Yet another reason to avoid PartMiner
larwe
access to datasheets.
Today I received an email from PartMiner which says, in essence, "our
core business model is unprofitable, so we are now professional
spamwhores. Your contact details are being sold to anyone we can find
who will pay us a nickel":
> If you would like to receive business or career related offers
> from PartMiner Information Systems, you do not have to respond
> to this e-mail. You can easily unsubscribe each time you receive
> an e-mail from us if you don't find the information worthwhile. To
> unsubscribe now, please scroll to the bottom of this e-mail for
> instructions.
This "vendor" should be boycotted.
Didi
Well, are any of the kind any good anyway?
Those I have encountered mining for hard to find parts either
want me to pay them to tell me where to try to buy (if someone
pays them it won't be me...) or cheat the search engines
so you locate them while searching for just about any part,
while having really very little if anything of what they list.
If you have had some good experience with some of them,
please advise.
My only successfull experience was 5-6 years ago with Magnitude
Electronics
( www.magnitude-electronics.com ), they listed a SCSI chip which I
could
not find and really delivered (small quantity, they had large stock),
somewhat pricy,
perhaps a bit more than somewhat, I don't remember, but I got the
chips.
Dimiter
------------------------------------------------------
Dimiter Popoff Transgalactic Instruments
http://www.tgi-sci.com
------------------------------------------------------
Bob Parker
After their low bait-'n-switch trick a year or two ago when they
stopped making data available for free, I made a mental note not to
ever consider them if I was looking for a rare component.
Earlier this year, I tried to find a source of Allegro UGN3235K
hall effect sensors. I contacted dozens of companies, many of whom had
it listed as "available" on their websites. A few answered my e-mails,
most didn't. Not one of them was able to supply this part. It's
probably the same with most other obselete components. Big promises
but no results.
If anyone's looking for UGN3235K devices, you can replace them
with a pair of Infineon TLE4906L chips facing each other.
Bob
James Sweet
I got so tired of the Partminer links coming up that I used Customize
Google to block all hits.
Spehro Pefhany
<bobp.de...@bluebottle.com> wrote:
>On 29 Sep 2006 16:07:55 -0700, "larwe" <zwsd...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>I stopped using PartMiner years ago, when they closed down all free
>>access to datasheets.
>>
>>Today I received an email from PartMiner which says, in essence, "our
>>core business model is unprofitable, so we are now professional
>>spamwhores. Your contact details are being sold to anyone we can find
>>who will pay us a nickel":
>>
>>> If you would like to receive business or career related offers
>>> from PartMiner Information Systems, you do not have to respond
>>> to this e-mail. You can easily unsubscribe each time you receive
>>> an e-mail from us if you don't find the information worthwhile. To
>>> unsubscribe now, please scroll to the bottom of this e-mail for
>>> instructions.
>>
>>This "vendor" should be boycotted.
>
> After their low bait-'n-switch trick a year or two ago
Believe it or not, it was almost 5 years ago (late 2001).
>when they
>stopped making data available for free, I made a mental note not to
>ever consider them if I was looking for a rare component.
>
> Earlier this year, I tried to find a source of Allegro UGN3235K
>hall effect sensors. I contacted dozens of companies, many of whom had
>it listed as "available" on their websites. A few answered my e-mails,
>most didn't. Not one of them was able to supply this part. It's
>probably the same with most other obselete components. Big promises
>but no results.
>
> If anyone's looking for UGN3235K devices, you can replace them
>with a pair of Infineon TLE4906L chips facing each other.
>
>
>Bob
Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany
--
"it's the network..." "The Journey is the reward"
sp...@interlog.com Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com
Bob Parker
<spef...@interlogDOTyou.knowwhat> wrote:
>>
>> After their low bait-'n-switch trick a year or two ago
>
>Believe it or not, it was almost 5 years ago (late 2001).
>
>
>Best regards,
>Spehro Pefhany
Wow, where does the time go? Thanks for getting me more or less back
into sync. :-)
Cheers
Bob
Aly
news:1159571275....@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
I agree with this. I outright refuse to use suppliers that expect ME to pay
for their advertising material. Maplin is one them, wanting Ł5 for a
catalogue. RS are so stingy with their catalogues it's unheard of, you'd
think they'd be giving them away on every street corner when you see their
prices. After LOADS of arguing I lost interest, they sent them eventually
by UPS/TNT? to a rural country location taking 3-weeks of further cock-ups,
such that I had absolutely no faith in anything I ever ordered getting to
me. The catalogues went in the bin.
Buy our products *AND* buy our sales merchandise. Use *OUR* delivery
service that *WE* have a cut price contract with, even if it'll never get to
you because the drivers are too lazy to even bother.
This methodology wouldn't work at my local Indian Restaurant I'm sure.
Lostgallifreyan
news:p5ydnd8_-oR6D4PY...@bt.com:
RS stingy? Overpriced in many things, yes, but not stingy. Those paper
catalogs cost so much that it's amazing they can give them away at all. If
you paid actual cost for them, you'd pay Ł70 per set. You can always get
the DC ones. Also, you can use their site and you can set up any handle you
like on their site to get access to PDF's for free, with no need to have an
account with them. If you think that's stingy, you have forgotten the
meaning of generosity.
And no, I don't work for them, nor get any benefit other than what I
described, same as you can have.
Maplin's catalog is less than impressive now, but if they'd start putting
those tech notes back like they used to add to it, it would be worth the
money for those alone.
Lostgallifreyan
I was told once, and I think it might have been the whole-year figure,
three releases per year. The costs rise per set the fewer they make, and
they're trying to use CD's to save costs.
Aly
news:Xns984EC2E2BF2...@140.99.99.130...
I know where you're coming from. My issue was more that RS insist on using
a courier, and from the onset with RS it was just one big hassle.
But as for Maplin. They've become an overgrown toy store. What I do have
here are the catalogues from 1988 thru 1992 and they're still useful, hence
:-) Being able to look up every 7400 device at a glance, and every
transistor package is just brilliant. It was like a total of about 20-pages
so I don't buy into their excuse today that they're too complicated to list.
Too complicated for them today maybe....
ian field
"Aly" <ali...@logicsaysNOSPAM.com> wrote in message
news:hN6dnYp18ra...@bt.com...
Is that the Maplin cats you have back issues? I'm trying to find the
original manufacturers (Hung Chang) model number of the MF100 multifunction
counter so I can search it online, if you have a cat that list that
instrument the info might be on the page - it is for the currently stocked
MF1000 counter/function generator.
Paul Carpenter
<p5ydnd8_-oR6D4PY...@bt.com>
ali...@logicsaysNOSPAM.com "Aly" wrote:
>"larwe" <zwsd...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>news:1159571275....@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>> I stopped using PartMiner years ago, when they closed down all free
>> access to datasheets.
>>
>> Today I received an email from PartMiner which says, in essence, "our
>> core business model is unprofitable, so we are now professional
>> spamwhores. Your contact details are being sold to anyone we can find
>> who will pay us a nickel":
>>
....
>> This "vendor" should be boycotted.
>
>I agree with this. I outright refuse to use suppliers that expect ME to pay
>for their advertising material. Maplin is one them, wanting ?5 for a
>catalogue. RS are so stingy with their catalogues it's unheard of, you'd
>think they'd be giving them away on every street corner when you see their
>prices. After LOADS of arguing I lost interest, they sent them eventually
>by UPS/TNT? to a rural country location taking 3-weeks of further cock-ups,
>such that I had absolutely no faith in anything I ever ordered getting to
>me. The catalogues went in the bin.
BTDTGT in a large town!
>Buy our products *AND* buy our sales merchandise. Use *OUR* delivery
>service that *WE* have a cut price contract with, even if it'll never get to
>you because the drivers are too lazy to even bother.
>
>This methodology wouldn't work at my local Indian Restaurant I'm sure.
The ones I hate that have crap web programming, that wrongly identify
browsers and even worse claim a new browser is too old but they support
ancient microscrotum only.
I then also speak to technical people as if they are using web browsers
Supplier- "We cannot do[/support]...."
Me:- "I think I know the cause of the problem, can you tell
me the make and model of your telephone?"
Supllier - "Uh... model is ...."
Me:- "Sorry the problem is we only support telephone
conversations using a Binatone R3000, please get one of
these phones and contact us again.
Have a nice day"
I you think I am bitter and twisted, you must of course be mistaken
or judging me by your own standards :-^ :-^ :-^
Again for the humour impaired
^
^
^
^
:-^
--
Paul Carpenter | pa...@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk
<http://www.pcserviceselectronics.co.uk/> PC Services
<http://www.gnuh8.org.uk/> GNU H8 & mailing list info
<http://www.badweb.org.uk/> For those web sites you hate
Lostgallifreyan
news:hN6dnYp18ra...@bt.com:
> But as for Maplin. They've become an overgrown toy store. What I do
> have here are the catalogues from 1988 thru 1992 and they're still
> useful, hence
>:-) Being able to look up every 7400 device at a glance, and every
> transistor package is just brilliant. It was like a total of about
> 20-pages so I don't buy into their excuse today that they're too
> complicated to list. Too complicated for them today maybe....
>
That pegged Maplin neatly. It's a stupid move. Tandy failed in the high
street in the UK because of it, and Maplin succeeded so well that Tandy
mostly went back to the US where they operate more like Maplin did here. So
why Maplin now start to do what made Tandy fail I do not know. It's painful
to watch, so most of the time I don't watch.
Your point about RS and couriers I also recognise, I wish they'd reduce
costs by using the standard mail. The kind of logic that says that to get a
decent service you must use an expensive private courier is wasteful, and
the neglect reduces the quality of the main service, making a self-
fulfilling prophecy. Same logic that's currently making a crisis in
UK dentistry. That scandal is making street long queues now, it's too big
to hide, as will be the pollution of lots of tiny vans doing what a single
train used to do.
Aly
news:w0zTg.43622$8V4....@newsfe5-win.ntli.net...
>
> Is that the Maplin cats you have back issues? I'm trying to find the
> original manufacturers (Hung Chang) model number of the MF100
multifunction
> counter so I can search it online, if you have a cat that list that
> instrument the info might be on the page - it is for the currently stocked
> MF1000 counter/function generator.
>
Give me until mid next week. I will check for you when I'm back home.
Actually mail me if you really want it done :)
Aly
Hi Paul
:-)
That kind of sounds like my conversation with PayPal at the moment. They
did a system upgrade about a month ago which messed up the reporting of some
Verified accounts to eBay. This is slowly trickling back onto the forums.
PayPal say it's eBay. eBay say it's PayPal. Well, through my own
determination (and access to multiple accounts) it's definitely PayPal.
I've now told them to stuff it (in polite terms) and STILL they keep on
bloody contacting me. I've finally resorted to totally blowing my top
earlier, and STILL they thank me for telling their useless staff to F-off!
I do have limits. It's usually about a month before I go crackers!
Aly
Totally acknowledged.
Maplin. Well. I don't go there unless I'm in deep *stuff*.
RS. Yes, why they can't use RM I have no idea. But I'm not paying £30 for
a little edge connector anyway (in my thread on the sci.electronics groups).
As for dentistry, you can't even get one if you're willing to give them REAL
money now. :-( Look, reaaaaal money, lotsza money. Nope, they'd rather
treat 7-bus loads of smelly whining children a day. (yes, I hate kids. And
I hate companies. Is there a link?)
Tim Auton
[supplier woes]
> But as for Maplin. They've become an overgrown toy store. What I do have
> here are the catalogues from 1988 thru 1992 and they're still useful, hence
> :-) Being able to look up every 7400 device at a glance, and every
> transistor package is just brilliant. It was like a total of about 20-pages
> so I don't buy into their excuse today that they're too complicated to list.
> Too complicated for them today maybe....
I've got the "Spring/Summer 2006" Maplin catalogue. I'd never bother to
buy it, but the sales bod said there were vouchers in there which would
save me more than the catalogue cost on what I was buying anyway (which
they did) so it cost me about minus one pound. They have the 7400
series, 4000 series and transistor packages in there again (with a note
saying it's a result of feedback).
I completely agree about their change in direction though. It's awful. I
just don't know what they are trying to be - they're now crap for
components, crap for consumer electronics, crap for toys and crap for
computers. Their sole redeeming feature is that you can check stock at
your local store on-line so you can be disappointed without having to
leave the house :)
I've pretty much given up on Maplin for anything but "I need a 50k
trimpot to finish this off and I want it this afternoon" type
'emergencies'. Rapid and Farnell are my current favourites. Rapid's
catalogue (which I was sent gratis, without asking) is good.
Tim
ian field
"Aly" <ali...@logicsaysNOSPAM.com> wrote in message
Real email = dl0504DOTfieldATntlworldDOTcom
Many thanks.
ian field
"Aly" <ali...@logicsaysNOSPAM.com> wrote in message
RS told me "no minimum order" and no P&P unless requested express delivery -
maybe they've changed their terms since you last looked?
Aly
>
> RS told me "no minimum order" and no P&P unless requested express
delivery -
> maybe they've changed their terms since you last looked?
>
>
The problem with RS is if you're not in a major city or town. Courier
delivery drivers simply don't even bother to deliver the packages, they just
say 'attempted-delivery' when clearly they haven't. 3-weeks it took to
deliver the catalogues in the end, before someone eventually rang to say
they were in the village.
Even if you give couriers your telephone number, they just don't bother.
This is the gripe with RS, in that their delivery method is fine if you're
in big easy to find business premesis.
David R Brooks
your order is more than $100. That doesn't make a huge order, these days...
Aly
news:jv13v3-...@bertha.auton.me.uk...
>Rapid and Farnell are my current favourites. Rapid's
> catalogue (which I was sent gratis, without asking) is good.
>
>
> Tim
Yes Rapid are excellent. They're a 10-minute drive down the road from here
and the trade counter is ideal, you just walk in with a load of numbers and
you're out in 20-minutes.
Only issue with Rapid at the moment is this ROHS compliance, it's messing up
their stock levels all over the place. But, some non-ROHS stock is
ridiculously cheap. 30VA 15v-0v-15v toroidals for £3!!!!!!
Lostgallifreyan
news:7qOdnUV_OOH3b4PY...@bt.com:
> The problem with RS is if you're not in a major city or town. Courier
> delivery drivers simply don't even bother to deliver the packages,
> they just say 'attempted-delivery' when clearly they haven't. 3-weeks
> it took to deliver the catalogues in the end, before someone
> eventually rang to say they were in the village.
>
> Even if you give couriers your telephone number, they just don't
> bother. This is the gripe with RS, in that their delivery method is
> fine if you're in big easy to find business premesis.
>
>
>
That definitely sucks.. if anyone working in RS is reading this, consider
the Royal Mail. Not only does it work well with most recorded deliveries,
at least as well if not better than most couriers (and cheaper), there's a
special advantage: a parcel can be sent to a local post office for
collection. Try doing that with a courier. I did once, it's
impossible, even impossible to get a direct phone line to a local
office. Instead of neglecting the postal service so that we all have
nothing to do but moan as it shrinks, use it.
Lostgallifreyan
news:451ef3eb$0$15669$5a62...@per-qv1-newsreader-01.iinet.net.au:
> Can't speak for other countries, but here in Australia, RS ship free
> if your order is more than $100. That doesn't make a huge order, these
> days...
>
RS will ship for free for any order I place. Wasting money is wasting
money, even if it's not mine. :) The point is that the waste is
particularly stupid. Originally the courier idea was a fast track service.
Now that everyone wants it the efficient service has become neglected and
the 'fast' service isn't anymore. There's no sense in a special service if
the general one is not an option. All it does is ruin both, eventually.
Aly
> Many thanks.
>
Email sent containing scanned image of 1993 catalogue :-)
(i don't even know what I have here, found the catalogue while looking for a
cable)
Aly
>
> That definitely sucks.. if anyone working in RS is reading this, consider
> the Royal Mail.
Oh, RS apologise repeatedly in a perfectly worded scripted
message.............
One of the bits of work I've done is prototyping for the automotive
industry, ABS braking sub components and alike. I just said to RS, "if I
don't have it then I can't spec it."
Like I'm going to cock up a project and put RS on the list of suppliers.
Mostly I just go direct to suppliers, Microchip, SGT, Maxim etc. etc. The
stuff always arrives by Royal Mail about a week later, some of it comes from
Asia!!! It always arrives though, funny that init!
Stuff from Hong Kong gets here faster than using DHL. :-(
Arfa Daily
"Aly" <ali...@logicsaysNOSPAM.com> wrote in message
To be fair to Maplin, they do give you vouchers whereby you can recover the
cost of the catalogue with your first purchase, unless you are just buying a
couple of tupp'ny resistors. RS are predominantly a trade supplier, and in
general run an excellent service, and have done for probably more years than
you've been alive. Their prices are no higher or lower than anyone else in
the trade component supply business. Their catalogue package is offered free
of charge to their trade customers, and in my experience always arrives next
day.
Any of us who are in business have to cover our costs, and that includes the
costs of advertising and catalogue producing. It's a fundamental tenet of
business practice, and if not observed, would soon lead to a company's rapid
demise in the market place. The cost of producing a catalogue package such
as RS or Farnell do, is huge, and I think that it is perfectly reasonable
for them to want to recover that cost. With trade purchasers who buy many
hundreds of pounds worth of stuff from them a year, then they do. With Joe
Punters who buy that one elusive component that they can't find anywhere
else, they don't.
PartMiner used to provide a very good free data service, and I guess that's
where most people on here knew them from. Obviously, the economics didn't
work out, so they had to start making charges for some of their services,
which moves them into a different client demographic. The bottom line is
that they are not some evil company out to screw everyone every which way.
They are just trying to stay in business and provide a service for the big
boys who need it.
Arfa
Michael A. Terrell
>
> "Aly" <ali...@logicsaysNOSPAM.com> wrote in message
> news:p5ydnd8_-oR6D4PY...@bt.com...
> > "larwe" <zwsd...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> > news:1159571275....@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> >> I stopped using PartMiner years ago, when they closed down all free
> >> access to datasheets.
> >>
> >> Today I received an email from PartMiner which says, in essence, "our
> >> core business model is unprofitable, so we are now professional
> >> spamwhores. Your contact details are being sold to anyone we can find
> >> who will pay us a nickel":
> >>
> >> > If you would like to receive business or career related offers
> >> > from PartMiner Information Systems, you do not have to respond
> >> > to this e-mail. You can easily unsubscribe each time you receive
> >> > an e-mail from us if you don't find the information worthwhile. To
> >> > unsubscribe now, please scroll to the bottom of this e-mail for
> >> > instructions.
> >>
> >> This "vendor" should be boycotted.
> >>
> >
> > I agree with this. I outright refuse to use suppliers that expect ME to
> > pay
Partminer bought the old CAPS database, and then offered free access
for a short while to get you hooked. Before long you needed to pay for a
subscription to access their horrible, crooked, low resolution scans of
older parts. The place I was working made the mistake of taking out a
subscription. The next thing you knew, they were constantly on the phone
trying to sell us something else. They got hold of my name during the
free period, when I did a search for an old data sheet to repair a
damaged test fixture. They called and asked for me about once a week,
till management had to tell them to stop.
--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.
Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida
larwe
> >> Today I received an email from PartMiner which says, in essence, "our
> >> core business model is unprofitable, so we are now professional
> >> spamwhores. Your contact details are being sold to anyone we can find
> which moves them into a different client demographic. The bottom line is
> that they are not some evil company out to screw everyone every which way.
> They are just trying to stay in business and provide a service for the big
> boys who need it.
The tactic they are now employing _IS_ screwing everyone every which
way.
Bob Parker
<arfa....@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
>PartMiner used to provide a very good free data service, and I guess that's
>where most people on here knew them from. Obviously, the economics didn't
>work out, so they had to start making charges for some of their services,
>which moves them into a different client demographic. The bottom line is
>that they are not some evil company out to screw everyone every which way.
>They are just trying to stay in business and provide a service for the big
>boys who need it.
>
>Arfa
I got the impression that from day 1 they intended to get people
hooked with their free access to data sheets, then start charging for
it. Maybe I was mistaken...
Bob
Hal Murray
>where most people on here knew them from. Obviously, the economics didn't
>work out, so they had to start making charges for some of their services,
>which moves them into a different client demographic. The bottom line is
>that they are not some evil company out to screw everyone every which way.
>They are just trying to stay in business and provide a service for the big
>boys who need it.
I consider spammers to be evil.
It's perfectly reasonable to require reading ads in order to access
their data sheets. They could require joining an email list (for ads)
as long as the opt-out works and as long as they are up-front about
what the deal is. The magic word is informed consent.
They would have to specify something about how many and what
type of ads they were going to send.
It's not reasonble to sell/trade the email addresses they collect.
There is basically no way to opt-out from a system like that.
It is reasonable for them to forward ads for other people,
again, they have to be up front about how many/often and how big.
In theory, it might be reasonable (as in "informed consent") to
require an email address that will get sold, but I can't see
how to do that in practice. It would require that people sign
up with a disposable address. Would the advertisers accept their
end of that?
--
The suespammers.org mail server is located in California. So are all my
other mailboxes. Please do not send unsolicited bulk e-mail or unsolicited
commercial e-mail to my suespammers.org address or any of my other addresses.
These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's. I hate spam.
Tom Lucas
I worked for Maplin in the Cardiff branch between '98 and 2001 while I
was at uni and got to watch the decline from the inside - it all started
with an over-eager purchasing manager who got promoted to where he could
do some damage. When I first started then the Cardiff branch was one of
the "old school" stores with a massive storeroom and a little shop at
the front mostly frequented by grubby fingered regulars or people
looking for something obscure that they couldn't get elsewhere. We were
even allowed to smoke in the storeroom - what luxury!
In '99 the shop was refitted and a large portion of the storeroom was
turned into shop space which meant that the building was full of the
stupid toys and trinkets that had become the latest rage and all there
was no room for the stuff people actually wanted. We lost nearly all the
regulars in a matter of weeks when we ended up continually being forced
to order in simple parts that always used to be carried in stock. In
fairness, the manager normally tried to get requested items carried as
stock but there was a limit to the amount of space available - which was
reduced from at least 40'x20' to 20'x10' shared with a sales counter.
It is a shame to watch it destroy itself when I used to have such a love
for the place. The Chatham branch is still one of the "old school" dingy
stores with a big storeroom but it increasingly becoming staffed by
muppets and children and they are beginning to discontinue the useful,
but obscure, bread and butter lifeblood. I lost count of the times that
someone would come in looking for a video drive belt and leave with a
bag full of other bits and pieces but, these days, they just leave empty
handed.
JW
Message id: <1159571275....@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>:
>I stopped using PartMiner years ago, when they closed down all free
>access to datasheets.
>
>Today I received an email from PartMiner which says, in essence, "our
>core business model is unprofitable, so we are now professional
>spamwhores. Your contact details are being sold to anyone we can find
>who will pay us a nickel":
>
>> If you would like to receive business or career related offers
>> from PartMiner Information Systems, you do not have to respond
>> to this e-mail. You can easily unsubscribe each time you receive
>> an e-mail from us if you don't find the information worthwhile. To
>> unsubscribe now, please scroll to the bottom of this e-mail for
>> instructions.
>
>This "vendor" should be boycotted.
We stopped using them when we started getting forged semiconductors from
them. Buyer beware...
Homer J Simpson
"Tom Lucas" <news@REMOVE_auto_THIS_flame_TO_REPLY.clara.co.uk> wrote in
message news:115978174...@demeter.uk.clara.net...
> It is a shame to watch it destroy itself when I used to have such a love
> for the place. The Chatham branch is still one of the "old school" dingy
> stores with a big storeroom but it increasingly becoming staffed by
> muppets and children and they are beginning to discontinue the useful, but
> obscure, bread and butter lifeblood. I lost count of the times that
> someone would come in looking for a video drive belt and leave with a bag
> full of other bits and pieces but, these days, they just leave empty
> handed.
Pretty much what happened to Radio Shack in the US. Perhaps they are the
model - certainly their stock is now 1/4 of what it once sold for.
Joel Kolstad
news:L0cUg.7286$N4.2849@clgrps12...
> Pretty much what happened to Radio Shack in the US. Perhaps they are the
> model - certainly their stock is now 1/4 of what it once sold for.
I think it's almost impossible to keep an electronic "parts" store open these
days, but that being said, Radio Shack was doing OK when they had a large mix
of consumer electronics and parts some 20 years ago. I think they became
greedy, by deciding to concentrate much more on the consumer electronics: Even
though the unit prices are higher, they could never compete on price with the
Big Box store for price nor selection. Their decision (pushing a decade ago)
to really concentrate on cell phones should have been obvious as a temporary
strategy -- the large layoffs this year were directly a result of the fact
that there's no longer any huge "untapped" market for cell phone users out
there -- sales today are 90+% people upgrading their handsets or new consumers
(kids!) slowly entering the market.
I'm certainly glad that Radio Shacks are still around, but -- like many
companies do over time -- the current management seems completely out of touch
with what made them so useful decades back; this leads directly to mediocrity
at best, at chapter 11 at worst.
PeteS
I remember nipping down to the local Radio Shack in Riyadh about 25
years ago for the parts to make a simple RF field strength detector.
It's a shame you can't really do that nowadays.
Cheers
PeteS
Homer J Simpson
"Joel Kolstad" <JKolstad7...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:12i2n6q...@corp.supernews.com...
> I'm certainly glad that Radio Shacks are still around, but -- like many
> companies do over time -- the current management seems completely out of
> touch with what made them so useful decades back; this leads directly to
> mediocrity at best, at chapter 11 at worst.
The only decisions the shareholders get to make now are to approve or not
(it makes no difference) the latest complicated system for 'compensating'
the board members to 'motivate' them to do . . . . whatever.
All real decisions are made by them or elsewhere.
Henry
Well I am sad to say all the electronic components stores have left
our town and we are left with Radio Shaft.
So we are stuck with the giant mail order wharehouse venders with
there $25 or more, min order.
It's hard to predict what componenets you will need in the futere, so
you buy the most common parts to meet the min order and save that
$5.00 extra charge. Since companies are only going to make a limited
amount of certain models of electronics and discontinue it whithin a
year. You should be able to demand a schematic or service manual when
you purchase it! This is crap buying a bigscreen TV with a one year
warranty and it goes tits up eight months out of warranty and no
longer supported. All they are doing is filling our landfills and
forcing us to buy their new products on a regular schedule. Won't be
long before automobiles will follow!
Eighteen years in the electronic industry with nothing to fix.
Homer J Simpson
"Henry" <Spam...@tufu.com> wrote in message
news:eoq2i2173d3vmjo9a...@4ax.com...
> Well I am sad to say all the electronic components stores have left
> our town and we are left with Radio Shaft.
> So we are stuck with the giant mail order wharehouse venders with
> there $25 or more, min order.
> It's hard to predict what componenets you will need in the futere, so
> you buy the most common parts to meet the min order and save that
> $5.00 extra charge. Since companies are only going to make a limited
> amount of certain models of electronics and discontinue it whithin a
> year. You should be able to demand a schematic or service manual when
> you purchase it! This is crap buying a bigscreen TV with a one year
> warranty and it goes tits up eight months out of warranty and no
> longer supported. All they are doing is filling our landfills and
> forcing us to buy their new products on a regular schedule. Won't be
> long before automobiles will follow!
> Eighteen years in the electronic industry with nothing to fix.
If everything still used tubes we'd have run out of techs years ago, however
the pendulum seems to have shifted viciously in the opposite direction.
Even if we ordered the makers to support products for a reasonable lifetime
(25 years?) I suspect we would slow down the flood and not cure it. I
certainly think there should be some sort of compulsory return of dead
things to the vendor for safe disposal.
In the meantime I will try to Freecycle where I can.
or
CBFalconer
> "Tom Lucas" <news@REMOVE_auto_THIS_flame_TO_REPLY.clara.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> It is a shame to watch it destroy itself when I used to have such a love
>> for the place. The Chatham branch is still one of the "old school" dingy
>> stores with a big storeroom but it increasingly becoming staffed by
>> muppets and children and they are beginning to discontinue the useful, but
>> obscure, bread and butter lifeblood. I lost count of the times that
>> someone would come in looking for a video drive belt and leave with a bag
>> full of other bits and pieces but, these days, they just leave empty
>> handed.
>
> Pretty much what happened to Radio Shack in the US. Perhaps they are the
> model - certainly their stock is now 1/4 of what it once sold for.
I think they just laid off about 2000 employees. Virtually no
point in visiting their stores anymore. All they do is flog cell
phones.
--
Some informative links:
<news:news.announce.newusers
<http://www.geocities.com/nnqweb/>
<http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html>
<http://www.caliburn.nl/topposting.html>
<http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html>
<http://cfaj.freeshell.org/google/>
Homer J Simpson
"CBFalconer" <cbfal...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:452157EC...@yahoo.com...
> I think they just laid off about 2000 employees. Virtually no
> point in visiting their stores anymore. All they do is flog cell
> phones.
It wouldn't even cross my mind to buy a cellphone there. I did just buy a
CD/MP3 player there - because it was cheap.
Lostgallifreyan
news:eoq2i2173d3vmjo9a...@4ax.com:
> This is crap buying a bigscreen TV with a one year
> warranty and it goes tits up eight months out of warranty and no
> longer supported. All they are doing is filling our landfills and
> forcing us to buy their new products on a regular schedule. Won't be
> long before automobiles will follow!
That's something that will be legislated against. If ROHS can be forced to
avoid dangerous waste, so can this, and in this case I think the
legislation will probably be more welcome. Once a customer is not able to
discard eletronics as if they were biodegradable rags, the service industry
might start looking better again. There might be a heathy return of second
hand shops too, because as the value of used goods rises, so will the
respect for them, so the crime which helped the demise of the second hand
eletronics trade will be guarded against, at least enough to establish the
return of that trade. I think people would probably rather buy second hand
gear from a shop with a decent service dept than take their chances on
eBay, especially as eBay is now derelict regarding its responsibility to
protect its users.
Lostgallifreyan
news:pan.2006.10.02....@nntp.sun-meatplow.local:
> Any decent Sawzall can render a big screen into camp fire wood within
> minutes.
>
The day you find a CRT made entirely of wood, be sure to let everyone know,
ok?
Gene S. Berkowitz
o...@nowhere.net says...
No, because there is no incentive to spend the extra money to make
these products repairable. The "big box"/Wal-Mart model drives the
manufacturer to produce goods at the lowest cost, not the highest
reliability. That means offshore design & manufacture, with extremely
high integration components that might have only a two-year lifespan in
the market.
As long as consumers behave as though a big-box off-brand, or worse, a
big-box-only "name brand" model is the equivalent of the higher end
product, this trend will continue.
--Gene
Lostgallifreyan
news:MPG.1f8b9e8c1...@newsgroups.comcast.net:
Your view is outdated. The pressure to recycle, not just to satisfy new
laws and regulations, but also to satisfy the ease of getting raw materials
cheaply from existing stuff. That means modularity. The only way you can
defeat that is to invest hugely in smart materials so a gradient of heat
can make them part company in sequence for easy separation later. Work is
being done on this, and if people want to have gaudy fashionable shells
that change from week to week, that work will be vital and must continue,
because there's only a limited time that sweatshops in China and such will
tolerate doing that work by cheap manual labour. China's been buying the
West's scrap metals like there's no tomorrow, because it knows what we've
allowed ourselves to foget, that where there's muck there's brass, as it's
said in Yorkshire. The only reason why the Wallmart kind of business
thrives as it does, is because they can pass the resposibility while raking
in the buck, if you take my meaning... Once the oil reserves become
expensive, people will have to either have to be VERY smart with their
materials, as I said at the start of this post, OR thry will have to revert
to modularity, the way telecoms companies made their phones for many years.
Both will probably happen. Either way, both methods will involve a lot more
recoverable stuff than current methods, so a healthy service industry will
rebuild on the strength of that.
Lostgallifreyan
> extremely
> high integration components that might have only a two-year lifespan in
> the market.
I take your point there. Thing is, that stuff will become code. While the
number of PIC's and AVR's and all are proliferating like mutating rabbits,
eventually people will get fed up and start to gravitate to the few types
that are most useful to them. The numbers and families will start to reduce
in number as the remaining ones start to more effectively cover the range
of operations most demanded from programmable IC's.
While new tech makes it possible for hardware to be designed on as
mercurial a basis as code has known for decades, that doesn't mean it's a
good idea. Human minds vary immensely too, but nature never makes our
brains look much different. We need to learn from that.
Arfa Daily
Your feelings on the service industry's future, are touchingly optimistic,
but I fear, fundamentally flawed. As the level of integration on consumer
electronics increases, it becomes more and more impossible to fix, not only
from the fault-finding point of view, but also from the practicalities of
being able to successfully remove and replace some of the high integration
devices - BGA's for instance. Owners of the gear expect now to bring it in,
and collect it next day, fixed. If they can't, they will go to the local
Tesco or Walmart or wherever, and just buy another, with more whizzbang
features on it than the last. Plasma TVs seem to have gone back for the
moment to the old days of modular electronics, but nothing that the you can
( or the manufacturers will let you ) fix on the modules, for the most part.
I don't actually believe that even the modules that you are sending back to
them, are actually getting repaired.
All that I can see happening, with the benefit of 35 years in the service
trade behind me, is that the manufacturers will find better ways of allowing
the stuff to be more readily reduced to its constituent parts, at what is
considered to be its ( commercial ) life-end. Their business is driven by
volume sales. For every one high quality expensive item that was sold by
them in the past, they probably now need to shift a hundred or more, so they
really don't want the likes of us repairing them ad infinitum. Where some
serious inroads to this could be made, is in the cost of spares. How many
DVD players have you scrapped, for instance, because the 50 cent laser
that's in it, comes out at 100 or more times that when it's offered as a
spare ? But there you go - they don't really want us putting a new one in,
do they ?
Arfa
Tom Lucas
> news:L0cUg.7286$N4.2849@clgrps12...
>> Pretty much what happened to Radio Shack in the US. Perhaps they are
>> the model - certainly their stock is now 1/4 of what it once sold
>> for.
>
> I think it's almost impossible to keep an electronic "parts" store
> open these days, but that being said, Radio Shack was doing OK when
> they had a large mix of consumer electronics and parts some 20 years
> ago. I think they became greedy, by deciding to concentrate much more
> on the consumer electronics: Even though the unit prices are higher,
> they could never compete on price with the Big Box store for price nor
> selection.
It's the greed that will kill them all. They had a good niche selling
parts but there wasn't a huge amount of money in it - although there was
plenty to keep the stores open. They then branch out into areas that are
sewn up by other suppliers specialising in those areas and wonder why
they aren't selling anything anymore. It's the drive to dominate all the
market places which is typical of middle management ambition who are
just looking for something to put on their CV for the next job rather
than a sensible decision about the nature and direction of the company.
The cafe around the corner from work does a mean Full English Breakfast
but if they wanted to follow the Maplins strategy then they would stop
selling black pudding and bubble and squeak because not everyone likes
it but they would start selling Whopper style burgers because Burger
King manage to make money out of them. Before you know it I would be
sitting in a McDonalds clone wondering how they managed to take the
hallowed ingredients of a Full English and produce something so entirely
unlike one.
> Their decision (pushing a decade ago) to really concentrate on cell
> phones should have been obvious as a temporary strategy -- the large
> layoffs this year were directly a result of the fact that there's no
> longer any huge "untapped" market for cell phone users out there --
> sales today are 90+% people upgrading their handsets or new consumers
> (kids!) slowly entering the market.
Fortunately Maplin only dabbled in cell phones briefly when the
pay-as-you-go craze started and then got out once the price frenzy begun
amongst the cell phone dealers. They made a pretty penny selling the
top-up cards but never sold anywhere near enough phones to even cover
the wholesale cost. For once, they were ahead of the game by being
amongst the first to offer pay-as-you-go phones but, as always,
completely failed to advertise it, failed to give staff any training in
it and overpriced everything forcing them to demolish their margins
offering heavy discounts after a few months of no sales.
> I'm certainly glad that Radio Shacks are still around, but -- like
> many companies do over time -- the current management seems completely
> out of touch with what made them so useful decades back; this leads
> directly to mediocrity at best, at chapter 11 at worst.
I can't understand why the management are doing this. They want to be a
jack of all trades but neglect what got them to where they are now. The
consumer electronics market is cut-throat and you need to be able to
alter prices at a moments notice and catalogue stores find that very
hard. The recent move to turn all Dixons stores into Currys is quite
intersting as they are both stores that know what they are doing in the
consumer electronics market (I don't know why they didn't do this years
ago) and shows a shift in customer demands. I know for a fact that I
want to be fiddling with Sat Navs and digital cameras while the
girlfriend gets all breathless shopping for vacuum cleaners and cookers.
Paul Carpenter
<Xns9850ED6F131...@140.99.99.130>
no-...@nowhere.net "Lostgallifreyan" wrote:
>Henry <Spam...@tufu.com> wrote in
>news:eoq2i2173d3vmjo9a...@4ax.com:
>
>> This is crap buying a bigscreen TV with a one year
>> warranty and it goes tits up eight months out of warranty and no
>> longer supported. All they are doing is filling our landfills and
>> forcing us to buy their new products on a regular schedule. Won't be
>> long before automobiles will follow!
>
>That's something that will be legislated against. If ROHS can be forced to
>avoid dangerous waste, so can this, and in this case I think the
>legislation will probably be more welcome. Once a customer is not able to
>discard eletronics as if they were biodegradable rags,
In Europe the upcoming WEEE directive, is geared at the electrical being
returned to manufacturer to dispose of dead equipment. This will probably
effect inkjet printers more than TVs.
They are already moves on vehicles to do the same, especially as the last
thrity years has seen an increase in plastic and reduction in metal in
vehicles.
The aircraft industry is already doing schemes to do this, to avoid sections
or whole old planes being dumped in the seas. Also before long there is
likely to to be several thousand aircraft a year being scrapped as many
aircraft like early 747s reaching 30 years old
>..the service industry
>might start looking better again. There might be a heathy return of second
>hand shops too, because as the value of used goods rises, so will the
>respect for them, so the crime which helped the demise of the second hand
>eletronics trade will be guarded against, at least enough to establish the
>return of that trade. I think people would probably rather buy second hand
>gear from a shop with a decent service dept...
Considering some of the chnages to things like TVs Radios and Hifis with
going digital, widescreen and other things, most of the old stuff and
early versions of new schemes will not be useable. As soon as some
types of flat screens start developing faults in the highly integrated
glass the vast bulk of it is only scrap, and not repairable without
very complex clean rooms.
--
Paul Carpenter | pa...@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk
<http://www.pcserviceselectronics.co.uk/> PC Services
<http://www.gnuh8.org.uk/> GNU H8 & mailing list info
<http://www.badweb.org.uk/> For those web sites you hate
Hershel
On 3-Oct-2006, "Tom Lucas"
<news@REMOVE_auto_THIS_flame_TO_REPLY.clara.co.uk> wrote:
I used to manage a RS store about 30 years ago.
We sold a ton of stereo equipment, because there wasn't a
Best Buy down the street. We sold CB radios because they
were popular at the time. We sold PA equipment, microphones,
and the like (expensive goods, with a huge profit margin),
because we were the only place in town (other than the TV
repair shop) where you might find something like that. We sold
TV antennas, masts, rotators, signal boosters, etc. because
everybody didn't have cable.
The electronic components, connectors, hardware and other
little items had a great gross profit, but didn't generate enough
revenue to amount to anything.
Those items were there to attract customers. A guy comes in
to buy a "record player needle", and you sell him a new stereo.
It was great, going into a RS years ago and being able to buy
a couple of 1/4 watt resistors. But when people quit checking
to see what stereo system was on sale while they were there
(because you know you can get one cheaper at Best Buy),
the business model quit working. I think they have done the
best that could be expected, but are on the same path as the
small grocery store or full-service gas station.
Anyway, my $.02.
-Hershel
Lostgallifreyan
news:YgpUg.35836$0i4....@newsfe4-win.ntli.net:
> Your feelings on the service industry's future, are touchingly
> optimistic, but I fear, fundamentally flawed. As the level of
> integration on consumer electronics increases, it becomes more and
> more impossible to fix, not only from the fault-finding point of view,
> but also from the practicalities of being able to successfully remove
> and replace some of the high integration devices - BGA's for instance.
> Owners of the gear expect now to bring it in, and collect it next day,
> fixed. If they can't, they will go to the local Tesco or Walmart or
> wherever, and just buy another, with more whizzbang features on it
> than the last. Plasma TVs seem to have gone back for the moment to the
> old days of modular electronics, but nothing that the you can ( or the
> manufacturers will let you ) fix on the modules, for the most part.
> I don't actually believe that even the modules that you are sending
> back to them, are actually getting repaired.
>
That just means that the repair/recycling goes back to source instead of
other people getting a look-in. Sad, but it still allows for one of my
preducted outcomes. It's not a big prediction. Even if legislation doesn't
enforce recycling, it will happen. Think about that heat gradient thing,
the way different melt temperatures allow plastics to separate from each
other. That would benefit the maker immensely, saving them a lot of raw
materials cost. It's in their interset to get the stuff back, ot's one
reason why they like it that way. It doesn't all go to landfill, there are
whole towns in China that specialise in deconstructing stuff to save money
in reuse, and I'm sure the companies would love to automate this, same as
the industrial revolution sought to automate things.
> All that I can see happening, with the benefit of 35 years in the
> service trade behind me, is that the manufacturers will find better
> ways of allowing the stuff to be more readily reduced to its
> constituent parts, at what is considered to be its ( commercial )
> life-end. Their business is driven by volume sales. For every one high
> quality expensive item that was sold by them in the past, they
> probably now need to shift a hundred or more, so they really don't
> want the likes of us repairing them ad infinitum. Where some serious
> inroads to this could be made, is in the cost of spares. How many DVD
> players have you scrapped, for instance, because the 50 cent laser
> that's in it, comes out at 100 or more times that when it's offered as
> a spare ? But there you go - they don't really want us putting a new
> one in, do they ?
>
Then that's where some limited service industry can result. Perverse, I
know, but if buying intact units to strip for spares is the cheap way to
get them, then that's what people will do. I suspect it won't be to do
direct repairs of original gear (except where individuals demand and pay
for it), the firms making it will do that, if anyone does, but there will
be money in it. The trick for people outside the firm's traffic will be in
taking advantage of a cheap item containing parts that someone elsewhere
will pay a lot for. The main problem with this is that many items will have
a high waste to parts ratio. That could be where the enforcing of recycling
comes in though. Once the companies making this stuff identify their
ownership so well that the bulk traffic is to and from them, it might be
easy to make them responsible to handle even dismantled items, providing
the people who dismantled them voluntarily make the effort to return them
at least to a starting point for their journey.
This isn't blind idealism, it's already beginning. Recycling still has a
green treehugging image, but in cities that's rapidly being seen as a basic
service like rubbish collection, but with more detailed demands on what is
put out, and how. Money will drive this, eventually, same as it has for
years with non-ferrous metals. As soon as the price of heavy metals and oil
start to rise as population growth, world-wide industrialisation, and
increasing difficulty getting raw materials grows, so will the rise of a
market for salvage. Wherever there is a need for sorting, even at
domestic level where a lot will be done, there will be a demand for pay
for the work, and as the price will rise, and the work won't get done
without pay, that pay will get paid, though there won't be anything quick
about agreements being made. There will come a complexity and invention of
ways to make money that hasn't been seen or imagined yet.
Lostgallifreyan
news:20061003.08...@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk:
> Considering some of the chnages to things like TVs Radios and Hifis with
> going digital, widescreen and other things, most of the old stuff and
> early versions of new schemes will not be useable. As soon as some
> types of flat screens start developing faults in the highly integrated
> glass the vast bulk of it is only scrap, and not repairable without
> very complex clean rooms.
>
Ok, but it's very recoverable scrap. Extracting phosphor materials from
glassware before melting is probably a viable economy, not very attractive,
but no worse than most recycling business already running.
Once things like Necsels (Novalux laser device, RGB emitter in compact
form) start appearing in TV's, there will be modular parts with high resale
value. New tech is just as likely to make new opportunities as to destroy
old ones.
Lostgallifreyan
> It's the greed that will kill them all. They had a good niche selling
> parts but there wasn't a huge amount of money in it - although there was
> plenty to keep the stores open. They then branch out into areas that are
> sewn up by other suppliers specialising in those areas and wonder why
> they aren't selling anything anymore. It's the drive to dominate all the
> market places which is typical of middle management ambition who are
> just looking for something to put on their CV for the next job rather
> than a sensible decision about the nature and direction of the company.
>
So true, but that actually offers hope. It only takes a bit of realisation
on the part of the public, and of shareholders, and these blinkered
agressive egoists with more ambition than sense will become unemployable.
Tom Lucas
news:eftrg...@enews1.newsguy.com...
>
> On 3-Oct-2006, "Tom Lucas"
> <news@REMOVE_auto_THIS_flame_TO_REPLY.clara.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> "Joel Kolstad" <JKolstad7...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>>
>> news:12i2n6q...@corp.supernews.com...
>> > "Homer J Simpson" <nob...@nowhere.com> wrote in message
>> > news:L0cUg.7286$N4.2849@clgrps12...
>> >> Pretty much what happened to Radio Shack in the US. Perhaps
>> >> they are
>> >> the model - certainly their stock is now 1/4 of what it once
>> >> sold
>> >> for.
>
> I used to manage a RS store about 30 years ago.
>
> We sold a ton of stereo equipment, because there wasn't a
> Best Buy down the street. We sold CB radios because they
> were popular at the time. We sold PA equipment, microphones,
> and the like (expensive goods, with a huge profit margin),
> because we were the only place in town (other than the TV
> repair shop) where you might find something like that. We sold
> TV antennas, masts, rotators, signal boosters, etc. because
> everybody didn't have cable.
>
> The electronic components, connectors, hardware and other
> little items had a great gross profit, but didn't generate enough
> revenue to amount to anything.
>
> Those items were there to attract customers. A guy comes in
> to buy a "record player needle", and you sell him a new stereo.
>
> It was great, going into a RS years ago and being able to buy
> a couple of 1/4 watt resistors. But when people quit checking
> to see what stereo system was on sale while they were there
> (because you know you can get one cheaper at Best Buy),
> the business model quit working. I think they have done the
> best that could be expected, but are on the same path as the
> small grocery store or full-service gas station.
I'm sure there is still a viable market there for the accessories and
parts that no-one else sells - cordless phone batteries, stylii, fuses,
obscure bulbs etc. There is also another niche market that they should
be involved in, albeit carefully, and that is the support of partially
legal activities. PIC12C508 and 509s are used in the chipping of
playstations, cable boxes and other devices and Maplin is about the only
place around you can buy them in bulk and still pay cash. They also have
their "video copy enhancer" which very effectively strips off
macrovision and other copy protection mechanisms which can be happily
overpriced and people will still buy it.
There is a future for high street electronics shops but they must stick
to their core business and accept that they have grown about as big as
they are going to and stop striving to topple Comet, Currys and Toys 'r'
us.
Tom Lucas
There will always be work for an aggressive egoist with more ambition
than sense. No company large enough to use an HR department for their
recruitment can resist the buzzwords and glowing reference from a
manager desperate to get rid of them. Only small companies are immune
because they have to recruit people on merit.
Lostgallifreyan
How long can the big companies afford the indulgence? New stuff happens
with small firms. The big firms buy them out as the thing becomes
established and commercial pressure bites into the profits. The faster new
tech changes, the more it favours the small firms, and the less the big
ones will be able to afford their current indulgence. They won't recruit
from HR agencies, they'll keep their own best staff, and keep the small
firm's staff too, as anything else might become too big a risk. Once the
small firms they buy up are driving the market harder than middle
management is, they won't risk letting some egoistic paper pusher scupper
the ship. They'll want more loyalty, and they'll pay to keep it.
Isaac Bosompem
Meat Plow wrote:
> On Mon, 02 Oct 2006 14:18:20 -0400, CBFalconer Has Frothed:
>
> > Homer J Simpson wrote:
> >> "Tom Lucas" <news@REMOVE_auto_THIS_flame_TO_REPLY.clara.co.uk> wrote:
> >>
> >>> It is a shame to watch it destroy itself when I used to have such a
> >>> love for the place. The Chatham branch is still one of the "old school"
> >>> dingy stores with a big storeroom but it increasingly becoming staffed
> >>> by muppets and children and they are beginning to discontinue the
> >>> useful, but obscure, bread and butter lifeblood. I lost count of the
> >>> times that someone would come in looking for a video drive belt and
> >>> leave with a bag full of other bits and pieces but, these days, they
> >>> just leave empty handed.
> >>
> >> Pretty much what happened to Radio Shack in the US. Perhaps they are the
> >> model - certainly their stock is now 1/4 of what it once sold for.
> >
> > I think they just laid off about 2000 employees. Virtually no point in
> > visiting their stores anymore. All they do is flog cell phones.
>
> to keep useful things on the shelves. Now unless you're looking for a
> phone battery, talking picture frame, or an R/C toy you're shit outta luck.
>
> --
> Pierre Salinger Memorial Hook, Line & Sinker, June 2004
>
> COOSN-266-06-25794
That is interesting. Here in Toronto, most of the Radio Shacks I've
been too carried electronics components (proto boards, soldering irons,
resistors, caps, LED's, connectors, IR, etc.) but they are hidden at
the far back of the store. Also they are very expensive.
5 LED's will cost you almost $3 CDN, pfft... Thats crazy being that I
can go to the many electronics stores we have downtown and buy 5 for a
quarter.
-Isaac
Ignoramus906
often do not know what is a resistor etc. Which kind of makes sense,
when electronic components are so easy to buy from various websites, t
makes little sense to sell them in stores.
i
Homer J Simpson
"Isaac Bosompem" <x86...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1159893938.7...@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> That is interesting. Here in Toronto, most of the Radio Shacks I've
> been to carried electronics components (proto boards, soldering irons,
> resistors, caps, LED's, connectors, IR, etc.) but they are hidden at
> the far back of the store. Also they are very expensive.
> 5 LED's will cost you almost $3 CDN, pfft... Thats crazy being that I
> can go to the many electronics stores we have downtown and buy 5 for a
> quarter.
Yes. A dollar store that sold electrical / electronics only would compete
well with RS (The Source).
The reason they hide that stuff in back is that the salesman makes a modest
commission on a cellphone deal but only about 20 cents on a $3 sale.
GregS
My Radio Shack remodled a couple years ago and I found the new layout the best ever,
except I miss when the stores had a regular stereo listening area setup. They had nice isles
and had soldering stuff, cleaners right there in the middle of things.
They closed this summer.
greg
Joel Kolstad
> The reason they hide that stuff in back is that the salesman makes a modest
> commission on a cellphone deal but only about 20 cents on a $3 sale.
Yeah, but one can argue that -- these days -- it usually requires *selling* to
get someone to purchase a cell phone, whereas for something like an LED the
employee is almost always just going to be an *order taker*.
Hershel
On 3-Oct-2006, "Joel Kolstad" <JKolstad7...@yahoo.com>
wrote:
But the next guy that comes in the store spends 1/2 hour
asking the employee why he can't connect the LEDs to
120VAC, before he spends the $3.
Then of course, returns the defective parts the next day.
-Hershel
Lostgallifreyan
news:efuaj...@enews3.newsguy.com:
How many buyers were really that bad? Surely not enough to dent the income
that badly? I think it's arguable that assumptions like that lead to an
impression that stocking small parts leads to being beset with timewasters,
and that might be a big reason why people stopped stocking them. That says
far more about the management than about the customers. I accept that there
is no smoke without fire, but the fire is usually far smaller than the
smoke. Besides, isn't pricing LED at $3 for a pack of 5 asking for trouble?
All the sensible and well-informed clients are buying elsewhere.
The first rule of high street spares and parts is: keep them in stock. That
might not apply to special parts but once it gets to the point where a 16V
1000 µF capacitor or an LM317T regulator can't be bought at a moment's
notice at any time the shop is open, that's when the business goes belly up
with all speed unless it gives up trying and becomes a different kind of
shop, in which case it should make way for another firm who will take on
that trade. Looks like some of the small mail order firms might soon start
doing what Maplin and Tandy/Radio Shack were doing. I guess history repeats
itself.
Arfa Daily
That's all as may be, but I really can't see any mileage in offering
recovered parts to the service industry, or any such thing spawning a
revival in the ' mend and make do ' mentality of Joe Punter. I would not
dream of fitting a second hand recovered laser, or any other component come
to that. It's simply not practical when you've got to be able to offer a
warranty on the repair. Neither would I waste the time recovering components
for commercial use. It would just not make economic sense. The only way that
recycling of electronic equipment is going to have any serious impact, is in
recovery of the base materials for reuse in manufacturing new goods.
However, like wind turbines and battery cars, the energy budget advantage
for doing even this, is dubious. Far better my original contention that
manufacturers should be obliged to pass on spare parts at cost plus
handling, not cost plus handling plus 5000% profit, thus stopping the stuff
being prematurely scrapped in the first place...
Arfa
Gene S. Berkowitz
o...@nowhere.net says...
No, my view is current. We build products to RoHS, and we now document
the quickest and safest ways to disassemble our products for recycling.
In most cases, our SMT boards are not economical to repair; the labor
cost of removing one PLCC package, or God forbid, a BGA, very rapidly
approaches our cost for a new, fully populated and tested PCB from our
turnkey vendor.
It's cheaper and easier to shred the entire product, case & all, skim
the plastics off to make park benches, and throw the rest in the
crucible and separate out any metals of value.
Should China become unwilling to take on the work, there are dozens of
developing economies in Asia and Africa that would be happy to take it
off their hands.
--Gene
Mike Monett
> In most cases, our SMT boards are not economical to
> repair; the labor cost of removing one PLCC package, or God forbid, a
> BGA, very rapidly approaches our cost for a new, fully populated and
> tested PCB from our turnkey vendor.
>
> It's cheaper and easier to shred the entire product, case & all, skim
> the plastics off to make park benches, and throw the rest in the
> crucible and separate out any metals of value.
> --Gene
Just out of curiosity, Gene, do you do any failure analysis to determine
the cause before shredding the evidence?
Regards,
Mike Monett
Antiviral, Antibacterial Silver Solution:
http://silversol.freewebpage.org/index.htm
SPICE Analysis of Crystal Oscillators:
http://silversol.freewebpage.org/spice/xtal/clapp.htm
Noise-Rejecting Wideband Sampler:
http://www3.sympatico.ca/add.automation/sampler/intro.htm
Tom Lucas
That was one of the better parts of the Maplin job but it certainly did
take a lot of time. I didn't mind on slow week days but on a busy
Saturday when someone hands you a melted mass of black plastic and wants
you to identify and replace a part now absent from a smoking crater then
it becomes a bit tedious.
Good job satisfaction though if you manage to actually teach a customer
something because you know he's going to go bragging to his mates about
his new found knowledge, even if it is just calculating a voltage drop
resistor for a LED.
Gene S. Berkowitz
says...
> Gene S. Berkowitz <first...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> > In most cases, our SMT boards are not economical to
> > repair; the labor cost of removing one PLCC package, or God forbid, a
> > BGA, very rapidly approaches our cost for a new, fully populated and
> > tested PCB from our turnkey vendor.
> >
> > It's cheaper and easier to shred the entire product, case & all, skim
> > the plastics off to make park benches, and throw the rest in the
> > crucible and separate out any metals of value.
>
> > --Gene
>
> Just out of curiosity, Gene, do you do any failure analysis to determine
> the cause before shredding the evidence?
I didn't say we don't investigate, it just isn't cost-effective to
repair the board by hand, rather than pull a new one from stock.
We do investigate hen we can. Some of our boards are potted for
intrinsic safety, and it's pretty difficult to remove. When a product
is returned because it was struck by lightning, or flooded, we don't
usually investigate much!
The failures we see in-house have been due to improper handling (bad
wrist straps), correctly marked SMT resistors that are the wrong value,
and an occasional defective EEPROM.
--Gene
Mike Monett
> I didn't say we don't investigate, it just isn't cost-effective to
> repair the board by hand, rather than pull a new one from stock.
> We do investigate when we can. Some of our boards are potted for
> intrinsic safety, and it's pretty difficult to remove. When a
> product is returned because it was struck by lightning, or
> flooded, we don't usually investigate much!
> The failures we see in-house have been due to improper handling
> (bad wrist straps), correctly marked SMT resistors that are the
> wrong value, and an occasional defective EEPROM.
> --Gene
Thanks, Gene,
Is it correct to assume the in-house problems are detected before
shipment? Do you do a burnin where you run a self-test program?
Gene S. Berkowitz
says...
> Gene S. Berkowitz <first...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> > I didn't say we don't investigate, it just isn't cost-effective to
> > repair the board by hand, rather than pull a new one from stock.
>
> > We do investigate when we can. Some of our boards are potted for
> > intrinsic safety, and it's pretty difficult to remove. When a
> > product is returned because it was struck by lightning, or
> > flooded, we don't usually investigate much!
>
> > The failures we see in-house have been due to improper handling
> > (bad wrist straps), correctly marked SMT resistors that are the
> > wrong value, and an occasional defective EEPROM.
>
> > --Gene
>
> Thanks, Gene,
>
> Is it correct to assume the in-house problems are detected before
> shipment? Do you do a burnin where you run a self-test program?
We have board-level tests that are either performed at the vendor or by
us prior to product assembly. The finished product usually undergoes
further performance/accuracy checks. This catches virtually all our
defects. We usually don't burn in products unless they have mechanical
parts like compressors or pumps that tend to have much higher "infant
mortality".
--Gene
Johnny Boy
"Aly" <ali...@logicsaysNOSPAM.com> wrote in message
news:p5ydnd8_-oR6D4PY...@bt.com...
> "larwe" <zwsd...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1159571275....@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> > I stopped using PartMiner years ago, when they closed down all free
> > access to datasheets.
> >
> > Today I received an email from PartMiner which says, in essence, "our
> > core business model is unprofitable, so we are now professional
> > spamwhores. Your contact details are being sold to anyone we can find
> > who will pay us a nickel":
> >
> > > If you would like to receive business or career related offers
> > > from PartMiner Information Systems, you do not have to respond
> > > to this e-mail. You can easily unsubscribe each time you receive
> > > an e-mail from us if you don't find the information worthwhile. To
> > > unsubscribe now, please scroll to the bottom of this e-mail for
> > > instructions.
> >
> > This "vendor" should be boycotted.
> >
>
> I agree with this. I outright refuse to use suppliers that expect ME to
pay
> for their advertising material. Maplin is one them, wanting Ł5 for a
> catalogue. RS are so stingy with their catalogues it's unheard of, you'd
> think they'd be giving them away on every street corner when you see their
> prices. After LOADS of arguing I lost interest, they sent them eventually
> by UPS/TNT? to a rural country location taking 3-weeks of further
cock-ups,
> such that I had absolutely no faith in anything I ever ordered getting to
> me. The catalogues went in the bin.
>
> Buy our products *AND* buy our sales merchandise. Use *OUR* delivery
> service that *WE* have a cut price contract with, even if it'll never get
to
> you because the drivers are too lazy to even bother.
>
> This methodology wouldn't work at my local Indian Restaurant I'm sure.
>
>
I was going to reply with some sense, but why bother with effort on
these deals - just tell PartsMiner to go and get stuffed. In fact, tell them
nothing, just move on. There are plenty of other parts suppliers just
waiting for real business, you don't need these arseholes - just boycott
them. RS are no better. I have an account with them, but, in fact, even if
you have an account, they're not interested
... Johnny