Mouser - Beware!!!

[thermionic]

Hi,

Having ordered from Mouser without problem for several years, a few days ago I received an unwelcome telephone call, asking me if I wanted to buy a Meanwell power supply. I then started to wonder how they knew I'd used a Meanwell PSU... I worked out that the only time I've ever bought one was from Mouser, to try.

Then again, today, I received another - number withheld- call, offering me Meanwell PSUs. I asked the guy where they got my number from and he said Mouser.  My number is registered with TPS, so it may not be legal for them to have cold called me.

This has got me thinking: what other data of mine do they share with 3rd parties?

In 25+ yrs of buying from Farnell, RS, Maplin etc, I have never received a cold call directly from a distributor, after buying a part from said firm.

This creeps me out. Mouser is no cheaper than Farnell or Arrow, so I'll be doing everything I can to avoid them in future. Mouser's practice strikes me as morally dubious at best.

 

[Rochey]

Technically, all distributors have to report back to a manufacturer who they sold their products to. At least it's law. (worried about exporting products to dangerous countries etc).

At my employer, we get details of anyone and everyone who buys a product from a distributor. That doesn't mean we actually do anything with that data. It's not truly worth our time to call the guy who bought 10 parts from digikey

just pointing out, Mouser (as a US company) may simply be following the law. I'd be more miffed at meanwell.

 

[thermionic]

I just got a call from Mouser, so credit to them that they responded to my complaint promptly.  It transpires that they gave the details to their parent company, TTI.

Cold calling, under any circumstance, is an utterly crass sales technique. Slim pickings... It strikes me that TTI is the kind of monolithic bureaucracy, where they won't even realise that they've made an error in policy until it's cost them several million. A lot of small OEMs will be seriously peturbed at receiving cold calls in the manner I did. It will lose Mouser business as well.

Aside from that, it strikes me as a bizarre business model for a parent company to steal sales from companies it owns.

 

[Script]

Ugh! Good move to complain to Mouser.

 

[ruffrecords]

@Thermionic

Can I just get this straight - you are in the UK; did they phone you from the US or the UK?

Cheers

Ian

 

[JohnRoberts]

These days with VOIP spam phone calls are cheap and hard to prevent. (I am on a do not call list, doesn't have much teeth).

I don't have caller ID on my old hand set, so pick up a few spam calls every week. One guy even called me back to ask why I hung up on him. 

I am equally annoyed by computer tracking cookies, that spam me with ads for things I searched recently, often pushing ads at me on multiple forums. My only consolation is that the ads are relatively expensive, so they are wasting money.

JR

 

[thermionic]

I got called by TTI's UK division. On both occasions there was no caller ID. On both occasions the caller's manner seemed a little furtive, as if they were doing something a little shifty (well, poaching business from a company owned by the one you work for might feel a little odd?).

 

[Gus]

John
firefox
Noscript, amazing how many things are trying to run, You need to turn things on to see the pages correctly it can remember the web page settings
Adblock plus, there is even a YT version
HTTPS-Everywhere
Privacy badger, sometimes causes pages not to show correctly
Ghostery
Better Privacy

 

[JohnRoberts]

Actually I am getting used to it and it feels OK because I know they are wasting their ad money chasing me... for something I already bought, or didn't even plan to buy.
---------
The harder someone tries to sell me, even if i want it, the less likely I am to buy..(I have a contrary gene).  Back in the '80s when I bought my first mustang GT I drove my pinto station wagon to the dealer ship, and resisted the hard sell, even though I really wanted the mustang.  I got into my pinto and drove about a block away from the dealership, before I turned around and bought the GT on the spot, but there was not much comparison. The pinto, a yankee car, didn't even have air conditioning. The mustang GT was a much better red-neck car, far more appropriate for life in MS.

JR

 

[Script]

NET
- Get rid of Google et al search engines. I use "DuckDuckGo". It's amazing how it filters out ad URLs. Search result page is scarily naked (needs getting used to) and there's a marker directing user to "official website". This saves a lot of time per day.
- In Firefox: use "private window" (top left: Strg+Shift+P). It doesn't record history that way.
- Regularly clean web tmp folders using something radical like CCleaner.
- Use Adblock. There's a setting to allow scripts/cookies temporarily.
Internet looks much cleaner this way, though still too much bullshit for my taste. And yes, Adblock stops some sites from opening correctly. I'd say, the owners' fault

PHONE
- Complain to companies.
- Be impolite to caller.
- Say: "I know you have to call that many numbers per day. You just did, now go call the next one."
- Hang up on callers immediately and forget about it.
#

 

[ruffrecords]

Actually I am getting used to it and it feels OK because I know they are wasting their ad money chasing me... for something I already bought, or didn't even plan to buy.

Somewhere on the net there is an hilarious audio recording of a guy winding up a cold caller beautifully. The gist is the guy pretends to be a a detective  or an FBI agent who is investigating the death of the of the guy who has been called. He ends up  interrogating the cold caller and even gets is address. wish I had the link to that.

Cheers

ian

 

[audiomixer]

Or you can just ask them to hold for a second, lay the phone down and go on with your life.... freaks them out a ton!

- Michael

 

[ruffrecords]

I got called by TTI's UK division. On both occasions there was no caller ID. On both occasions the caller's manner seemed a little furtive, as if they were doing something a little shifty (well, poaching business from a company owned by the one you work for might feel a little odd?).

Looking at the TTI web site their MOQs are quite high; typically 100 and often 1000+. It is not unusual if you place an order for a largish quantity from a regular distributor to later get a call from the next tier up. If you are going to buy that sort of quantity on a regular basis then they are the sort of people you should be buying them from.

Cheers

Ian

 

[thermionic]

I got called by TTI's UK division. On both occasions there was no caller ID. On both occasions the caller's manner seemed a little furtive, as if they were doing something a little shifty (well, poaching business from a company owned by the one you work for might feel a little odd?).

Looking at the TTI web site their MOQs are quite high; typically 100 and often 1000+. It is not unusual if you place an order for a largish quantity from a regular distributor to later get a call from the next tier up. If you are going to buy that sort of quantity on a regular basis then they are the sort of people you should be buying them from.

Cheers

Ian

I bought one - fromMouser! And I got a call!

For parts that I use quantities on I always try to bypass Mouser / Farnell etc - where possible. In the case of the SMPS module I chose over the Meanwell I got to buy from the UK distro direct, so saved around £7 per module over Mouser or RS!

 

[bitman]

The probably MeantWell.

 

[thermionic]

It was Andy Peters who told me they SmokeWell

Thanks to Andy, that poor chap who called me lost a sale...