[Lab] Adafruit Shipping

[Justin Hornosty]

jason.cobill at gmail.com writes:

>    Hey gang,
>
>    I have a shopping cart full of electronics at Adafruit that I want to
> buy, but the shipping rate gave me a bad case of sticker shock. (Nearly 33%
> of my purchase!)
>    I know a bunch of you are doing runs down to Ogdensberg (sp?) - are
> there other options? Does Adafruit have a good fully stocked Canadian
> distributor? Does Active re-sell their stuff?
>
>    I got nailed on an Amazon purchase recently (Books cost $12, Shipping
> was $48) and I'm getting fed up with UPS and their BS Canadian shipping
> rates.

I sadly avoid places like Adafruit, sparkfun, etc for this exact
reason. While back with a order from Sparkfun I ended up paying more than half the cost of my order on
shipping and duty.

In many cases you can avoid the duty by shipping via USPS (though not
always)

It sucks to say, but if you don't mind waiting are are just stocking up,
ordering from aliexpress/ebay or similar places is the way to go. Parts
are cheaper (though obviously some are counterfeit I personally have
never had a problem with any chips I have ordered - you can of
course find horror stories) Shipping times vary, I have some stuff
arrive in 2-3 weeks, on a few occasions more than a month.

If you're looking for a exact part (say a TLC5940 or some specific
resistor)
mouser or digikey is a good route. Both companies offer free shipping
and cover duty on orders over $200 (so if you know a few folks who need
stuff it's not too hard to get a $200 order)

One thing I like about mouser (and I think
digikey has it now) is 'shared projects' or 'shared carts' where you can
share a specific shopping cart with people, or make a project with all
the parts you need and duplicate it (like this guy did with
http://www.instructables.com/id/Perfboard-Hackduino-Arduino-compatible-circuit/
-
https://ca.mouser.com/ProjectManager/ProjectDetail.aspx?AccessID=20ea42b1c5
making it super easy to purchase all the parts)

I find shipping from digikey to be a bit more reasonable when not
getting $200 of stuff over mouser.