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Comment by hprotagonist | Hacker News Reader

digikey and mcmaster are wonderful things to know about.

at least in 2012 or so, digikey still had call centers in minnesota and the upper peninsula, and still taught all their call center reps the nato alphabet. There is nothing more crisply charming than a call operator who sounds like Bobby’s mom from Bobby’s World reading you back your resistor SKUs in flawless and rapid phonetic alphabet.

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Do you happen to know about a mcmaster equivalent for the EU?

RS components is good - I used them in HK and I think they serve EU as well. Not quite the same but pretty solid.

RS doesn't deign to even talk to people who don't have VAT IDs here :-(

It's a shame; as far as I can tell, the only reasonably-priced source for bulk machine screws that I've been able to find was Aliexpress/Alibaba (depending on quantities), and even that has gone to shit with the new import tax rules. (I'm not opposed to paying import taxes. I am opposed to paying a €20 processing fee in addition to €0.30 tax for €1.50 worth of stuff)

In France, they have a different website for the general public ( https://www.rs-particuliers.com ). Its search function is terrible: you basically have to look up the RS ID of whatever your are looking for on the pro site first. But you even have free shipping when ordering during the week-end.

Don't they have similar sites for other EU countries?

Thanks to your comment I just found https://www.rsonline-privat.de but the site doesn't seem to have free shipping during the weekend (at least now 1h before the end of Sunday).

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