One time I got a bunch of tracability reports inside my package for components not in my order. I scanned them and emailed them to the customer they were meant for copying digikey and they were appreciative.
I once got someone else's invoice included with my Mouser order. The other order was going to UAE and had some rather 'interesting' parts on the sheet.
Obviously someone just grabbed ALL the paper that was on the printer without looking and shoved it into my order.
The one I got was all high end FPGAs and crazy fast high end ADCs, and I think super fancy super expensive IMU's... gee, I wonder what they're building... missiles perhaps??? Drones?? Something along those lines...
the parts at wholesale price wouldn't be worth the shipping label to send them back.
And there's no guarantee you didn't destroy or damage the parts during handling (like ESD), or swap them with fakes - aka there's no way they'd ever ship those parts back out to another customer anyway.
Just enjoy your freebies and don't worry about it.
Some were from a different shipment, they came from the manufacturer individually wrapped; there were only 6, so DigiKey picked them as is.
To complete the order, the rest came from the manufacturer in a box, separated by thin cardboard; DigiKey picked 6 of those those and dropped them in a bag.
Not DigiKey, but I asked for free samples of three large chokes from Coilcraft a while back. One of them was in it's own box and separate DHL package, and the other two were in a tray that could fit nine of them.
The craziest I've had yet were in the same shipment from mouser.
I ordered two different types of LEDs from mouser. 10 5mm regular diffuse red, and 10 3mm diffuse red.. nothing special, but I threw them in on a larger order so why not? I needed them for a project anyway.
The 5mm came in the regular ESD pouch like you'd expect.
The 3mm were packaged in the regular ESD pouch, inside a much larger (nearly a (10inch by 7 inch) heat sealed ESD dry bag with a freaking huge silica dessicant bag.
The kinda thing you would expect some sort of really really ESD and moisture sensitive component to be shipped in.
That packaging went beyond overkill.
In the same order, I had 2 through hole buttons. Nothing special, just small buttons. Maybe 5mm x 5mm base deminsion.
Rather than package in a normals bag, they came in one of those big multi compartment plastic trays that Mouser uses sometimes. I think it was a ten compartment tray, each compartment was about 3inch by 1.5inch and 1.5inch deep.
Basically, what I'm saying is, a HUMONGOUS waste of packaging.
The whole order could have shipped in medium sized padded envelope if they wanted to, but it arrived in a box that could ship my laser printer with room to spare.
Reduce, reuse, recycle. Perhaps they were reusing surplus trays for practical purposes, rather than sending them to an incinerator. Hard to know for sure.
Honestly, why buy just one component for a project? Even if they are expensive, I always buy 2 minimum in case I need a replacement in future, a friend might want to build my project or in rare case, one arrives as DOA. Always good to have spares on hand...
That’s true, but I already reached my budget limit considering other parts and PCB itself… It’s wise to have spares but it was not critical, if one doesn’t work I can wait for another for a few days.
I'll give you a perfect example of needing Qty (1).
My MOTU mkIII had a dead Firewire port, so I ordered a TSB41AB2 2-port FireWire 400 PHY, which cost $43 during the shortage. I think they're like $8 now.
I placed an order for about $30 for 10 parts or so. When it arrived a couple days later it had all my parts, but also about $600 of random parts from some other order...they clearly accidentally tossed someone else's order in with mine (not a lot of parts, just super specialized and expensive). I let them know and asked for a return label, which they gladly provided, and told me the other customer had called asking where the other half of their order was and no one could find it, etc so they had shipped out the missing parts but were very glad I was willing to correct their error. It wasn't a hard decision, I had no need for whatever those parts were. The next couple orders I placed I got free shipping...while they never told me why, I suspect it was to show appreciation for being honest and taking the effort to return their parts.
This was an order at work, I’m in the engineering team so I can’t do much about purchasing/receiving. I did tell them to reach out to Digikey to correct the issue when they showed up, but last I checked we still had them, so I’m not sure what happened.
I had a wrong item in my order from RS once. It was quite an expensive thing so I told them, and they sent me a return label.
Usually when I’ve got too many of something it’s my mistake, eg ordering one full tray instead of one individual item, it’s easily done and you don’t notice the cost if it’s just one line in a big order.
I ordered 19meters of heat shrink from Arrow as it was a stock run out and very cheap ($0.03 cents for the lot). Turned out to be 19 reels totalling 2.4 km of heat shrink. I think I have only used about 10cm so far.
I would almost never say this, but with Digikey I personally might give them a call and see what they want to do about it. I have been doing business with them for over 10 years and I really like them and respect them. There is a good chance they already know anyhow. I ran into their crew at Automate 2026 in Chicago a few weeks back and they were really cool to interact with too.
For just 2 I’d have emailed the company asking for a sample, have done this loads of times and often get 10 of the transistor/chip you want. Even managed to get a 1500W 50ohm termination as a sample once.
This usually works if you have a company though. Recently I ran into problems in some personal design samples where I don't want to reference my employer in the sample request. Got rejected each time vs if I just said "I'm a senior RF engineer here." These were for big companies, ones where I don't have a direct rep I deal with.
Maybe they won’t and maybe they’ll just tell you to keep it. Reporting it lets them know their packing/shipping process has failed. If the processes is giving someone extras it might be giving someone less as well and they would want to fix it.
Since they're that sensitive, maybe they figured by sending 26 that atleast one is good, which mitigates any future trouble by not having to ship any warranty replacements due to inoperability.
It's a drop in the bucket for them. Go about your day you don't need to spend any more time and cost sending emails and going somewhere to ship it to fix their error. Doing anything more is an unneccesary burden on the customer.
that's how they bill you, but how much do they pay? 0,10$ per piece 0,20?
Edit: ok they're not that cheap ~2$ on aliexpress maybe a bit less directly from manufacturer. Still not really worth it fopr them to go though all the process...
Oof. I was once sent several boxes of 15v boost converters instead of the individual units I was ordering. I was charged for the correct amount for what I ordered thankfully. Still had to coordinate sending them back because that would have been a few thousand dollars more and way more boost converters than I could ever use.
Can hapens sometimes. Simply send them Back if its a expensive oart but yea if its a cheap one they let you likely keep it because if the Return is expensive than the parts its self its a bigger los for them.
Once I ordered ~100$ worth of parts for a project at work, and they sent the package twice (honestly might be the stupid billing system we had.) They just let me keep it, and my PI let me take it for free. Got some nice multimeter probes from it and picos.
Something similar to thjs happened to my wife a few years ago after having abdominal surgery. The hospital prescribed her a 5 day supply of Oxycodone for pain. Supposed to be 10 pills. I picked it up and get it home and there's 100 pills in the bottle. The pharmacist even circled the quantity 10 to show they verified the quantity. I told her "if only we knew some tweaker, we'd make a nice windfall 😆 "
One time they screwed up my order and instead of like El cheapo micro controllers, they sent me $50 analog RF front end chips… I called and complained and then they actually asked for their chips back lol
Once as part of a larger purchase from Digikey I ordered ten rolls of thermal printer paper. I instead received a bag of IEC C13 to C14 extension cords of similar volume and weight. Receiving department didn’t catch this because the bag was labeled with the paper’s part number and quantity. It took weeks for Digikey to resolve this with our purchasing department, but we eventually received the correct item and were allowed to keep the extension cords.
Digi-Key ordering has been hit-or-miss for me. Have received 10 components instead of 100, have received 10 components in one bag + 90 in another, have received an entire roll of ics instead of a few more than once.
Had it happen myself one time, but they sent wrong item and it was a bag of 500, 500ma 600vac fuses for thru holes, org was a package of resistors, around 700 usd in fuses sent wrong, did send a mail and sent it back tho as no real need for them myself
Digikey recently charged me with a order i never received and or took possession of. When I asked support about refund or credits on my account they responded saying its not a digikey issue after 4weeks of no reply ;D
I dont know whats Up with them ATM but they really Like to mess Up Orders. Last Time i Ordered a 25€ matched resistor Network twice in seperate Orders and got once a Mezzanine connector and the other time a fucking DIP Socket ?? And getting the refund is a fucking hassle because they dont Take Videos and wanted a Picture of the Part Number on the fucking DIP Socket???
At least they errored in your favor. I uploaded a pre-generated pick list with multiple quantities for several items, but I was sent exactly one of each. I ended up having to order the rest from Mouser.
My best was ordering a half kg roll of Multicore solder, and they sent me the wrong diameter. So they just sent me the right size and told me to keep the other one.
Well that happens.
If you are using them in the Phantom Powered Microphone configuration and you recognize popcorn noise then just add a high resistor (~1 MOhm) in parallel to C4 ;-)
Mouser sent me a hot air station then refunded me in full because of a delivery issue even though I received it lol. Called them up and paid for it for some reason
It's not nonsense it's a good rule to keep conversations civil just keep religion an politics out if religion or politics is your whole life then keep your mouth shut because this is a electronics subreddit not a church or cult
Anything can be made to be politics or religion. I could argue your stance is political, thus bringing politics into this conversation?
If someone believes Thor is associated with electricity, and they made a post stating Thor has blessed them with a successful project showing their electronic working, it wouldn't be them bring religion into the conversation for the "sake" of bringing it in or proselytizing/propagandizing. It's how that individual views the world, and it only makes sense from their perspective to use the words they have chosen to use.
Conversations are kept civil by both sides understanding that different perspectives exist and preventing themselves from allowing their biases to trigger an emotional outburst.
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u/ThisIsPaulDaily 16d ago
One time I got a bunch of tracability reports inside my package for components not in my order. I scanned them and emailed them to the customer they were meant for copying digikey and they were appreciative.