Banzai Music

[Tobyk]

Anyone has experience with this German company? They seem to have a good selection of stuff, but my order hasn't been shipped more than one week later, and nobody's answering e-mail..

[bluebunny]

I used them a few times some years ago, but stopped.  They were persistently advertising items "in stock" that weren't.  Other folks have had happier experiences.

[Fancy Lime]

I've had similar experiences with them. Long(ish) wait time and slow response to emails but I always got what I ordered, even the hard to get parts, which is not always a given in times of fake transistors and chips flooding the market. Whenever I got impatient and called them on the phone during business hours, they were very helpful and responsive, though. I once had the case that they did not have a capacitor, which I ordered ten or so pieces of. I had forgotton about them, because they were not super important, just re-stocking the inventory. Three weeks later, I got some surprize caps in the mail. Postage must have been ten times of the value of the parts. They payed the postage, so I don't really care. This was one of those cases, that the Bunny mentiones, where the parts were listed as "in stock" but it turned out they weren't.

All in all, a good shop, especially for rare parts that you sometimes cannot get anywhere else in Europe, but they seem to be a bit understaffed and they need a better inventory management system.

[DrAlx]

I am in the UK, and have used them quite a lot over the years, but have experienced delays a couple of times in the past when parts are not in stock.
For my last order this year, some of the parts I ordered were not in stock and I knew that when I made the order.
I think the estimate on the website was that those parts would take 4 to 6 weeks to be in stock again.
The remainder of the order was shipped to me within a week, and I was told the remaining parts were on back-order and would be shipped as soon as they got them.  I did eventually get those parts without having to chase Banzai,  but I got them something like 3 months later, which is much later than the estimate given on the website.
So I think so long as the parts are in stock, or you are not in hurry for parts that are not in stock, they are a good option.

[Tobyk]

Thanks all. I got e-mails from them today, and my order has been shipped. So all good I guess, a bit understaffed prolly.

[MetalGuy]

I buy from them constantly 15 years now. Yes, sometimes they will ship after a week or so. It's a holiday time and some of the employees are on vacation so in this time of the year things are slow. Or they may be waiting for an item to arrive in the upcoming days.
Sometimes items listed in stock are not. They will ship them free of charge when available but you need them now not who knows when so when you order just put a note note for them not to ship incomplete order and to contact you for replacements.

[drdn0]

I've had some mixed experiences.

Shipping is absolutely atrocious - I've had stuff delivered from the US in the time it takes for them to even ship. I've even been posted a parts kit that was missing all the PCB's.

With that said, everything has eventually been shipped and sorted out. I think they're just understaffed/slow.

[Kevin Mitchell]

-Shipped the incorrect items and had to create my own return label - though I was refunded once customs accepted the package. I'm in the US, so it certainly held up my project.
-Replacement order was of fake chips and I was provided a "that can't be possible" answer while my prof was overwhelming. They told me their source, which I know for a fact are stamped differently than what they had provided to me - other suppliers used the same exact source/MFU for the last of the new-stock production.

Many hours spent investigating which ultimately enforced my suspicion. I was in the end issued a refund. They took the product page down but later put it back up. The chips are discontinued, so someone else will likely deal with the same runaround.

LM301AN. My project called for 35 of them. So you can imagine how upset I was when most functions were not operational and those that were could not be properly calibrated - the compensation cap values for the LM301AN did not work for the chips they had provided.

I've told this story a few times already.
They're not horrible, just a bit short on transparency. That seems to be a trend with our vendors lately.
*miss you, Steve*