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01-21-2019, 01:27 AM
Hi Guys
Mouser (TX) and Digikey (MN) both offer free shipping to Canada for orders over $100cdn. You can place your order in CDN$ and they charge HST, so everything is taken care of and the shipment simply arrives at your door via Fedex or UPS. Mouser and Digikey both ship quickly and support the products they sell. You can get everything except tubes and tube sockets from them
For tube sockets, I buy these direct from China, which is where CE Distribution and everyone else gets them from. If you want a North American rep, CE is good, but Canadians will have to pay HST and a handling charge for the border bribe.
Within Canada, Electrosonic USED TO BE a viable option. However, they have gone through some corporate changes and now behave quite unethically. Specifically, their site says online orders can get free shipping but when you try to place an order it is pending shipping charges. To make matters worse, they do a pre-authorisation on your CC of an amount much higher than what your order is for. For example, I placed an online order with them that should have been about $303cdn. A couple of days later I get a call from them saying my card has been declined. I ask them how much they were trying to authorise and they say $553. I can't believe it !! They say the "extra" is to cover unexpected shipping charges despite the fct shipping should be free on my order, so I tell them to cancel the order right away.
I was also placing n order with another company and their transaction did not go through. I look at my online banking and find that Electrosonic has now charged an amount of $330 to my card - not the $303 of the original order - and this AFTER I've told them to cancel the order. I call my bank and tell them what went on; they call Electrosonic while I'm on the phone with them; the ES person claims to have reversed the charges long ago but the bank says they see the charge was only reversed a minute ago. Since I can hear their conversation, I can also talk to both parties and suggest that ES's action violate privacy laws within Canada, that they have no right to know how much money I have above the order amount.
Anyway, I strongly recommend AGAINST using Electrosonic.
A friend of mine had been telling me about the great deals and price matches he got with ES, which is why I tried them again after about a decade of not using them. After my experience, my friend called his sales rep to ask about the excess authorisation amounts and decided not to use them after that. A sales guy called me later to try to plead their case but being both a CC merchant and card holder I know both sides of the way things should be conducted and could not see how they could justify their position.
As an aside, the CC I use is called a "travel card". It is actually a gateway card parents are supposed to get their kids, so the kids get used to pulling out the CC. It is loaded from your account, so it is your money you spend NOT the banks - so technically it is not a credit card, more like a debit card that has a visa or mastercard number. Do not confuse it with a visa-debit or MC-debit card, which are what you can do your ATM stuiff with but it defaults to CC function elsewhere (online or purchases). My card won't help you build a credit rating but neither can you get into trouble with it. I put funds into it seconds before I use it.
Mouser (TX) and Digikey (MN) both offer free shipping to Canada for orders over $100cdn. You can place your order in CDN$ and they charge HST, so everything is taken care of and the shipment simply arrives at your door via Fedex or UPS. Mouser and Digikey both ship quickly and support the products they sell. You can get everything except tubes and tube sockets from them
For tube sockets, I buy these direct from China, which is where CE Distribution and everyone else gets them from. If you want a North American rep, CE is good, but Canadians will have to pay HST and a handling charge for the border bribe.
Within Canada, Electrosonic USED TO BE a viable option. However, they have gone through some corporate changes and now behave quite unethically. Specifically, their site says online orders can get free shipping but when you try to place an order it is pending shipping charges. To make matters worse, they do a pre-authorisation on your CC of an amount much higher than what your order is for. For example, I placed an online order with them that should have been about $303cdn. A couple of days later I get a call from them saying my card has been declined. I ask them how much they were trying to authorise and they say $553. I can't believe it !! They say the "extra" is to cover unexpected shipping charges despite the fct shipping should be free on my order, so I tell them to cancel the order right away.
I was also placing n order with another company and their transaction did not go through. I look at my online banking and find that Electrosonic has now charged an amount of $330 to my card - not the $303 of the original order - and this AFTER I've told them to cancel the order. I call my bank and tell them what went on; they call Electrosonic while I'm on the phone with them; the ES person claims to have reversed the charges long ago but the bank says they see the charge was only reversed a minute ago. Since I can hear their conversation, I can also talk to both parties and suggest that ES's action violate privacy laws within Canada, that they have no right to know how much money I have above the order amount.
Anyway, I strongly recommend AGAINST using Electrosonic.
A friend of mine had been telling me about the great deals and price matches he got with ES, which is why I tried them again after about a decade of not using them. After my experience, my friend called his sales rep to ask about the excess authorisation amounts and decided not to use them after that. A sales guy called me later to try to plead their case but being both a CC merchant and card holder I know both sides of the way things should be conducted and could not see how they could justify their position.
As an aside, the CC I use is called a "travel card". It is actually a gateway card parents are supposed to get their kids, so the kids get used to pulling out the CC. It is loaded from your account, so it is your money you spend NOT the banks - so technically it is not a credit card, more like a debit card that has a visa or mastercard number. Do not confuse it with a visa-debit or MC-debit card, which are what you can do your ATM stuiff with but it defaults to CC function elsewhere (online or purchases). My card won't help you build a credit rating but neither can you get into trouble with it. I put funds into it seconds before I use it.
