RS is in my top 5 most respected brands, so of course I thoroughly recommend them.
Their massive catalogue of extremely high quality stock is truly a wish list for engineers.
Fortunately it's quite difficult for me to get to the trade counter, else I'd spend all my wages there and be a lot poorer than I am. In fact I used to spend all my wages there nearly every Friday afternoon.
Traditionally a product-led organisation (with only high quality products) built up from supplying radio parts to pre-war Britons, RS has become a more service-driven company. And what service standards they have! They stock nearly anything an electronics engineer (and many other engineering disciplines) would need. If they are out of stock, they'll generally have it in for the next day, before 10am. Their website has a huge database of datasheets on the products they carry. If the datasheets don;t answer a customer's query there are teams of engineers who will give product information on the telephone.
Delivery is usually by next day if ordered on their website or by telephone or collect immediately at the trade counter.
Their paper catalogues are hefty tomes and they also have a very intuitive and omprehensive online catalogue as well as a CD catalogue.
I find there being a trade counter very useful for books, components which I would be bettier seeing in front of me rather than in a catalogue or website and most of all for buying equipment of higher value such as test instrumentation. It's always good to get some people contact if one is working with machines all day and it's good to get contact with professional helpful trade counter staff who'll furnish you with the right product for your needs.
They accept card payments at the trade counter and online, invoicing is clear and if web ordered shipments are trackable. It's also possible to select from a choice of couriers when web ordering which is handy for me, if I'm not in to receive a delivery I'm near the royal mail collection centre.
If an order is around £500 (I could easily spend that ... 5000 .... 50000 in RS, I'm like a kid in a toyshop there) they can price flexibly.
The web team is responsive too, I've suggested website ideas to them and they've taken them on board. They have also taken product suggestions on board too, of course for high quality products in this case my favourite brand of high capacity Nickel metal Hydride rechargeable batteries. The move towards online ordering rather than paper catalogues I suppose means thay can be more responsive like that. read more
