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Do you order from small business online stores?

westveld

westveld

Experienced Member
Joined
Dec 31, 2009
Messages
173
Location
Reed City, MI
Do you order from small business online stores?

I'm thinking Unicorn Electronics, TexElec, ReActiveMicro.

Do you order from medium-size stores?

Like Jameco, maybe Monoprice, Parts Express.

My guess is no, aside from unique items that are only available at a specific store.

Free shipping and one-stop shopping are hard to beat.

Plus already having an account and a level of trust with your CC info and personal data.

My reason for asking - I'm thinking about setting up an online store to complement the eBay stores.

We have a large stock of vintage electronic components - some generic (logic ICs, resistors, caps), some rare, many vintage computing related.

eBay is moving away from that type of listing - they promote fast-selling and high-value stuff.

We could offer things like custom 3d printing, ROM/PROM/GAL/PAL burning, custom floppy disk creation.

Also a stock of vintage parts - ISA, PCI, AGP cards, processors, stuff like that.

Same or next business day USPS shipping, payments via an external processor (CC via PayPal, maybe Amazon Pay or Google Pay)

Thoughts?

Thanks,
Matt
 
I buy from small, medium, and large stores. For parts I use Jameco or Digikey or Mouser. Sometimes one does not have a part that another has. So I have ordered from all of them. I buy from who has what I want at a reasonable price.
 
Yes, I purchase from TexElect, ReActiveMicro, for speciality items. For components, my go to is Mouser (but I'm in Texas). I also buy components from Amazon, mainly larger quantities resistors, safety caps, etc. But for very critical capacitors (say low ESR electrolitics,) as well as chips, sockets, etc. then it has to be Mouser or like, not eBay, not Amazon.
 
Yes to all of the above. Two trends on eBay that I don't like are (1) Drop shipping without informing you that the item comes from the local Walmart and (2) Someone billing himself as a "U.S. Seller", but orders your item from AliExpress (i.e. there's a photo of the item, but he doesn't really have it).
 
RE: eBay drop shippers -
It will be interesting to see if the new Bad Buyer Experience rating will help with those issues - at least in the cases it doesn't meet the promised time frame.

I wish there was an option to sort or filter by delivery date when you are searching listings. For Amazon too.
 
I have ordered from both small and medium online stores. I am willing to pay a bit more for getting working items in a timely fashion. Even a full refund does not compensate for the time wasted getting that refund.
 
The problem I found when I did have a local electronics supplier is nothing I ever needed was on the shelf or at best he could only offer used stock.
Semiconductors come form Digi-key for authenticity. Resistors and discrete parts come off ebay and things like switches, sockets and LED's come from aliexpress.

Specialty components and assemblies I typically manufacture myself to avoid markup and cosmetic upgrades I typically ignore because I don't like their prices. Reproduction items I'm famously a hard-ass about and repair what I already have rather than seeking a full replacement.
A few times I've ordered from smaller specialty websites without too many issues, but they were typically component surplus outlets or auto parts vendors.
 
How harsh is shipping from Digikey to Kamloops?
Looks like a beautiful place to live from photos :)
 
I've had good luck so far for really obsolete stuff with UTSource. No fakes/duds yet.
 
westveld said:
How harsh is shipping from Digikey to Kamloops?
Looks like a beautiful place to live from photos :)
Click to expand...
Usually $8-$10 shipping, which does not sound like much but when you consider most jobs are going to be using on average $5 worth of small value capacitors, resistors and diodes you have to group projects together to make it economical. I know for a fact that at work if we make a digi-key order in excess of $100cad the shipping is free, however on Sunday I made an order myself and it took to $110 before free shipping was offered. :/

When you are not dealing with large parts distributors with heavily subsidized courier shipping it's brutal. I'm on the record repeatedly trash talking people's projects and instead opting to either build it myself or opt for chinese clones of the exact same product because it might be a $30(usd) price, but you select "Canada" from the shipping pulldown and watch that basic USPS shipping price go from $12 to $30(usd) and forget it, 90% of the time the cost of shipping breaks the deal.
 
Yeah, even my minimum cost in the US is around $4.40 with box. Annoying when someone wants 1 or 2 ICs.

RE: Canada -
High shipping from the US, but on the other hand:
 
westveld said:
Do you order from small business online stores?

I'm thinking Unicorn Electronics, TexElec, ReActiveMicro.

Do you order from medium-size stores?

Like Jameco, maybe Monoprice, Parts Express.

My guess is no, aside from unique items that are only available at a specific store.
Click to expand...
I find the premise of this question a bit odd. TexElec, ReActiveMicro, etc. exist for the exact purpose of selling specialty items. I can't buy vitamins or motor oil from TexElec.

If you are also selling specialty items, then I imagine you would have similar success. Provided you can get the word out and traffic to your site.
 
Chuck(G) said:
I'm not surprised. Ever watch "Highway thru Hell"?
Click to expand...
Ever watched it?
My dude, I usually go up and down the Coq at least a dozen times a year. I don't know what Discovery does to make it seem like some wreck-ridden winter hellscape but it's not that bad. :p
 
Plasma said:
I find the premise of this question a bit odd. TexElec, ReActiveMicro, etc. exist for the exact purpose of selling specialty items. I can't buy vitamins or motor oil from TexElec.

If you are also selling specialty items, then I imagine you would have similar success. Provided you can get the word out and traffic to your site.
Click to expand...
I just thought of those as small "random" stores that the folks here would know.

It sounds like there are no problems trusting small stores - if the offerings and value are there.

Easy peasy, haha
 
NeXT said:
Ever watched it?
My dude, I usually go up and down the Coq at least a dozen times a year. I don't know what Discovery does to make it seem like some wreck-ridden winter hellscape but it's not that bad. :p
Click to expand...
But I take it that you don't usually drive a loaded B-train in a blizzard on the Coq... :)
 
An 80's station wagon loaded full of computers and electronics introduces its own unique hazards. Have been caught up in a few blizzards up there though. People drive too damn fast for the weather. :p
 
It depends on the cost of items and shipping. My experience with smaller/medium sized online shops has been mixed. Some excellent and some horrible. But the same applies to eBay sellers.
 
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