German electronics webshop www.conrad.com ? I'd say: [AVOID]

Buy / Sell Budget Dealer Experiences
21

First mail to Conrad sent 5/18/2012.

After that, many “lost connections” in mail exchange.

11 days ago, after a long quiet period, I asked about how is the refund thing proceeding?
They told to give bank account data, 11 days but nothing.

I think I should contact VISA or Finnish consumer agency to get more instructions, this seems to be going nowhere and I have almost 100EUR lost already.
At the moment got not even the DOA product at hand and no money.

This has absolutely the worst customer care, they get mails, they send “automatic reply”, even give actual replies but nothing happens.
This is on par / worse than DX or DD.

PLEASE consider this making purchases OR make just purchases, that you are absolutely sure you WILL NOT NEED any CC.

22

In the end after exchanging e-mails and reminders (aparently the person you talk to changes in 48 hours) I have received my replacements and they agreed to send me another cable instead on refund me the shipping costs that I paid for the wrong items they sent.

23

I have ordered items from Conrad on several occasions some years ago.

The following is based on my dealings with Conrad as of several years ago. So their pricing and/or customer service may have changed since then.

Cons: Some items were a bit expensive

Shipping a bit expensive (to NZ)

Minimum order required (on some items)!

Pros: Good range of items

Fast to respond to emails

Prompt replacement of faulty items

24

I have had bad experience with Conrad.

I was looking for some pinion gears in sizes similar to ones used for RC models, but with a different gear pitch, and it appears they had in stock the ones I was looking for.

After some troublesome order placing and paying, I waited less than a week, and received the wrong gears: size was right but pitch was different. I emailed them about it and after some days they first answered that those were indeed the right gears, then I explained in another mail the difference in pitch between what they sent me and what I was looking for, and the evident discrepance between what they sent me and the site description, and they answered it was the same thing (which obviously is not!) and that if I was not happy with their product I should send it back and they would send me a coupon of same value for other purchase.

I wanted my money back, not the stupid coupon, and as a result they stopped replying to my email at all.

The value of those gears was small, so after a while I abandoned the whole thing.

Anyway this is my experience and warning: sometimes they have no clue of the specs of items they have in stock, and their customer service sucks big time!

:(

25

I only had good experiences with Conrad, but since I live in Germany, I usually just go to the local store, to “hunt” for new toys ;).

Are their products so special, that you can’t get them from a shop in your country? Saves a lot of time (and probably money, aswell).

26

I happen to live near one of their stores and I'm a regular customer. It is about the only source left for DIY electronics stuff here.

I avoid their online shop though, often I need only a few parts and the cost of shipping is just too high even here in Germany. They gave me a 5€ coupon for my birthday and it wasn't even enough to cover the shipping, so I said thanks, but no thanks.