On Mon, 2007-06-04 at 19:29 +0200, Rikard Bosnjakovic wrote:
> I sampled four different IC-types from National this weekend, all were
> some kind of motor interface-ICs. Today I got four mails (one per
> sampled IC-type) from National, all saying that they're sorry and they
> have to charge me a small shipping fee since I'm outside the US.
> 
> No problems with that, I thought, so I opened the four links where I
> could add my Visa-card etc. These "small" fees were, in order: $80.40,
> $73.40, $77.40, $66.20, making a total sum of $297.40 - which
> DEFINATELY is a "small fee", yessir!
> 
> Too bad, because I was a potential customer.

Hehe, National used to be forefront on the "parts I go to by default"
list because they had a great assortment of parts, and a REALLY good
sample system.

They then started limited their samples to people with "certain" email
addresses (basically they removed people with "generic" email addresses
like yahoo.com). That was fine for me, since I used a non generic
address.

They the limited addresses more, but gave no explanation as to which
were OK and which weren't. I was in school at the time, using my school
address, which they said should be fine, but wasn't. Tried using every
email address I had, none were "approved". So I dropped them. Haven't
been to their site since. 

It's a shame, their parts were pretty good, but their competitors have
"reasonable" sample programs, so why should I go with National? If they
make it that hard and expensive to get a few samples, how are they going
to be when you need a little support? I don't care to find out.

TTYL

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