Also, it is painful to wait for these packages from China. Digikey ships same day and its at your door step in the morning (I overnight it) and if you use $7, it is usually 2-3 days.
Plus, you're supporting legit businesses and not the shenzhen market.
I can understand total hobbyist who cannot afford $7 shipping often. But even then, you can bundle all your parts and order once.
Any engineer who earns a salary can afford $7 shipping. If you're a business, there is absolutely no excuse to penny pinch here. You're losing money by using unreliable parts, if not now, at some point in the future.
I fall for this trap every. single. time.
_HOURS_ spent racking my brain to think of all the things I might need in different scenarios, so I can be absolutely, positively, 100% sure that I have everything in that one single order.
... and end up placing 2 to 3 more orders before the project is done.
Most of these sites offer free shipping to trade accounts with no MOQ as well.
But also you want that customer service as a business. Mouser once sent me a replacement camera at work (university) because they supplied one with the wrong interface. No doubt we have a big order book, but I've had similar experiences with RS as a hobbyist customer - ordered tools which are not up to scratch or slightly out of tolerance - "just keep it, we'll send a replacement".
Or, like me, pretty much go "Meh, its counterfeits all the way down!" and frequently tack on a buck or twos worth of other "That's interesting looking, I might want one of those one day, I'll grab a few on this order" stuff when you're buying things you need for a current (hobby grade) project, so you've got a few boxes full of (hopefully sufficiently well enough labelled and documented" junk on-hand for the next random project idea... I bet I have a dozen or so "DS18b20"s here from that approach. I _think_ I could probably find then in under 10 minutes if I had an idea that needed one right now. Maybe... (Actually, I do have that idea. I want to put temp logging on a little LiPo battery that sits under a small solar panel to run an ESP32. I _think_ it's probably failing early because the whole thing gets too hot in the du5rect sunlight. Logging will confirm/deny that, and let me measure changes with insulation and/or fan cooling. Maybe I'll go hunt for one tonight...)
Now it feels like I'm paying some kind of tax.
I do have ethical qualms about supporting/funding "stolen IP", but then I've kinda got ethical qualms about the whole concept of IP anyway, and if you wanted to go hardline on IP compliance you'd probably have to avoid everything out of China (and everything that contains components out of China)... I wonder how often Apple get counterfeit components slipping through on Foxconn production lines, and how much effort they put into stopping it beyond extensive QA - which only ensures any counterfeits that make it through need to be close-enough to functionally equivalent to pass all the tests? The "test after" approach kinda pushes towards more IP infringement rather than less, since it's likely parts built from stolen designs would pass more often that parts reimplemented according to the spec?
Going further, if I'm in Germany, and order from a local place (e.g. a local ebay seller), I pay like $0.80 for postage on a delivery.
If I order from a reputable store... it's like 2 weeks waiting time with $15 on delivery.
In the past there used to be small stores everywhere selling every tiny part, but nowadays...
It didn't used to be that way -- mail order suppliers used to charge high fake "Shipping & Handling" fees.
That's why Amazon introduced 'free' shipping.
