Anyone else having issues with Mouser?

[Fictitiousfreedom]

I have been having the worst time with mouser the last two months. I have been a customer of theirs for ten years or so and they have always been great. My last few orders just stayed pending and after a week would then be canceled so i have had to deal with live chat which takes hours. The first time this happened my account was deleted somehow and i lost access to certain invoices. This most recent one went the same way, was in live chat all day and when they finally sent my order it was completely wrong, it was similar to a previous order but slightly different and missing things. Was on live chat for 12 hours, was told id be getting a shipping label and refund but the guy ghosted me and i have not gotten anything from them. Ive emailed them 8 times with no reply this month. When i’ve called I’ve gotten hung up on or sat waiting forever. Im about to cut my loses and go to digikey but ive become very familiar with mousers site and inventory.

So anyone else experiencing these problems or am i just getting unlucky?

[xtian]

No issues here. I order from mouser a few times each month, small orders. They're fast. Sorry for your troubles!

[maxkracht]

I've had a handful of errors in the past few years after over a decade of zero issues. Missing/damaged parts a few times and once they decided I was a reseller and wouldn't sell me certain products. They asked for a link to my janky website to prove I was a nobody then took me off that list. Not enough to stop shopping there, but enough to notice a decline. I would recommend emailing them instead of calling/live chat. I think most places don't want to pay a living wage that keeps up with inflation so workers aren't going to put in much effort.

[Fictitiousfreedom]

No issues here. I order from mouser a few times each month, small orders. They're fast. Sorry for your troubles!

Thanks!

I've had a handful of errors in the past few years after over a decade of zero issues. Missing/damaged parts a few times and once they decided I was a reseller and wouldn't sell me certain products. They asked for a link to my janky website to prove I was a nobody then took me off that list. Not enough to stop shopping there, but enough to notice a decline. I would recommend emailing them instead of calling/live chat. I think most places don't want to pay a living wage that keeps up with inflation so workers aren't going to put in much effort.

I have emailed them 8 times with no response. I have also had a few orders over the years be wrong but they always handle it well. I think your right about not wanting to pay a living wage, that seems to be what most corporations have done. Its almost as if they attempt to deter any type of communications, which you would think is bad for business but i suppose now that we live in bizarro world this is how it is.

Thanks man.

[ViperDoc]

Whenever I've called them, they've been super helpful. Are the real people gone, now?

[Fictitiousfreedom]

I should’ve returned sooner but just for the record they eventually did help me out. It took a long time to get a good email address but once i explained the situation, again, they eventually let me keep around 50$ in parts that i didn’t pay for. Strange thing is they sent me an order almost identical to a previous order but included 12V relays with the sockets, a bunch of eyelets, and a few CF Resistors that i never ordered. I need that stuff for my next build so i offered to pay for it but they let me keep them and i shipped the rest of the order back. So i call it good customer service, i hate how difficult it is to get through the layers of compartmentalization in these huge companies but i suppose i am lucky we can still purchase any of this stuff at all.

[drewspriggs]

About a year ago I had to change some stuff with a Mouser order, and they were INCREDIBLY helpful. I've also had a couple of technical questions about products that were answered within 24hrs.

The last order I made I needed to add a couple of IC's, and contacted customer support within a minute of making the order. The order arrived 4 days later before they even replied.

[GlideOn]

Bit of both.

I hate ordering from Mouser as it feels like an endless wall of text with pixelated thumbnails. The website for the local DMV is easier to use.

They are huge company with a massive catalog. Sometimes it arrives early, sometimes late. Who even knows if it's run by humans anymore?

[R.G.]

On balance, Mouser is still hands-down the best electronics supplier IMHO. I've been using Mouser since the 1990s. They work incredibly hard to fill and ship orders fast.

If you have an issue with a Mouser order, call them. Chat windows appear to promise fast interaction, but my experience is that chat windows are far less useful than a person on the phone. Mouser in particular has had very fast, friendly, knowledgeable people on its phone services.

Shipping problems are - well, shipping problems. Mouser, and most other businesses are completely dependent on third party shippers. Mouser fills orders and ships more quickly on average than most other electronics suppliers. The electronics suppliers have been either getting better, moving toward Mouser's standard, or going out of business.

The search engine is the most common complaint with Mouser. I realize that it's intimidating for a beginner. I. Love. It. But then I love dealing with databases, as well crafted queries tell you a whole lot of information. Mouser's search engine will tell me very quickly not only what is available in stock, but also what is the general practice in the electronics parts industry and what is a common versus rare and expensive part.

Here are some quick tips for Mouser's search engine.
> Click the "Products" on the blue bar. That seems like a duuh... but do this after every search when you change types of products. I find this a faster way to get from, for instance, resistors to transistors than to click the "all products" link under the blue bar for changing product types. The set up for steering is easier, to me at least.
> Use the "All products > type of product > selection of products" line under the blue bar for going back up one level; for instance, changing from wirewound resistors to carbon film.
> Always click the "in stock" or "normally stocked" button before entering a set of filters. Unless you're looking for what the whole industry offers, but Mouser may not have, you want to know what is on the shelves. Note that sometimes knowing what the whole industry offers, but Mouser doesn't is a good guide to a design being difficult to actually make on your workbench.
> Use the ability to search by package to get the parts that will fit in your board; for instance, picking products > passive components > capacitors gets you to either axial or radial package caps as a top level choice.
> turn smart filtering on and leave it on.
> After doing a search, I usually want to know what I can afford. I hit the sort by price button on the top of the returned parts columns.
> Use the columns of filters to narrow your search. If you're only interested in, for instance, TO-5 transistors and not TO-92 plastic packages, the package/case filter will let you pick only TO-5s. You can select multiple things in a filter column; If you want TO-5 ...and... TO-92 transistors but not SOT 23 devices, click on "TO-5", then control-click on "TO-92" in the packages filter column. Selection in these columns works with control-click and shift-click as in most Windows apps.
> You can customize several columns at a time; you can select, for instance, TO-92 transistors with Vceo between 30 and 100V and max collector current of 200ma to 500ma from only On-Semi, and then hit "apply filters" and get back only those few devices.
> on individual parts, hit that "datasheet" link and see the manufacturer's sheet on a particular part.

Granted, this is all a steep learning curve if you are new to electronics and only want the specified part. But it's a very good way to winnow down what you want versus what is available.

[Gary A.]

Why not call them? ( (800) 346-6873 ) I needed help locating the proper Panel Mount Jack and Plug so I called them and they quickly got a part’s tech on the line and he quickly located exactly what I needed! They are are about 40 minutes away from me. I hadn’t been there in Mansfield Texas in years and was shocked. They had moved to new location and it was unbelievably massive now. They are helpful and quick to fill the order and ship. If I order before 4pm they have filled the order and shipped that very day. I get the order the next day via UPS Ground.

[R.G.]

That works great. I used to do that a whole lot. Their phone people were really top notch.

I got hooked on using their search engine early on, and found that it has side benefits. Their search engine also turns up things that are not currently in stock unless you click the box for "in stock only". That's a pain if all you want to know is whether they have XYZ transistor or whatever. But in a new design, I also want to know things like
> what's the most common size for a certain type of capacitor; the search engine lets you pick a class of parts like "47uF through 100uF" and "16V through 35V" to see what is in that range, and then you can select one size; the search engine obligingly tells you how many of that size it found. If there's only two or three choices, the part could be a problem. If there are 50 choices, GREAT! Finding how many choices there are tells you whether parts are hard to find.
> the datasheet; parts turned up in the search give a link to the manufacturer's data sheet for the part. This is huge if you're trying to find out PCB footprint or exactly what power or voltage rating the things have.
> not last - price; I always sort by price ascending and can pick the lowest cost part or get a hint if it's from a manufacturer I like. I can then see how many competitor parts are similar in price, and maybe get more voltage/current/frequency/power/gain/etc. for the same price or a little more.

But then I just like databases.

[Gainzilla]

Great conversation. There were only a couple times over the past 10 or so years I've had issues, and both seemed to occur right around the time covid/lockdown happened. I think they must've had a labor problem as I got a few orders that had mistakes (which I had NEVER gotten before), and sometimes orders would take a couple days to go out. The other issue I had was their website went through a major slowdown around the same time, and it would sometimes take a minute (literally 60 or more seconds) for a page to load. That was a MAJOR hinderance, but I still went there most of the time due to their selection.

I sell mod kits for amplifiers and sporadically send out orders direct to customers (I then send instructions via email). I love the ability to save projects. That lets me curate ready-to-buy BOM's that I can just add to cart and checkout. The sheer amount of different parts they offer is unmatched by anyone else willing to ship small orders. The very fact that they are even willing to go through a warehouse and pick parts for a JCM800 mod (2 or 3 of each part, totaling maybe 15 parts) or whatever is amazing to me.

While there are better ways to shop for parts with a few different component types (ie, select 1W resistors, go down a list quickly entering quantities, and click add to cart is great... Tube Town for instance, in the UK), there really isn't much better or more powerful than their search and filtering tools when dealing with that many products. I design software by day, and have referred to their model for a projects dealing with a huge database of stuff. It's really powerful for helping you find a needle in a haystack (or a smaller pile of needles).

Great tips RG. I also highly recommend spending the time to get used to their filtering tools. It's a little daunting at first, but having gotten used to it now, I LOVE it and find it incredibly fast. Also, definitely take advantage of their project tools. For instance, shop for all the parts for an amp you're building, and from the shopping cart (or the individual parts detail page), you can click add to project. Then next time what may have taken 45 minutes will take you less than 5. You can also share projects with other people. There are many other tools geared toward making things easier/more effiecient... BOM upload for one. Highlighting previously purchased items in search results, for another.

Side note: I used to use their 1W Icon resistors for pretty much everything. I had dozens and dozens of projects, all using these resistors. Then one dark day, Mouser changed the minimum quantity of those resistors from 1 to 1000. This broke ALL my projects, causing me to have to update them with new parts as I ordered. Some of them are still broken. I would usually add a project to cart, then go through and shop individually for replacements, save the cart as a NEW project and delete the old one. Even then it's STILL way faster than starting from scratch.

Sorry for the ramble. Consider me a fan, warts and all.

[carlsoti]

With every company I've been a regular customer of for a decade or more, there's been at least one hiccup. The only issue I ever had with Mouser was with one particular order and it involved some weirdness in their internal system. It was a hassle to try to get it fixed because they couldn't see my order at all. Once I was in touch with the right people, it was resolved quickly, with all apologies. I was never nasty about the situation, which might be why they upgraded the shipping to hit the original delivery date without my asking.

Food poisoning or outright deception are really the only things that will dissuade me from patronizing a business after one bad experience. (Ok, there are probably other things, but you get the idea.)