CommLightingEngineer

We needed a toroidal transformer for a special commercial application but the one being retired was untraceable. Triad Magnetics popped up on Digi-Key as a manufacturer of similar transformers, so I called Triad directly. On my first call attempt, I was able to get a genuine, knowledgeable engineer (Lazaro Rodriguez) on the phone during lunch hour. He let me text him a photo of the label from the old offshore transformer that we needed to replace, and he took the time to isolate Triad's comparable transformer and compare specs line-by-line between the two, since the label coding is not apples-to-apples. He even explained the options for wire connection based on our application. Not every US design and import firm even has a person on staff who knows the product this well, let alone who's willing to chat with a customer about a one-off $37 transformer. Great experience. I will absolutely call Triad for our next transformers spec, which could be 1000 units. Nice work, Lazaro!

Strengths: Product knowledge. Pre-sales accessibility. Ability to spec their product to your application. American English-speaking, and American time zone sync.

Needs to improve: I did not detect any weaknesses of Triad Magnetics, with this experience. It's probably not Triad's fault, but Digi-Key was painfully slow in actually shipping this item which WAS in stock (why does it take them 2 weeks to get it to California?), hence the low "Speed" score. The only reason I didn't rate Price and Quality higher, is I don't yet have a comparable reference point to other manufacturers, so I went with "average" to be safe. The 5-star rating for "overall" is based on my pre-sales experience as detailed above. VendOp needs to have a 4th star category for "service" because even if price/speed/quality are not 5-star, sometimes the Customer Service makes up for it as it did here.