Getting Ersa parts and supplies in North America - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: JoeBean
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: June 07, 2015, 03:07:19 pm
content: tldr; Use a reshipper like shipito.com and Google Chrome and order directly from ersa-shop.comAs some of you know, I bought an Ersa i-Con Vario 4 from TopLoser on here a little while ago (still haven't done the reviewSorry, but I've been insanely busy and it doesn't look like it's going to let up till after the summer...)Anyway, as any of you who have Ersa soldering equipment in North America know, it's not very easy to get supplies for them. In fact, they're rarer than hen's teeth around these parts. But you can get them and at good prices if you go to the right places. Hopefully this'll help anyone else who may need or want Ersa products in NA.First off, don't bother with eBay unless you don't mind setting up some watched searches and waiting for the right parts to come along. There are sellers there that are offering tips and such at 3x the cost and (presumably desperate) buyers are lapping them up. Ugh!Secondly, most of the Kurtz-Ersa distributors have absolutely terrible customer service. Only one has a web store with any selection (murraypercival) and they are VERY limited in stock and shipping is high. Atlantech usa does have a pdf with prices of some available tips etc. on their website (what year is this? 1992?) but that's about it. And when I tried emailing a parts order list to every distributor asking for a price quote only ONE actually responded (fellow Canadians brockelectronics.com - friendly too!).He didn't have the info available but forwarded my request to someone at Ersa North America. Their response was quick, though it took a few hops to get to the right person. They were apologetic about the experience with the distributors. Turns out they are setting up a webstore of their own for the North American market, ersashop.comSounds promising, right? Not so much. First off, for some reason they went with weco.at, an Austrian company, for their online store. I assume their servers are all in Europe because it's s..l..o..w much of the time. Also, it has a number of Euro-centric and Austro-German-centric issues, like requiring your VAT #. Oh, did I mention that you have to be a business to sign up? Yeah. Anyway, not a problem for me, but I did complain that it was stupid as there were lots of private parties that would like to buy their products and it makes no sense to lock these people out. I don't think it got through, though, as the requirement is still there.The other issue I faced was with logging in. Not sure the problem, but my username and password does not reliably work. It gives an odd error ("Cannot find customer" or somesuch) that's different from if you use the wrong username or password. I reported this but was curtly told "I just logged in as you and it worked." Not exactly the response I was expecting. From that and some other emails I got the impression she wanted me to just get lost, so I did.So if these avenues don't work very well how can you get parts and supplies? I found a way that actually saved me money and headaches...As you may or may not know, ordering online in Canada tends to mean overpaying by a wide margin. Often things that you can get from the US for $X will be marked up to $2*X or even $3*X for Canada. eBay even found a way to steal more of our money with the ridiculous Global Shipping Program that tacks on atrocious brokerage fees for even the smallest items, often amounting to more than was paid for the item! So because of all of that I use a US based reshipper. In my case I use shipito.com For $50/year they let me ship all my stuff bought in the US to them and they'll consolidate it into one package when I'm ready to ship and send it up to me. So I save shipping costs. Plus DHL is usually cheapest and gets here in about 3 days from California (I'm in Newfoundland on the far east coast). All other shipping methods take weeks unless you overnight it (takes 2 days). They also have a plan where you don't pay anything per year, just pay the shipping + $1 handling fee, but you can only do 1 package at a time and no consolidation. (I'm not associated with them, btw, except as a happy customer)Anyway, the point is they have an Austrian address too. So that got me thinking - what about buying direct from Ersa Germany? Turns out it works great! The webstore address is at ersa-shop.com If you open it in Google Chrome it will ask if you want to translate it to English, which works surprisingly well (You may have to right-click on the menu items and choose Open in New Tab, though). Also, they have EVERYTHING! And it's about 1/3 cheaper than I could get in North America. I got carried away and ordered a bunch of stuff, including their butane soldering iron (after using an electric iron to install an auto start kit in my father's truck). It took about 2 days to ship, got to shipito about 2 days after that, and I shipped it here via Austrian air mail (they also had Fedex available for a lot more, sadly no DHL). Total shipping for about $750 in parts/tools was $50. That's about what I'd expect to pay from the US. It's currently somewhere between Toronto and Newfoundland so hopefully I'll get it this week.Anyway, hopefully that helps someone. Once things calm down I might bring some extra parts over and offer them for sale online for those over here that need parts. But in any case at least there are options.Also, to Ersa North America I'd like to say: Get your act together, please!!