In praise of Maplin

Never thought about it before but the thread

They don't make 'em like this anymore

made me think that on quite a few Saturday mornings I have trekked off to a local Maplin (do I need an excuse to ride my motorcycle?) to get a resistor, pot, capacitor etc..

OK they are a bit pricey (for parts, the fun 'tat' is reasonable and too tempting at times, why have I got a multimessage flashing LED badge?) but there when you want the bit, weekend not wasted. All the stores I have gone to (the better the weather, the longer the ride, been to a few) have a parts section at the back. I wonder how many prospective engineers started with a Maplin kit?

Never met unhelpful staff, if they don't know they find someone who does*, you can't ask for more.

*It was me once, new chap didn't have a clue (willing to learn, that's half the battle), spent a happy 40 minutes explaining components, he even made me a cup of coffee. BTW spent a quid on a couple on capacitors.

[Phil G4SPZ]

I second that. Maplin also do some good and inexpensive kits. I've built several of their 1 watt and 7 watt amplifiers and been very pleased with them. It's also the only place where you can still browse a range of project cases, battery holders and so on.

[Malcolm G6ANZ]

Most of the time they're ok. I tried to buy four caps of a certain value 0.01uF I think, and they only had two in stock. Explanation was that there was not much call for them and if I wanted more then I would have to go on line. Tis has happened several times, only keeping a couple of components in stock.

Malcolm

[Bazz4CQJ]

In so many places, Maplin are both the best and the worst of suppliers, viz the only supplier. Component stocks of 2 seem common. Just occasionally, their bargain bins can offer a nice surprise.

B

[fetteler]

Yeah, I agree with this, in a world where the only supplier is (regrettably) Maplin, then by default the best supplier is, well, Maplin!!
Sadly the world being reduced to this state

Steve.

[Oldcodger]

Sadly Maplin is reducing what it sells, possibly due to demand. I've found the staff really helpful and if I wanted more than in store stock ,would let me pay in store for quantity I wanted, and order from central stock, to be delivered FOC -at the same time making a complaint on held stock levels. How that stacks up today ,I don't know,as last time I wanted more than thy held in stock, the answer was to look for bargain bags which contained the remaining items. Staff levels- again the problem is changing staff levels. IO've usually found at least one ( usually senior member) with at least HNC/D quals, and the rest just there for a job, but are these blokes just there in their GAP year, OR IN A CAREER PATH?

[music-centre]

Our local Maplin store will still supply from their central warehouse if the store doesn't have enough stock of an item - a friend of mine went in for 2 diodes a couple of weeks ago, they had 1 in stock and the other was posted to him!
They cant have made much out of that sale, you would think it would be cheaper for them to keep a decent stock of such a cheap item.
Steve.

[bobreel]

My local Maplins staff have also been very helpful and knowledgeable and I cannot fault them. However, let us not forget that Maplins was one of those stores who didn't pass on the VAT cut in 2009.
Bob.

[threeseven]

Must say I've found them below par in my area. The staff seem more interested in gossip than serving customers and I've been met with an offhand attitude when collecting prepaid, collect in store orders. I only use them as a last resort now. I did hear recently that they were in financial trouble.

[AC/HL]

Bearing in mind the current situation on the proverbial High Street, we're lucky to have anywhere at all to shop. We can lament the passing of the hobby shops, but we're a small audience now.
It'll be Internet or nothing eventually, use them while you still can.

use them while you still can

And use them anyway, they may survive. On a brighter note, model shops (static, rail, floating and airborne) seem to be flourishing as do craft ones. Shows that people still want to make stuff, beats the telly any day.

[dave walsh]

I agree with Merlin's observation but it can be hard work. The branch in Eastbourne supply any item out of stock by post free of charge but I fear the worst overall . It 's possible that electronic component re-cycling may become an esoteric fine art in the future where cannibalism or "make do and mend" are even more of a norm!

A few years ago, I visited an outlet in Greater Manchester where the staff were friendly enough but didn't seem aware of the different types of switch-cleaner realistically though, why would they?

I got my spray can and at the check out they only eye contact came when I was asked if I was over eighteen? I'm many decades past that and said [joking] What do you think? In the absence of being taught or having the wit to just say "I'm sorry Sir but I really have to ask this" I got a surly defensive response [implying it was all my fault] about having to do what it said on the till screen in case I was a solvent sniffer. I actually felt very sorry for the young person

Dave W

[high_vacuum_house]

Maplin here in Rugby can be very hit and miss on what they have. It's only a small shop and things like stocking project boxes they only have them up to just over matchbox size. On individual components they rarely have more than 2 of any item which is great if you want to make a bridge rectifier !!!

Luckily they have a decent range of logic IC's but a very poor selection of capacitors.
Christopher Capener

[G6Tanuki]

My nearest Maplin [Greenbridge, Swindon] is rather hit-and-miss regarding small-parts availability. You don't roll up at the parts-counter at the rear of the store and expect them to provide ten each of 10/22/33/47KOhm 2-Watt resistors when you need to replenish your stock and you've got on the bench a receiver needing a gone-way-high screen-grid feed resistor replacing.

They might have 1 or 2 such in stock. But the people there are friendly and competent and had the smarts to redirect me to the 'telecoms' racks when I was looking for a specific BT-phone-outlet-to-RJ45 adaptor. They also pointed out that the Gigabyte PC-bits I was asking for were currently available as part of a package-deal [so I got what amounted to a free 8Gb of RAM].

Generally, if you treat the sales-staff with interest and understanding, I find they'll reciprocate in a friendly and constructive way. I *nearly* managed to get one of them to sign up to an amateur-radio 'foundation' licence course!

[Station X]

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