Arrow Electronics
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Buggy website, better use BOM, UNRELIABLE ship/delivery dates
UPDATE #2, February 2, 2024.: Unfortunately, I have to confirm the negative experiences here. Half of my items have arrived within a few days, but the other half was postponed TWICE. I expected the rest of the items to be shipped yesterday, and I have yet to see it happen. However, many items, especially the most needed ones, have been postponed TWO YEARS from now!!! I have a better chance getting something from AliExpress within promised timeframe, so I will stay away from Arrow.com from now on. Their supply chain is totally unreliable. (UPDATED REVIEW for January 25, 2024 - After my initial bad experience with the site's bugs, I gave it the lowest rating, but the quick and helpful Live Chat support staff helped turn it around, so I am giving it a 4-star rating for now until my order is delivered. Be warned: it's a lengthy review below!) After contacting Arrow support via their Live Chat, I was told to try Chrome in Incognito mode and to use their BOM (Bill Of Materials) tool, which I did. Incognito mode worked for some time and eventually started having the same problems, so I went back to using Opera for their site. The BOM tool was very useful because my list of items was saved even after encountering issues with their site. I figured out what the main issues are with their site: 1. A user is logged in for a limited time, and gets automatically signed out after a certain (relatively short) amount time has passed since login, apparently even if the user was actively browsing their site. There is no option to change that length of time or prevent an automatic logout, except pressing a pop-up button which comes after some time, but if the user is using another tab at that time, they will not see it. 2. Apparently their site is hosted on slower connections and servers and they use stricter rules to prevent DDOS attacks which will also block a user for refreshing a BOM list more than once every couple minutes, which happened to me twice and I was refused a connection to their site for a few minutes. I have also realized that Arrow is pooling a few of their warehouses over the world through their site when displaying available products, which adds some delay and possibly causes some of the bugs with their website. (If you are taking a long time, like a few hours to a few days, to add your items to the cart and purchase them, some of them could be gone by the time you want to order, especially if there was a small quantity left and the price was greatly reduced - it happened to me with at least one item, and this is nothing unusual.) After I submitted the order, the page was left hanging, telling me to wait, and nothing changed even after 10 minutes. I first checked my online banking to see if the charge went through and it did. Then I checked my Order History on Arrow from another tab, and my order was listed there, which means it went through. I had to check those things so that I don't re-submit the order and get charged twice. After that I closed the order tab, and now I'm waiting for delivery in a few days. The items will be sent from three different countries, yet shipping was listed as free (for orders totalling $50 or more). The main thing is to not accidentally click on some of the other shipping options for which there is a charge. (OLD COMMENT BELOW for January 22, 2024.:) I had been adding components to my Arrow account cart for 3 days. During that time, I had constant issues with their website, which would become unavailable, unreachable, unresponsive or would deny me access. I thought maybe my Chrome browser was the problem, so I tried Firefox. Same problems. Then I tried Opera browser, which seemed to work a bit better at the beginning, then the same or similar issues. After adding almost 60 components, Opera browser finally couldn't even open their site, kept getting refused. Now I can't even login through Opera, keep getting errors. Then I managed to login with the Chrome browser, only to find out all of the items in my cart are gone and the cart is empty. Considering how much time I had wasted due to their slow and problematic website, I am not willing to go through the same drama again. The main reason I tried buying from Arrow Electronics was their free shipping to my country, while DigiKey offers flat shipping rate of $120, Mouser offers no options for delivery, and TME charges a decent fee of around 9 euros but their stock is much smaller. Looks like I will have to avoid Arrow.com. After having these issues, I decided to check its ratings and sure enough my suspicions were confirmed. I am glad that I at least didn't waste money and more time with them.