RS components

[Morris]

Very diverse now. Maintenance solutions, stock control (they will hold and supply), calibration services, automation control equipment, electrical control equipment and a whole host of other stuff.
They aim to be the company you turn to if you need to support your business.

Just to add, turnover hit 2 billion pounds per annum when I was there.

The parent company is Electrocomponents, they own Allied Electronics, Okdo, Needlers, Iesa, Synovos and Liscombe. They started aquiring these about a year before I retired.

 

[ronan]

They are the only ones i can see who stock bearings in imperial sizes in Dublin.

 

[mike os]

Rs price is rarely great, but is available next day with free delivery for account holders.
You can get a decent amount off orders over 400 notes online and I have had stuff shown as in stock the other side of Germany on my desk the next morning.

Given that the prices are ok i

 

[MetalMonkey]

Sometimes RS can be very competitive on price, but only on occasional items, so if you are after a bargain you have to shop around.

Where they excel is they have stock and ship quickly, they are really designed for the industrial and commercial sector where cost is not necessarily as important as consistency and availability.
If you work for a large company and have an account an PO system set up with them, it’s usually worth paying the extra to avoid having to fill out the paperwork to order from anybody else.

 

[Other Daniel]

Well, I was going to join in and sing their praises.
But, today, I received a v-belt ordered yesterday.
The order was for an XPZ 1010, they've sent an XPZ 950.

More down time ...

 

[Farside]

I used to enjoy popping into RS on my way back out of town. Quite a handy little shop outlet they had in N.London, where I could get just about anything I fancied. Their prices seemed ok back then, but after leaving the urban sprawl and moving here, I had to rely on mail-order sources and suddenly RS didn't seem so great.

 

[slim_boy_fat]

but they posted orders quickly and for free

And that's a consideration, living where you do.

 

[xmetal]

I have an account with RS, Farnell, CPC and a few others. I find delivery times from RS to be the best. I've had wrong items sent from Farnell before now. CPC are cheaper but haven't got as good a range and also have a minimum order for free delivery which is a pain. The last lot of components I ordered worked out cheaper from RS than Farnell.

 

[ukracer]

With the building boom here industrial companies and their suppliers are getting moved further and further out of Dublin. One of the few engineers suppliers left thats handy to get to, are RS components. Haven't used them in years, looking on their website, their prices seem a bit high. Are they or is it just me ?

IMHO their prices have always been high. BUT it's often the only place left other than eBay /Darnell. But if you want one offs and have an account you get free postage.
Just paid 11 quid for an ender3 hotend fan. But with the free postage it was comparable to eBay where you never know if it's really coming from China or Leicester. (Occasionally London)

 

[Munkul]

I find them very good on some stuff, not so good on others. Always worth pricing from them though.

The thing i don't like is that no effort has went into a lot of the cataloging of items - so the sorting ranges are usually way out.
For instance, say you search for bearing pullers, like I did this morning.
You select capacity, intending to search for a puller that suits 10-50mm bearings. You should be able to plug that into the capacity filter box, and it will return everything that has capacities between those ranges.
Instead, you get each individual pullers' range in a long drop down list - 3-6mm, 3.7-4.3mm, 5-60mm, and so on. Rendering the capacity filter utterly pointless.

That's one example, but it happens regularly to me when I'm trying to find something esoteric. The worst one for me is when they put a simple number in a spec box, but the units are different for each item

If they sorted that out, it would be a lot easier to find what you wanted and they'd probably get more sales.

 

[Morris]

The cataloguing drove us mad when I worked there. At one point it was impossible to find a 3 pin socket outlet because of the description! There was an internal system for reporting and correcting descriptions but it was hit and miss. Dairy pipe weld fittings were described as solder fittings, I reported them twice but to no effect.
Price of being a huge company I suppose.

 

[awemawson]

The RS catalogue used to be a very useful source of information - particularly for electronic components. Now often there is a 'hot link' to a generic set of data for the type but not of the specific item that you were looking at.

. . . .progress I'm told, but I'm also told that I'm old and grumpy !

 

[armalites]

Personally I like thumbing through a catalog for the type of things RS sell. Often you'll something you need that you would never have found doing an online search.

The service is excellent and think next day shipping runs up till 2000 and I love the fact it actually says exactly how many that have and when they are due if they don't have them. You also know they will stand by what they sell.

Sometime you have to look carefully because you'll see something that is 27p and realise you have to buy a pack of 1000 but if you keep scrolling you'll find packs of 10 at 42p each

 

[mtt.tr]

I find them very good on some stuff, not so good on others. Always worth pricing from them though.

The thing i don't like is that no effort has went into a lot of the cataloging of items - so the sorting ranges are usually way out.
For instance, say you search for bearing pullers, like I did this morning.
You select capacity, intending to search for a puller that suits 10-50mm bearings. You should be able to plug that into the capacity filter box, and it will return everything that has capacities between those ranges.
Instead, you get each individual pullers' range in a long drop down list - 3-6mm, 3.7-4.3mm, 5-60mm, and so on. Rendering the capacity filter utterly pointless.

That's one example, but it happens regularly to me when I'm trying to find something esoteric. The worst one for me is when they put a simple number in a spec box, but the units are different for each item

If they sorted that out, it would be a lot easier to find what you wanted and they'd probably get more sales.

For me where they really and truly fail on search is thermistors they leave out the resistance at 25c and don't list the coefficient chart.

 

[Mick Annick]

I find them very good on some stuff, not so good on others. Always worth pricing from them though.

The thing i don't like is that no effort has went into a lot of the cataloging of items - so the sorting ranges are usually way out.
For instance, say you search for bearing pullers, like I did this morning.
You select capacity, intending to search for a puller that suits 10-50mm bearings. You should be able to plug that into the capacity filter box, and it will return everything that has capacities between those ranges.
Instead, you get each individual pullers' range in a long drop down list - 3-6mm, 3.7-4.3mm, 5-60mm, and so on. Rendering the capacity filter utterly pointless.

That's one example, but it happens regularly to me when I'm trying to find something esoteric. The worst one for me is when they put a simple number in a spec box, but the units are different for each item

If they sorted that out, it would be a lot easier to find what you wanted and they'd probably get more sales.

Have you tried Kukko for a puller? I broke the tip on mine being a ham-fisted twit, new one sent same day from Germany on trust with an invoice, having never dealt with them direct before.