Right. I stumbled around on their site for a few minutes before seeing the drop-down for brands. Meant to post that link but must've goofed up.

Dunno how their prices compare to other sources for WDC silicon.

_________________
x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

I'll contact Jameco during their business hours and see if I can figure out what's going on...

Well, that didn't last. Today I wanted to order a few small items (SIP resistors, a couple of RCA connectors, some other small items). Shipping: About fifty dollars! So forget that.

It's becoming nearly impossible to continue being a hobbyist these days. If I can't find it on Ebay then I can't get it, and what I can find on Ebay is actually very limited for a wide range of hobbyist components. I have several small projects which I can't finish for now. It's really frustrating.

-Tor

I suppose shared bulk orders might help, in some circumstances. But not all. Perhaps some USA-located people could buy and tranship at cost? I imagine the high delivery costs are for rapid and tracked deliveries.

That $49 (and that was after I removed anything bigger than small components from the order) was the cheapest option - no tracking, no Fedex or anything. Those start at $117 or something. It's completely absurd.

Bulk orders by individuals aren't really feasible either, because anything other than small orders triggers VAT&customs handling horrors (when I'm in Norway, and Paypal won't let me ship to Japan. I can only get goods sent to Japan in special cases - I got my Briel Apple 1 replica kit shipped here, thanks to Vince).

Buying via USA-located helpful people is good for the occasional special case (say, a group of people working on some particular SBC or kit), but it's not practical for the hobbyist who just wants to get some components now and then for the current project. I used to have a small supplier in the US who carried lots of small parts and shipped at low cost, but he has downscaled recently and doesn't carry those small parts anymore. The cheapest components were quite a bit more expensive than from some other sources, but the shipping and ease (and speed) made it all affordable. But for now that's not an option anymore.

Local suppliers are also out of the question for many of us. ELFA, the only one available for Scandinavia, has not just very high shipping costs, many items are more expensive than if I ordered single components plus shipping, customs and handling from the US. It's all geared towards companies, not hobbyists.

I have a few 65xx parts in my local stock, and some other components - but for new projects, or completing unfinished ones (for lack of parts) it's getting more and more difficult. As a teenager I could order a few resistors and transistors at the time from national providers, at reasonable costs. Those were the days. At that time microcomputers (even kits) I wanted were way too expensive for me - though I got myself a Nascom 1 - but components were at least readily available. Now it's the other way around.

At the moment it looks like options for hobbyists (at least outside USA and some countries (UK?) which still have reasonable local providers) are narrowing down to China-made Arduino clones or some such. I don't want to go there.

-Tor

I agree. $117 is highway robbery, especially when one considers that most of the parts we buy amount to little more than a few ounces/centigrams in weight. The problem with ordering from most of these distributors is that they only offer courier style shipping, which is more expensive than shipping via the postal system. However, I note that Jameco offers shipment via the postal system, which appears to be more reasonable than anything else.

Just for grins, I looked up what it would cost to send a small package from my location in the USA to Bergen, Norway, using the U.S. Postal Service's "Priority Mail International® Padded Flat Rate Envelope." This service also covers small boxes of a size sufficient to ship chips and such. Maximum allowable weight is four pounds/1.81 kilograms and the quoted rate at the USPS's website is $24.75, which includes insurance and tracking.

Typically, orders from Jameco cost $8.00 to $10.00 in domestic shipping to my location (Mouser and Digi-Key are a bit less expensive). Assuming parts were ordered from Jameco and reshipped to Norway, the aggregate shipping cost would be, worst case, about $35.00. Priority mail service is offered for shipments with a maximum value of 400 USD, which would cover quite a few parts. Not sure at what point, though, the declared value would trigger a customs fee and/or VAT. I supposed the shipment could be declared to be a gift...

_________________
x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

The last couple of times I used Jameco shipping was only $17 for small packages. Not as cheap as it could theoretically be (see Parallax example below), there was probably some handling fee in there. But it was OK. So I don't know why the postal shipping rate jumped so suddenly.

I just checked Mouser (I put a Bourns SIP resistor network into the basket..). 'Delivery charge' is $47 to Norway.
Digi-key had a fixed shipping rate of $30 for items up to some size the last time I checked, but that's a couple of years ago. Mouser has always been out of range for me. That's very unfortunate because they have almost everything a hobbyist needs - including 65xx parts, and hard-to-find small things like a good selection of Bourns SIPs..

The VAT limit is currently around $33 for Norway (value of the goods, not including shipping - although VAT is applied to shipping too when 25% VAT is triggered. And charges start around $30..). For gifts the limit is around $83, but 'gift' declarations are generally ignored - if anything looks like it's not sent from a private person (even just a typed address label) it won't be accepted. Ebay sellers in China almost always tick 'Gift' on the CN22, that's pointless.

In any case, for regular shopping it's not really feasible to do it via friendly locals. I was just suddenly in need of a few small parts. I still wonder what changed at Jameco.

I just checked with Parallax (Propeller chips etc.), and for orders below $100 and in reasonably small boxes (but not that small really) they still offer USPS First-Class Mail International for $6.55 - now that is a company I still like to shop from (they ship very quickly as well). Of course Parallax offers other options too, all the way to UPS Worldwide Saver at $155.29 (I wonder what the non-Saver version would be..), but what's great is the reasonable USPS First-Class shipping. They actually have many small items useful for hobbyists, just not the rights ones this time. When I order from there I can buy a protoboard or two, some caps, a couple of Propeller chips, and get to an order around $25-$30 and pay just a few dollars in shipping and have it in five to seven days. And no VAT and charges and extra cost. I wish I could do the same with Mouser.

I'm not sure what options are left for hobbyists in my location. Maybe put together a huge order of everything I could imagine, shipping and custom handling charges would then be much smaller than the value of the goods, and the 25% VAT itself is fair enough. Or acceptable at least. But that doesn't really make sense either, there's probably no limit to how much I could stock and still be without what I need.. so it's back to buying a small number of parts and then pay ten times more in shipping etc. than what the parts are worth. Between a rock and a hard place.

The Internet has made the world a smaller, more accessible place.. but the couriers and mail handlers are putting up barriers faster than the Internet can lower them.

-Tor

Actually, from what you are describing, it seems that the real barriers are the exorbitant tax rates you are being made to suffer. We Yanks like to grumble about how we're being taxed to death, but the reality is that most other countries have far more oppressive taxing schemes than we do.

Although the idea of a VAT has been floated as a way to increase our federal government's solvency (an exercise in futility—politicians will always find ways to waste new revenue) it has yet to gain any support. If it does, I suspect the elected officials who do support it will be out of a job in short order. There's nothing like taxation to stifle economic growth.

_________________
x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

The VAT as such isn't really the problem. It's 25% (here in Japan where I'm currently it's 8%, so Norwegian VAT _is_ high), but that only increases the price of a $4 component to $5. The problem is when it costs $30-$50 to ship that component. This prevents me from buying small batches of parts (although I avoid the 25% VAT on small batches. But shipping kills it).

I can buy larger batches to level out the shipping costs somewhat (particularly when two or three locals can share an order). But that moves me into VAT territory. In fact I don't mind the VAT that much, after all I pay VAT on everything in the shops and it's not a problem. Because it's only VAT, nothing extra. If I could just pay VAT only (add up parts, add shipping, add 25%) it wouldn't be too bad, but the handlers (couriers, even domestic mail) insists on adding handling charges. FedEx and UPS won't even tell you what those charges are, you won't know until you get the bill, and at that point they have often "adjusted" the price of the goods so that you have to pay a higher VAT than you should. When you point out the error they say "sure, we can recalculate, that will be $40 re-handling charge please".

In fact I can walk down to the customs office and pay VAT myself, at no cost. Then they send a fax (yes, still fax..) to the handler to get them to release the shipment. However, the handler still insists on getting paid for customs handling..

So although VAT adds to costs, it's the handlers shipping prices and handling charges that creates the real problem. Specifically, I can't justify buying a little batch of a few parts anymore. But as the Parallax example shows, the companies (Mouser, Digi-Key, and now, unfortunately also Jameco) are also to blame: they don't offer the cheapest, easiest shipping method for small shipments (and in any case the so-called "tracking" you get with the more expensive USPS option has no value, it only works until the shipment leaves USA in practice. And often not even that.)

-Tor

Perhaps the answer lies with smaller outfits who need the business from hobbyists - it sounds like Parallax are stocking and selling the various extra bits which a hobbyist customer might need, presumably to lower the barrier to sales of their main product.

Here in the UK I've used http://www.robot-electronics.co.uk/ as a small independent supplier. Maybe even they could be contacted and asked to stock appropriate parts - I'm sure they can ship throughout Europe.

Oh, and http://www.hobbytronics.co.uk/ too.

I've also used http://www.trenz-electronic.de/products.html and http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/ for what they have. I think Seeed are in China, but I have no issue with that.

Thanks for those links Ed - they look very useful. What seems to be difficult to find outside of Mouser is actually Bourns resistor networks - not easy to find. A few can be found on Ebay, at absurd prices and/or shipping.

-Tor

Do you specifically need that brand, or would any SIP resistor network suffice?
I see Mouser offering at £0.10 to £0.35, and ebay not totally dissimilar:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_nkw=S ... OR+NETWORK
As you say, shipping is highly variable on ebay, but some of them are free delivery.

What value and configuration are you looking for?

_________________
Andrew Jacobs
6502 & PIC Stuff - http://www.obelisk.me.uk/
Cross-Platform 6502/65C02/65816 Macro Assembler - http://www.obelisk.me.uk/dev65/
Open Source Projects - https://github.com/andrew-jacobs

Sorry for almost disappearing - I'm on the way to travel again so I'm a bit busy. I'll return to the thread either tomorrow or, if not, in a few days.

-Tor

To where are you headed?

_________________
x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!