Good offer on soldering station

[level42]

Yup some stuff comes from Germany (most things I've ordered so far). The German stuff is delivered through GLS which is great because they often deliver stuff to my neighbors when I'm not home. Thats' fine with me we have a great neighborhood and we receive packages from eachother regularly.

However the UK stuff is shipped with DHL. Now that's fine if you are either always at home OR you can have them deliver at your workplace, but since I don't have a fixed workplace and am not often at home at weekdays, this really sucks.
The thing is they demand a signature for EVERYTHING, even a tiny bag that EASILY fits through the mail inlet (how do you call that, we have a inlet in our door for regular mail, not a separate mailbox).
SO, then I have to go over to their warehouse which is a 30 km drive roundtrip. I hate that.

But that's the only bad thing about RS for me so far. They're great in every other way.

I guess these guys have a huge bulk contract with these shipping companies so it doesn't really matter how much they send.

[liquidx]

RS ship from France also sometimes (in old-school "radio spares" boxes), I've had deliveries from them come over 3 different couriers on the same day. Sometimes from the same depot.

I prefer to order from Farnell most of the time, they also ship next day for free and from multiple locations but it's all done via UPS so it gets consolidated before reaching you. Also the UPS people are actually friendly, as opposed to the GLS people who obviously hate their job

Price wise, they each have their better prices on individual items but in general it averages out. Farnell tend to have more stock on obscure parts.

Mouser is cool too, they have lots of parts you can't get locally. They ship from the US and pay all customs/brokerage fees but there's a minimum amount of €75 to get free shipping.

[level42]

Farnell doesn't have free shipping in The Netherlands the last time I checked...

[liquidx]

Farnell doesn't have free shipping in The Netherlands the last time I checked...

Indeed, you need to have a Farnell account.