Yeah,I know what you mean but there's always the odd one or two things that they're really competitive on, a couple of years ago we were buying all our Siemens PLC's through RS because they were exactly the same price than I was getting quoted from other suppliers so their superior service and free door-to-door delivery made them the best option by far and over a period of 6 or 8 months we bought hundreds of them.Not so much steep as effing vertical. The frugal bit of me (about 95%) used to start snarling whenever I used to have to reach for the flippin' RS catalogue.
More recently I purchased a Chauvin Arnoux tester