Re: Maplin stores
 

I went on holiday to Oz a few years ago and came back with quite a lot of electronic components, speaking to a guy Jaycar or Dick Smiths, can't remember which one, he thought that the electronic component suppliers had survived over there because at the time Australian citizens tended to do less online shopping than UK citizens. I have no idea if he was right but could explain the situation.

Dave

GW7ONS

Re: Maplin stores
 

I started to use Maplin way back in the 70's. Before Maplin started I used a couple of other shops. One was in Southchurch rd. close to the first Virgin record shop I think. The other was Bill Flemmings in Westborough Rd Westcliff. Oh and there was a semiconductor place, Bi-PrePack or something in West Rd near the junction of Victoria Ave. But I am afraid they have long gone and I have not been using Maplin so much now as the component stocks have diminished, but I will still be sorry if Maplin go.
That reminds me I have a voucher that I got for Christmas, I must go down to Maplin tomorrow and spend it.
Mike

Re: Maplin stores
 

Shadow, is an understatement. I am in process of a project, and I need a few ABS boxes- their range of Hammond look appealing at thir price. Then I find this lot are WEB ONLY. In the past, web only meant, order on line or in store and pick them up in store with no delivery charg. BUT NO. These days on line only means order on line and PAY to have them deivered to store/home( My ABS BOX WOULD COST CIRCA £1.5 , delivery was another £3, and in up to 7 days. RS prices, lower than cost + delivery, and available next day). Possibly stores get deliveries at least once a week. What is so wrong with Maplin saying for a low priced item, that order n line and we'll let you collect in shop, with no delivery charges, but it might be next week. Curry do it for low priced items. You depend on when they get a delivery of stock to shop, as to when item gets delivered.

Re: Maplin stores
 

Worth bearing in mind that for some time now, but not soon enough it seems, Maplin have been de-stocking and selling via an e-bay 'shop' which is a separate business strand with no connection with the shops or with their normal web-based business. I've just checked and presently they have more than 600 items listed, though nothing of interest to me. The site has a large banner across it emblazoned 'FINAL REDUCTIONS' but some items listed seem to be sky high, not bargain basement prices - the various Atlas testers for example.

To comply with forum rules I won't give the e-bay link, but the items offered include quite a lot of transformers including toroid, (what on earth were they doing stocking those?), ABS and die-cast Hammonds boxes, CCTV, home audio, electronic kits, 3-D printers & PLA. If that sort of stuff floats your boats it might be worth taking a peek. I guess a search for 'Maplin e-bay shop' should find it.

Not a good time to be buying considering recent events, so make sure you use a credit card not a debit card, or your money might go down the gurgler.

Re: Maplin stores
 

Just a point on credit card insurance to bear in mind. Insurance only covers £100-£30,000. Under £100 is chargeback territory and is at the discretion of the card provider. Sometimes they refund you and perform an investigation then charge it to you again later. I wouldn't poke that dead rat with a stick if I'm honest.

For ref, if you can stomach a couple of week's wait, another good Maplin alternative is Tayda. Got some stupidly good prices and quality items: https://www.taydaelectronics.com/ - They even buff the die cast enclosures for you if you want!

Re: Maplin stores
 

MrBungle, you've converted me to RS now, placed my first order last night, I wanted to get some decent capacitors for my Bush radiogram and seems RS stuff is all decent brands (not so with Maplin)

Up till now I've done a hybrid of online (ebay), with the odd maplin purchase. The final straw for me was I had visited my local store 3 times, between December and last week looking for tips for my antex iron, every time the shelves were just empty. One of many disappointments with them the last few years - I bought one on ebay instead.

It's no wonder theyre going bust, and good riddance frankly. Perhaps there isn't the same money in the industry, but If the stores were run and stocked well I might have more sympathy. In todays world with competition online, for any retail sectors the stores are the key, poor standards from chain stores just wont cut it anymore. Perhaps this is the forest fire that's needed to take out the dead wood

Re: Maplin stores
 

Just an anecdote to show how brilliant RS are in comparison. Last week I ran out of 600mW 100 ohm resistors so I headed over to their web site to buy some. Picked TE connectivity LR1F series as they are 50ppm quality, reliable ones which are milspec rated at 0.25W max power. Saw https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/throu...stors/1251155/ and you know, 82p including delivery for 20 quality resistors is good.

Went back later and typed in LR1F100R which is the TE part number and up popped this one: https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/throu...stors/1680192/ ... 1000 for £1.36 including delivery! So I thought, hey this might be a pricing error, better take advantage of that. That's two entire lifetime supplies of them. Ordered two boxes, because you know, overkill. Was charged for £2.72 as expected.

Two boxes of 4000 turned up 9am next morning via ParcelForce labelled also with 1000. So that's 8000 resistors for £2.72. I called them up and explained (call answered instantly by someone with clue) and they said they'd raise it internally and to keep them.

Attachment 157907

Now what to do with 8000 resistors. I've used 4.

If you're driving past Twickenham at any point, feel free to come and grab some for nothing :)

Re: Maplin stores
 

As a bit of a luddite - if I can go to a shop instead of buy on line I will do - you would have thought I'd be exactly the sort of person Maplin needed. But to me they became an irrelevence at least 10 years ago when I made up a shopping list of about a dozen components (I.C.s), went to the shop and found all but one were discontinued.

Over the years I popped in occasionally (whenever I went to Merry Hell, sorry, Merry Hill) but even if I was after something not discontinued it was seldom in stock, the only things in stock were the things I think of a Tandy's rejects.

So sorry for all those employed by Maplins - I think I read it is around 2000 people - but I think Maplins have reached the end of their story and it is time to close the book.:(

TTFN,
Jon

Re: Maplin stores
 

Sorry to hear that Maplin are going, but it is not surprising.

I do not feel that they were well run. In particular the components stocked were often very poorly selected, with needless duplications and needless stock holding.
As an example, they offered 1 amp silicon rectifier diodes in a wide selection of different PIV ratings But why ? the 1000 volt ones were so cheap that there was no need to stock the lower voltage items.
And as for 5mm LEDs, they had a vast selection despite the fact that almost any requirement for a 5mm LED could be met by a choice of just 2, in each colour. Brightest available, and cheapest available.

Add to that some wrongly described items such as "12 volt fluorescent tubes" Er no, the voltage is determined by the ballast, the tube is the same for 12 volts or for mains.

And what about the incandescent lamps marked "240 volts AC only" I wonder what would happen if I connected one to DC !

Or for that matter the "240 volts AC only" mains flex, this I used on 12 volts DC without ill effect :)

Re: Maplin stores
 

Eastbourne Mapilns has been very helpful and willing to get things brought in but not that knowledgeable and very expensive! Someone in Bolton Maplins once asked [reading from the till without looking up]"Are you over 18?" I was buying switch Cleaner and might sniff it. My jovial response ie "What do you think?" was met with indignation and it was all my fault from then on!! They've clearly not applied much commercial sense when expanding-fatal-you need a plan and an income stream to match!

OT perhaps but related. Hastings Pier is now up for sale after the local community saved it from extinction. RIBA award for it's minimalist design but nothing there to provide adequate income and maintain the on-going funding. Like Maplins, the commercial sector will sweep in and benefit from the previous investment and mistakes.

Dave W

Re: Maplin stores
 

The remaining big electrical chain is just as guilty of this, indeed I think you can go as high as £50-£60 pounds in there for an HDMI LEAD. If you don't opt for the 'Premium gold-plated, digital compatible' nonsense offering you're probably still looking at £11-£18 for a 'normal' one.

Poundshop - type shops are good walk-in sources for reasonably priced AV cables of most types, with one significant exception - none of them seem to stock optical audio cables, so if you want one right now you really do have to pay the exorbitant prices asked by Maplin or that other lot. If you can wait a few days, you'll get one in the post for about one quarter to one third of the high street price.

Re: Maplin stores
 

I thought I'd lay in a small stock of their op amp preamplifier board kits while they still have some. Very useful for all sorts of applications, use a bit of lateral thinking and some judicious alteration or addition of resistors and capacitors, and you can pretty much lash up any audio preamp needing an op amp. I even worked out just now how to build a nice 2 stage RIAA preamp using 2 stereo boards. It saves me from fiddling around with veroboard or having to make my own PCBs.
There,s still a few available online but the whole range seems to have disappeared from the main online menu. You have to do some crafty searching using keywords.
I am very disappointed as the local store was handy for getting odd bits i needed in a hurry, stuff like RCA plugs, odd lengths of wire etc etc.
It's a sign of the times I am afraid, there's not much of an electronics or radio hobby scene any more and it saddens me when I realise just how plain dumb the average person seems to be these days. Not their fault, something went very wrong in the basic primary and secondary education system at some point after I left school, but I come across people who aren't even capable of connecting up a source component to an amplifier and speakers downstream of said amplifier far too often these days.
Oh well rant over, at least RS Online is still around.

Andy.

Re: Maplin stores
 

I'll miss Maplin, for all they were much better 25 years ago when they stocked a good range of components, did their own kits (some very interesting), etc.

I hate mail order. I find there is nothing worse than waiting in all day for a parcel to be delivered, not being able to do anything else as you can't stop it instantly when the parcel arrives. I therefore use RS for most of my components as I can collect from the trade counter. But then I have to put in the order and collect the next day as the items I want never seem to be in stock at the trade counter.

Maplin are useful for 3 things I find

1) If I need a common-ish connector, switch, etc in a hurry. There are half a dozen Maplin shops round here, one is likely to have it and I can collect it within an hour or so.

2) For boxes, knobs, etc where it is nice to see the actual item before buying it. Several times I've looked at the knobs in stock in a Maplin shop and decided 'that one'. Much harder for me to do from a catalogue photo and description.

3) For cable. They sell cable by the metre. OK, it's an expensive way to buy it, but while I can often justify buying a 50m or 100m reel from RS of cable I use a lot, I can't for cables that I only need a couple of metres of for a project and will probably not need again in the future.

Oh well....

A bigger problem, mentioned in this thread is that people these days don't generally make anything. I was lucky that my parents taught me that the greatest joy is having something that you made. It doesn't matter what it is -- an electronic project, a model steam engine, a clock, a painting, a photograph, a piece of fiction writing... It's the fact that you can say 'I made that'. People these days I guess never get to experience that and that is the biggest pity.

Re: Maplin stores
 

Instant gratification Tony.
People want everything by yesterday if not sooner, so I think there isn't the patience to take the time to create something.
That and the perception that nothing is meant to last, often becoming "Obsolete" before it is worn out.

Ho Hum

A.

Re: Maplin stores
 

In 5 years time there won't be any shops. Coffee shops everywhere and hot coffee is difficult to sell online. J.

Re: Maplin stores
 

That's what a hot line is for. Back on topic, I will (it will "go down the pan") miss Maplin a bit, just right for the Saturday project when you need a switch or knob and an excuse to go out on the motorcycle.

Re: Maplin stores
 

So sad to hear ,i was in the Preston branch on saturday buying a usb microphone for my lad and and some resistors plus a couple of mes 24v bulbs for a project that they had in stock that i couldn`t find anywhere else on the net , feel sorry for the staff who put in long hours for probably little pay. where are we to go while the wife looks round clothes shops ! Tim.

Re: Maplin stores
 

That's actually a valid point. I think the few times I've actually been in Maplin in the last decade or so are due to that occasion. I didn't buy anything though. I suppose I'll just stare at ebay instead on my phone.

Re: Maplin stores
 

Perfect waiting place!

Re: Maplin stores
 

I used to think of RS as not being interested in the small customer. But I've had occasion to get stuff there and been made welcome ( something that Maplin have forgotten about). As for carriage- I'm lucky as I've got a RS depot on my doorstep, but looking at their map- there's not a lot of locations thatb are that far away that it's more economical to order on line and colect at nearest depot. As mentioned in a previous post, the craze these days seems to be click & collect. Maplin seem to be of old school order on line and pay for the priviladge of having it delivered about a week later. My example ( previous post) was of ABS Hammond boxes. Maplin price = £1.6 (approx) ,with web only pricing meaning a delivery charge of £2.99, and wait of about a few days. Same item in RS, was about £3 , order on line and pick up tomorrow . No contest.