"*UPDATE
Received my order 6/9/07. Everything looked to good. I personally will not be ordering from them again because of the long wait. YMMV



Placed an order on 5/5/07. I didn't hear anything for a three days so I contacted them. They said one of my items was on back order and they would ship the order in two weeks. A couple of days later (5/14/07) I get a notice that my order has been shipped. After three weeks I contacted them to find out where my order was since the "tracking number" they sent has nothing to do with the shipping company (usps) and they said I should receive it in a week or so. After another week I email again asking where my order is. They say give it another week. It has now been well over a month since I placed the order and I just sent yet another email asking them to cancel and refund my order. We'll see what happens.

I wish I had done a little more research before ordering from them. I will never NEVER order another item from them EVER!"

"Very, VERY, unhappy.

Buyer beware!!

My order was 'entered' and money withdrawn from my account about 2 days after my order was placed online.

About a week later my bank contacted me that there were suspected fraudulent charges appearing on my account. Sure enough there were several fraudulent charges, luckily my bank picked up on those and canceled the card. I mention this because I rarely use this charge card. I made this Futurlec purchase on the card (first use in months) and magically the account number is being used to make internet purchases starting 4 days after the Futurlec purchase ??

The bank caneled the card, but Futurlec had already taken money out.

2 weeks later I had not heard anything from Futurlec. No confirmation, order shipped notice, nothing ...

I decided to write the company. They replied that parts were on back order. I opted to cancel those parts from my order, and a few days later I received a shipping notice via email.

1 month later and several emails later ... I have still not received my order.

Futurlec's latest email to me claims that they have re-shipped my order (a second time.)

I have since contacted my bank to reverse all charges.

If I receive either order they claim to have sent, I will obviously contact my bank to remit payment back to Futurlec.

Futurlec's advertises a big inventory at low prices, but I am convinced this is a scam.

Buyer beware!!"

"Order has not been sent it's 2 days off a month.
You pay $15 to get the order in 4-7 days.
The only Email they responded to was when I asked to change my Email address. They responded in about 6 hours. So they see your mail but normally don't answer.All other correspondence goes unanswered. They may be cheaper but if you need the products in a hurry and are in Australia try someone else like Electus,RsComponents,Soanarplus.
They can frustrate you increase anxiety levels.
So if you are prepared to wait a long time then
use them but if you need products in a hurry forget them.
"

"I have placed 3 orders with Futurlec and they have gotten worse with every one. They have made
mistakes on all three orders and have left stuff out, but on the first couple of orders it wasn't
that bad and what they left out was only worth a couple cents so not worth the time. I placed my last order on Jan. 15 and they left out several items along with sending the wrong items, of which I am still trying to get resolved. As of this posting, I'm still having trouble getting them to respond to my emails. I have recommended them to people in the past but only because of their really low prices. I tell people if you have any trouble with your order you are screwwwwwwed and if I find someone with a better price I will drop them like a dirty &!ut. They usually will just subsitute something close to what you ordered if the item you ordered is out of stock, without asking you of course. I think they have managed to train a bunch of chimpanzees as their employees and maybe the poor stressed out overworked chimps don't know the difference between S-M-D, S-O-I-C, D-I-P, and 1-2-3. If you have trouble getting them to answer an email, I've found that if they don't answer, I can send them 10 copies of the same email and that gets their attention. I just sent them 7 copies today, I'll double it next time. When they do respond, they usually lie to try to cover themselves. But it usually gets the ball rolling. If anybody knows of a cheaper place to get electronics parts, please post it, so we can move on with our lives.

--Futurlec keeps your credit card information on record and if you repeat an order with the same login they will automatically bill that credit card without asking you. They don't even give you the option again on that account to enter in a different credit card. Nor do they say they will be billing that card. I thought that was illegal. If they are so unorganized with everything else, it can't be safe that they have so many credit cards on record. On my second order I found that out and I emailed them to tell them I wanted it charged to a different account. They emailed me back and told me if I wanted to use a different credit card I would have to start a new account with them. They charged the account I didn't want to use, even though I told them not to, and it ended up overdrafting my account. Now that's just wrong."

"Ordered from this place because they had the Atmel 128 AVR board for 1/3 as much as anywhere else. A friend recommended them to me. After reading the reviews here, I asked him about it and he said they were slow to respond, but cheap.
Everything worked great for me:
ordered 2/22
emailed 2/26 that order was shipped via USPS
received 3/5

I upgraded my shipping from the standard to expediated."

"This is a horrible company, bordering on fraud. I got suckered into ordering from them based on their prices and how well their website is laid out. First off they are not an international company as their "Contact" and "How to order" pages would lead you to believe. They are a single store located in Austrailia. The mail addresses in different countries that they give you do not belong to them. For example, when I Google'd the New York address I had mailed my payment to, the same street address and suite number showed up as belonging to several different software developers. They have no phone numbers to call.

I had placed a large order with them for the parts to build a D.I.Y. analog synthesizer. After two weeks I had not recieved an order confirmation email, so I emailed them asking if they had recieved my order. No response. After two more weeks of ignored emails I consulted with an attorney to discuss my options. I was advised to email them at least once more asking that the order be cancelled and my money refunded. Two days after I did this I received a single sentence response that my order was ready and would ship soon. I emailed them right back and told them "No, cancell that order and refund my money." No response again. Aproximately another week later I received an email telling me my order had shipped via USPS (from Austrailia!?) and was provided a tracking number that the Post Office told me was not any type of USPS code and didn't look like any type of courier tracking number. About another week more I did recieve my order and it was complete.

Unfortunately, I have begun building my project and have found that the components are sub-standard. This would explain why their prices are so cheap. The 1% metal-film resistors vary as much as 3% from their marked value which is unacceptable for this application. The electrolytic capacitors are over-rated for voltage handling and some have burnt out as a result. Because I cannot even build the circuits I have no idea if the IC's are any good or not."

"Ordered banana plugs. Upon receipt, they appear to be defective, as there is NO WAY to separate the insulator from the conductor for attachment of wiring. Multiple emails to company have been ignored."

"I can't seem to understand as to why this company doesn't give any effort to resolve customer issues. In my case it involves an order for a Silicon Chip magazine which they clearly posted in their website as the June 2006 issue. I included this magazine in my purchase because I wanted to build my own color tv pattern generator. I even asked their card processing supervisor to please ensure that my order is for the June 2006 issue. Well after a few weeks of waiting I finally got my package but the magazine inside was the April 2006 issue. I sent them an email in a not-so-friendly tone asking as to why this happened. No reply from their end. I sent them again an email asking them how we can rectify this problem. Still no reply."

"BOTTOM LINE: Don't order from Futurlec if you have any sort of near-term project timeline in mind. If price is the only object and you don't mind potentially waiting much longer for your parts than you would from Digikey or Mouser, Futurlec has the best prices on many componenets (but certainly not all) and a good selection.

MY EXPERIENCES: I found Futurlec via a message in a DIY audio electronics forum. The author stated that he'd ordered from Futurlec because of their low prices, but that they'd seriously messed up his order. However, he stated that they set things straight to his satisfaction, so I decided to give them a try.

In my first order, I ordered parts for two high quality class-A headphones amps (Dynalo's). In order to closely match the output transistor NPN/PNP pairs, I needed to order many to ensure that I'd get perfect matches on a sufficient number. Unfortunately, even though they were listed as SENT on the invoice, the 2SA1015's were not in the box and this made completion of the amps impossible. I emailed Futurlec and they said they'd send replacemnets. Some time later after still not received the parts, I emailed again and they claimed that the parts had shipped on 31 March. I finally received the parts on 17 April and the package was postmarked >14 April< not 31
March.

I thought this might have been an abberation, so I gave them another chance and placed an even larger order. When I placed my new order, all parts in the order were indicated as being IN STOCK (and, now that I think about it, I don't remember ever seeing any parts that were indicated as being OUT of stock!). Unfortunately, a week later, an order status query on their web site indicated that the order still hadn't shipped. I emailed them and they claimed that the order was on hold waiting for a part that would arrive that afternoon. Now, two days later, their web site still indicates that the order hasn't shipped.

Futurlec does respond to their emails, at least in my experience, but it looks like their reponses should be taken with a grain of salt."

"I've ordered from them several times now, and each order has been complete, well packaged, correctly charged, parts well labeled, and the components of good quality. However, the orders seem to take AT LEAST 3 weeks to arrive, sometimes more like 4-5 weeks. Sometimes they don't ship the box for a week or two, and they aren't great about telling you when there's a delay. Prices are great, selection so-so, but they are sssslllooooowwwwww."

"I've put in 2 orders to Futurlec without significant problems. As other reviewers have noted, they are slow and not very communicative--your order goes in and seems to sit there as "entered" when you check its status. Eventually it's sent (at least mine have been sent), though you might have to send them an email to get it to happen.

On the plus side they have some amazing prices, especially on basic components. If you want to stock up on resistors or capacitors, this place might be worth the risk. With resistors, especially, other places tend to have much higher prices and/or they force you to buy in ridiculous quantities to get a decent price. I'm not sure I'd recommend them for high-end components, but the stuff I've gotten from them so far has been fine.

Their shipping charges are more reasonable than most, especially for small orders. On the other hand, they charge your credit card in Australian dollars and so your credit card company will probably hit you with a currency exchange fee. This is because the credit card companies are greedy beyond belief, and isn't Futurlec's fault, though they also don't warn you about it like they should.

I expect to order from Futurlec again, hoping for the best.
"

"Total black hole. If things go well - well. If anything goes even slightly wrong - noone to contact. Phone no not listed anywhere, not on white pages, no reply to any emails sent. Like dealing with a brick wall."

"I have exactly the same problem as KKelly. Order placed, entered, not delivered. After a month I queried sales@futurlec and Alex said the order was ready apart from one item on back order, did I want delivery of what was available? I said yes, and why did he not tell me this a month ago. No reply after another two weeks, and still the website says the order has not been sent. No response to further emails. Have they gone belly-up?"

"I don't know what to think of them. I was thrilled when I saw their prices and how easy and nice their web-site was to use. They also have a very large stock.

So I placed an order on November 8th, 2005. A day or two later, it showed up on their site as "entered". My credit card was charged. After two weeks, I e-mailed them and asked if there were any problems since it never went past "entered". I didn't hear back. I waited a couple of more weeks, still nothing. I wrote another e-mail and said that if I didn't receive some message back in a week, that I would reverse the charge. Now here it is Dec. 7th and still nothing. I tried to find a phone number but couldn't. I wasn't even sure there really existed until I found this site. I was about to call and try to reverse the charge."

"I ordered about $35 of components in small quanities. Note: I plan to order again soon, as I
won a unpopulated PIC developers board on EBAY.
The board I won has a lot of different parts and I am impressed that futurlec appears to have them all. The prices are the best I have found for small quanities anywhere so far, the website pictures and information is good to excellent. Would be excellent except maybe 5% of items are missing important information. Example they say they have a large and small keypad but they don't give the dimensions for either. Usually they do with most things. The order I made was custom pulled, and I was informed as to my order being filled and shipped by email after one working day from making my order online. My order arrived by U.S. priority mail in california in 7 days exactly. I noticed the package postage was $6.80 but the flat rate postage charge I paid was $6.00 even. The order was exactly correct in content, nicely sperated/labeled components. So they rate near perfect with me so far. Anybody have a better components site for hobbiest quanities? Most I see have significant mininium order sizes, poor selections, poor websites, higher prices, they are oriented to large business customers and could care less about the hobbiest little guy."