Over the past 6 months or so I've had increasing problems with shipments 
from Mouser.  I know from reading the list here that some other people have 
run into the same problem.  The difficulty is that even when ordering off 
their web page, even early in the day, the shipment often doesn't get sent 
out until the next day.  This occurs even when the web page says "order 
before X" and it will be shipped the same day.

Anyway, I needed to place an order and I noticed that the web page today 
said that their shipping department would be closed tomorrow.  That meant 
that if I encountered this problem, my shipment wouldn't go out until 
Monday.  So I thought I'd call them up and see if there was any way I could 
get them to get this going today.  That led to an interesting 
conversation.  Previously, I had thought that when you phoned them up to 
place an order, someone was sitting at their computer with basically the 
same interface that we see on the web.  That is, I was under the impression 
that it didn't matter which door you go in through.... it would all go to 
the same place.  It seems this is not the case.  All web orders go through 
Texas, when you order by phone it goes through their regional centers.  The 
person on the phone said that I could be assured of same day service by 
placing orders by phone rather than by web.  She said that phone service 
was always faster than web service with Mouser.  I almost had a sense that 
the phone operator was on commission, but I don't know whether that's the 
case or not.  The person I talked to at one point also said that she had 
never seen the web interface!

This seems to be particularly weird because handling these orders by phone 
must be more expensive than having customers enter them via the web.  I 
would think it was in the company's financial interest to direct as much of 
their business as possible to the web site.

Anyway, we'll see if it really does get out today.

John Hansen


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