To Make a Long Story Short:

• Mouser is a versatile supplier for Electronics parts, With a nice interface to quickly find the parts you need.
• Unlike Digi-key (another popular supplier), orders that are more than 100$ get free shipping via DHL and FedEx to Egypt.
• shipping is fast( takes about 5 days from submitting your order).
• The additional cost (customs fees, clearance,..) totals to about 35% of the order cost.
• Shipping from Mouser is cheaper and offers more flexibility than shopping from Egypt.

 

The Long Story:

The story starts with my new project, though I have done a project before in which I needed parts from outside Egypt, one of my mates was responsible for the shopping of parts, he bought the required ICs from China, I didn’t actually know how exactly the process goes.

At first, I started shopping at Digi-Key, I know they have a great interface, I  noticed an Ad that says free shipping for orders more than 100$, GREAT! after uploading my bill of material, I found that the deal is exclusive to certain countries and Egypt is not one of them, the shipping cost for Egypt was 75$ as shown below, after adding the taxes this becomes not very convincing!

This got me wondering, what makes Egypt excluded? I tried different countries like Israel for example, I found that the shipping cost is 20$ or something close, no idea why this is the case!

I started to see what other options are there, I already have a BOM with specific parts, I searched for some Chinese suppliers and didn’t found all the parts I need! Ugh!

I thought maybe the reason for the 75$ shipping cost at Digi-Key is the distance from the USA to Egypt, for some reason I thought that mouser is German-based (this isn’t actually the case, but it was for my own good),  maybe they have a better offer.

At mouser I found the shipping cost at first to be 20$, the after I uploaded my BOM which total cost exceeds 100$, the shipping cost for the DHL and FedEx options became ZERO! GREAT!

I continued with DHL and proceed to check out, I already had an account with details of my address and phone number, and used my debit card for payment, and completed the order.

Mouser sent me a couple of emails to notify me that the order has been submitted and gave me a link to view the order status, they also told that as soon as they are ready to ship they will notify me with an email.

This mail came the next day with an added receipt and a link to track my shipment on DHL website, all these data also exist on your mouser account.

Following “online Tracking Service” which is just DHL website and your WBA / Tracking Number entered, you can view your shipment status, as they say on the website it takes a couple of hours for the first updates to appear.

I was surprised to find that the order actually ships from the USA! not Germany, this is the point I discovered that mouser is an American company, Nonetheless, the order tracking looks like this:

It’s better to sign up for the shipment notification using your mail, this will keep you updated.

The ship traveled from the USA to London, then to Egypt, and finally, it was ready to ship inside Egypt.

For some reason, they couldn’t find my address and phone number to contact me and I found an update ( as above) says “Adress information needed; contact DHL”, I called their customer service in Egypt which is 16345, and the guy told me they don’t have any data for my phone number, don’t know why! I entered it on Mouser. I asked him if I could get the shipment from one of their logistics, up to this point I have expected to get the ship at home which is a bit inconvenient as I would be at work and so, the guy told me yeah, it is possible and asked me to send them an email with some details, he told me about the the ship total due, which was within the expected (about 35% of the order cost) amazingly enough this is still a huge safe.

This is great, For one I can buy anything I want, not just what exists here in Egypt stores and for about 0.5 to 0.75 of the retail price in Egypt!

For example; the below product retails here at Egypt about 475 EGP, the same product costs $14.36 at mouser, so If you make an order for more than 100$, you will get the board for 14.36*1.35(adding the customs)* USD2EGP( about 16.6) = 320 EGP which is 0.67 in this particular case!

I received the packet from one of HDL logistics, it didn’t take much time, I paid the customs fees, signed some paperwork and that was it. I was surprised by how big the Mouser box is! I expected something small, other than that the packing was very good and every item on my BOM has a separate little case with a label identifying it.