Farnell UK Reviews 1,037

OK, havent used Farnell for a long time. Registered as a one shot, email only.
My items dispatched within an hour of ordering, received the next day via TNT.
What`s not to like, A1 transaction.

Once a great company, since Brexit? a complete mess!!

Orders take a lot of time (customs?)
Website slooowwwwww.
Customer service in India?, incomprehensible.

Such a shame

Sent Farnell 2 x orders. Paid for goods by pro-forma in May. Farnell failed to process either of the orders and now I need to prove I paid them. They even admitted that they "use a manual system for progressing orders and this isn't the best".
Never again

Ordered 2 timer plugs one was faulty, could maybe cause electrocution. All emails being ignored by farnell. Worst customer service ever. Avoid. I have now had to open a PayPal dispute in my own time to recover a refund

On the website they list as available equipment that turns out to be unavailable and causes a lot of time to be wasted waiting for purchases that will never arrive on time.

Obscene amount of plastic packaging.
This is a regular issue with Farnell, who clearly don't care at all about the environmental effect of plastic packaging.
On this occasion I ordered 1000 small connectors, these arrived bagged in lots of 10! yes, 100 plastic bags, where 1 would have done. Had this sort of thing from them many times before, where there is a huge amount of plastic used. Voiced this to their customer services who ignored the e-mail.

Farnell cancelled my order when it came into stock after it had been on "back order" for approximately 5 months. This was due to their PayPal authorization expiring, which they offered no opportunity to address.

Their suggested solution was to order again, however the new suggested delivery date is 11 months away. They refuse to honor my place in the queue.

The way Farnell cancelled the order was unacceptable and their suggested fix is wholly inappropriate.

When challenged on escalation and complaints procedures, none are provided.

It's telling that Farnell make no attempt to respond to customer feedback on TrustPilot, unlike other reputable brands.

Farnell are a very hard company to like.
From the peremptory telling off when you make an enquiry through the wrong chat window (PLEASE UTILIZE THE CORRECT WINDOW!) to the disinterested calls, I have never had a smooth time ordering.
A small £5 component was slapped with a £10 "handling charge".
Maybe I should charge them for wasting my time?

Expect pre-orders to be cancelled without notice.

I placed back orders for large numbers of Raspberry Pi computers for use in my business. Originally in March, with delivery estimated for November 2022 - I received the order confirmation, and even a phone call to check that the order was not a mistake.

Order then cancelled without ANY notification to me - reason put down as "customer restriction".

I then re-ordered in May - delivery estimated now for September 2022, so I placed an even bigger order.

Again, order confirmation received. But when I logged on to their site, I could see that the order was cancelled again. Phoned up customer services, was cut off several times as soon as they said "I just need to check this..." eventually spoke to someone who said latest order was cancelled "at customer request".

They promised to look into this as to why orders are being cancelled. I emailed a complaint also.

STILL NO RESPONSE

Now delivery estimate is another 554 days.

I assume someone working there is allocating pre-orders to friends and family instead and cancelling perfectly valid orders.

Complete lack of communication and respect is just not what you expect from a company which has been around for over 30 years.

Ordered parts online however received an e-mail saying it wasn't confirmed and the order was on hold. We called up to pay in the morning, our first call the line went dead whilst putting in card details, the second call they said our card wasn't working. We tried a different card, this didn't work either. We were instructed to e-mail credit control who told us to ring back up sales which we did and the same issue occured again, we then got put through to accounts, support and once again a sale member. I asked to speak to a manager but was told there wasn't one available. There are no issues with our cards as we've been using them this same day. We've been told to wait for someone to call us up and they will look into the problem further. Having spoken to 7 different people over the course of an entire day I don't think this is acceptable and this could've been sorted in a much shorter time frame.

Only bought from these guys for free next day delivery.
Gave instructions so the item could be left at my door on the Friday as I needed it on Saturday. No item left, just a slip from UPS with no details. Left a message for Farnell on their website to remind them to instruct their deliverer to leave the item at my door, also contacted UPS to remind them to leave the item at my door.
7 days later I have had no response and no trolley.

Terrible service from Farnell, sales assistance didn't wanted to assist me with a order because I didn't had a order number.
Do they always ask for order numbers if you don't have one!!

Ok so I used before to buy a micro switch which is tiny and fits in a small poly bag then on a reorder for 3 micro switches they added a handling charge of 10 uk ..in other words they took a tenner extra to put 3 tiny switches in an envelope...bring bill to 20 quid with vat ...got same ones on ebay x3 for 5.99 delivered ....won't use again ..basically a rip off...

In general, an okay company to deal with and one which i have used for many years.
I use them for small quantities of electronic components to make prototypes which i design.
They seem to fulfil my orders by shipping from various locations which always baffles me.
Shame there is no Trade Counter.
Had a couple of defective products from them. Duratool, which appears to be a CPC / Farnell own brand has some products of questionable quality !.

I also use RS Components and Digikey so I'm not wholly dependent on them.

Yesterday I ordered an item from Farnell, which I paid for during the ordering process. The payment was taken from my credit card. So, I paid for something, successfully, without hitch...

Today, I received a rather obnoxious and patronising email from "Andrew Cawood" at Farnell, informing me that as a first time customer....my order had been refused...(psst! I already PAID for it. You guys accepted the credit card payment which was taken off my card).

The reasons given were that:

a) I'm a first time customer (actually, I'm not. I have ordered from them before. But aren't ALL customers "first time customers" at some point?!!)

and b) That I was spending more than £150...

There was also a comment about them "only dealing with businesses"...well, I am actually a commercial entity but this is moot since they are selling to the public, have a website that allows the public to purchase from them, they take money from the public but then refuse to ship items that the public have purchased...this feels like a strong case for trading standards actually...

So...in essence, they don't recognise a return customer, they don't want new customers and they certainly don't want new customers who spend more than £150 with them. /facepalm

They then sent me another email asking me to wire transfer the money instead... It really felt as if I were being scammed by some guy claiming to be a Prince and could I just, ya know, wire him some money so that he could get access to his "millions of dollars, tied up in a trust fund".

The whole thing was ridiculous, outdated and rather amateurish, frankly. Further, it would have added another week on top of the order delivery and given me no comeback whatsoever if the order had arrived damaged, which smells distinctly like a company trying to circumvent consumer laws and protections. Which is exactly what they did by taking payment for something and then refusing to ship it.

Have successfully ordered from their competitor now, who - surprise, surprise - did NOT make a song and dance out of what was a simple sale / transaction. Item selected, paid for and dispatched all in less than 10 minutes, without messing around.

Digikey, bitsbox, mouser et al all stock the components that I need. In this case, I selected Farnell as it was the first company in the list that had the item I needed in stock, but there is clearly no good reason to choose Farnell again and when my credit card is refunded - which they had better do within the next 48 hours - I will close my account.

Ordered an Arduino Nano 33 IOT and it was promptly dispatched, arriving early the next morning. So far so good, until I opened the package!
The Arduino was sent in a flimsy envelope with minimal protection (small bubble bag liner). Since it was an envelope, it probably got jumped on and crushed by other boxes thrown on top. The Arduino box was crushed, the pins of the device bent, and the antenna bent and broken (terminals torn off the PCB pads). I emailed support as directed on the website and haven't received a reply!!

Bought a battery costing £15
They charged me 10 for delivery (normal one)
They added 4 for vat
Total 29
A huge box arrived for a small battery (a bit bigger than AA)

I ordered the wrong one (surprise surprise).
I send it back (I paid for the delivery 3pounds because I thought that I should use the original huge box) and guess what?
I refunded 17 back
They do not have a clue about customers service.
And I am sure they wondering why we support amazon.
I will never buy anything from them again.

Have not had a bad experience so far, quick and efficient service.

I'd leave zero stars but it doesn't allow that.

Be very careful before sending this crew your money.

I placed an order for £400 of stuff on the internet. Paid by card. Then, several hours later, got an email, with a pile of utter BS excuses, that they hadn't accepted the order, had placed it onto a new one expecting payment by bank transfer, and they would refund the card payment within 5 days. Hmmm.

Very poor service and totally useless customer service. I made an order two weeks ago and it was supposed to be next day delivery. Every day they were sending automated emails about delay with delivery. They did not respond to emails. I had to call their customer service which is not free and in fact was charged way above the normal rate. I was told that the order will be shipped that day or at latest the following day. Still one week passed and not even shipped. I will avoid ordering from Farnell whenever possible. I am getting orders from Mouser within 2 days despite them being shipped from USA.
Farnell used to be very reliable supplier but not anymore. Very sad.