentioned on the original site, they make all the effort to look like an EU company, they have an EU VAT registration and actually do collect the VAT here, they invoice you from Netherlands as well, so as a buyer you have the every right to expect it is a "local" (within EU) transaction (thus you shouldn't have to pay any customs  declaration fees) - they will waive the fee! But good luck trying this unless you are a company with a VAT number, they will just tell you to piss off.

I find this a very disgusting business practice.

[Siwastaja]

Digikey is actually "funny" here in France - they pretend to have a French website, it shows as the contact their Dutch office (with a Dutch phone number & French fax number - go figure). But when you order from them, everything comes from the US (Digikey doesn't have any EU stock, AFAIK) and while you usually don't pay any customs charges, UPS will send you an invoice for about 20 euro for doing the customs declaration - for every order. Even though filling the customs declaration is the sender's responsiblity and not yours (Digikey apparently couldn't be bothered/doesn't pay for it - so UPS will charge the recipient for it instead!).

This is a classical web fight subject. The truth is, the shipping can work either way: the sender pays everything, or they don't. When buying through digikey.fi, they clearly pay for all the customs declaration services for UPS beforehand (everything's hidden in the digikey.fi product pricing), so absolutely no hassle. I though it would be the same for France, as well, since, why not - that's the point? But apparently someone has screwed something up and it's country-dependent. This should be an easy fix if there is will. Maybe they don't want to satisfy French customers for some strange reason.

So really, here Digikey works exactly like you expect it to.

[Karel]

Digikey is actually "funny" here in France - they pretend to have a French website, it shows as the contact their Dutch office (with a Dutch phone number & French fax number - go figure). But when you order from them, everything comes from the US (Digikey doesn't have any EU stock, AFAIK) and while you usually don't pay any customs charges, UPS will send you an invoice for about 20 euro for doing the customs declaration - for every order. Even though filling the customs declaration is the sender's responsiblity and not yours (Digikey apparently couldn't be bothered/doesn't pay for it - so UPS will charge the recipient for it instead!).

This is a classical web fight subject. The truth is, the shipping can work either way: the sender pays everything, or they don't. When buying through digikey.fi, they clearly pay for all the customs declaration services for UPS beforehand (everything's hidden in the digikey.fi product pricing), so absolutely no hassle. I though it would be the same for France, as well, since, why not - that's the point? But apparently someone has screwed something up and it's country-dependent. This should be an easy fix if there is will. Maybe they don't want to satisfy French customers for some strange reason.

So really, here Digikey works exactly like you expect it to.

The same in Italy. No hassle at all with Digikey (or with Mouser or Farnell).
Farnell delivers in one (working-)day. Digikey takes two days and Mouser three.
No problems with customs or additional fees.

[janoc]

Digikey is actually "funny" here in France - they pretend to have a French website, it shows as the contact their Dutch office (with a Dutch phone number & French fax number - go figure). But when you order from them, everything comes from the US (Digikey doesn't have any EU stock, AFAIK) and while you usually don't pay any customs charges, UPS will send you an invoice for about 20 euro for doing the customs declaration - for every order. Even though filling the customs declaration is the sender's responsiblity and not yours (Digikey apparently couldn't be bothered/doesn't pay for it - so UPS will charge the recipient for it instead!).

This is a classical web fight subject. The truth is, the shipping can work either way: the sender pays everything, or they don't. When buying through digikey.fi, they clearly pay for all the customs declaration services for UPS beforehand (everything's hidden in the digikey.fi product pricing), so absolutely no hassle. I though it would be the same for France, as well, since, why not - that's the point? But apparently someone has screwed something up and it's country-dependent. This should be an easy fix if there is will. Maybe they don't want to satisfy French customers for some strange reason.

So really, here Digikey works exactly like you expect it to.

Yeah, I was also shocked by this. What you describe is how it should be - if they want to use UPS to ship the goods, that's their choice, but why should I have to pay extra for UPS doing paperwork that is both unnecessary (the fee is flat regardless of the value of the goods, even though for small packages all the sender has to do is to slap a sticker with declared value and description of goods on the package, no need to file any papers!) and overpriced, because DK could certainly negotiate better price for this service with UPS if they wanted them to handle it. I am happy to pay a few bucks extra in shipping & handling costs for this.

No idea why they are operating like this here - it is either the local (Dutch?) subsidiary which is incompetent (they have a German one too at least), maybe they use different shipping companies for different countries or something else is afoot, I don't know.

Either way, the result is that I am avoiding ordering from DK unless I have no other choice. No other major distributor (Mouser, Farnell, RS, ...) has these issues.

[bernie79]

The problems with Digikey in France sounds like the problems we have: Almost every customer we have in France begging us not to be delivered by UPS. Strange routing, not explainable delays, vanished parcels..  To equal with other parcel services: other areas in Europe stays away from other companies. Funny: many of our customers around Bonn (Germany) avoids DHL. Now look where the DHL global hq is.

We also see many of the one-man-LTDs founded in UK sending us papers showing company transfers. "We have a new address. And oh, our VAT has also changed.." But there are so many customers with a UK-based LTD, that havn't done yet.

[janoc]

The problems with Digikey in France sounds like the problems we have: Almost every customer we have in France begging us not to be delivered by UPS. Strange routing, not explainable delays, vanished parcels..  To equal with other parcel services: other areas in Europe stays away from other companies. Funny: many of our customers around Bonn (Germany) avoids DHL. Now look where the DHL global hq is.

Could well be (OTOH I had some insane issues with DHL before as well ...).

However, that's really not the customer's problem but DigiKeys - they aren't offering a choice of a shipping agent, so it is in their interest to choose a sane and well performing one. Then there is also the part about the customs declaration that UPS charges the recipients for - that fee (and paperwork!) should be normally done by the sender (the part where you declare the content of the shipment and its value so that the customs can process it).

In this case DK is obviously not doing it and it is possible that in order to import stuff to France from outside the EU the requirements are more strict than elsewhere - then UPS is not going to swallow the costs, so it is charging for it here. Similar like the CE/WEE marking issues when importing stuff to Germany, that aren't seen elsewhere.

But again, while this is understandable and unfortunate, their competitors don't have these issues. So it is in their own interest to fix it.

[MT]

The 3 packages from the UK will be subject to customs check and tariffs. Whether you do it, or a EU affiliate of RS does it, it'll cost money. Don't kid yourself. As I noted above, compare shipment from Ouagadougou.

Cant se any difference in shipment from to Ouagadougou from to Vagaga. Btw customs and vat is just a scam of the common people to pretend things for them.

[Towger]

Farnell have published a Brexit Update: https://www.element14.com/news/brexit-update-for-our-eu-and-uk-customers-march-2019

[SilverSolder]

Farnell have published a Brexit Update: https://www.element14.com/news/brexit-update-for-our-eu-and-uk-customers-march-2019

Jesus wept.  Multiply this effect by tens of thousands of companies and it becomes a cause for concern to any British citizen/resident about where this is all heading.

[bd139]

Yeah it's shit sandwich. I just did a whole bunch of international orders to cover me for the next 6 months or so. Hoping they clear customs before it all goes to hell.

[Towger]

Yep.  Two of the big car manufacturers have shut down for a couple of weeks. They planned it in advance to elevate JIT supply problems.  But with a delayed/cancelled/FUBAR brexit there was not enough notice to keep open.  Employees booked holidays is the official reason...

I bought loads of 'on the long finger' kit from eBay.co.uk in the last few months.  No point messing around which import taxes.  Same with Amazon, but have now switch over to the Spanish version.  It is actually cheaper for some items, even taking the €7~ postage vs free from .co.uk.

[stj]

it's all bullshit you know,

inside EU, or not - governments DECIDE to screw with goods at the border or tax them - there is nothing set in stone that says they actually have to.

look at animals, take a donkey across borders and you have problems - take a race-horse and you dont.
why? because race-horses are owned by the rich.

governments are the problem, they produce no net value - serve no usefull function.
they just spy on and tax the life out of everything and everyone in order to fund international terrorism they call "interventions".
i personally look forward to the day they mess with the wrong country and go away in a bright flash of light!!

[SilverSolder]

governments are the problem, they produce no net value - serve no usefull function.

Are there any examples of countries that have no government at all, that you could also call a well functioning country?

Not that I don't understand where you're coming from, but it might be best to file government under "necessary evil"!

[stj]

one small european country had no government for atleast 2 years afaik and functioned just fine - it may have been belgium.
i remember because the EU communist head office imposed one on them so they could take directives(orders) from brussels

only local government actually does anything usefull - like fixing roads and collecting rubbish - national governments are parasites.

[bd139]

You clearly haven't spent any time with local government.

[apis]

There's always a government, always have been, always will be, whether you realise it or not.

[SilverSolder]

i remember because the EU communist head office imposed one on them so they could take directives(orders) from brussels

You make take orders from Brussels - the rest of us give orders to Brussels! (via our governments and MEPs)  -  you may have misunderstood something fundamental somewhere along the line about how all this works?

[stj]

You clearly haven't spent any time with local government.

i never said local government wasnt a bunch of common-purpose masonic peido's with their fingers in every contract,
i just said they do some usefull things - sometimes they may even do something properly, although it wont be intentional!