Raspberry PI $25 PC

GinjaNinja

i manages to order one, but didn't really cop the extra 7 on va, all the f5'ing an panic. reminded me on the hp fiasco.

anyway one on the way. disappointed in rasberry team pushing blam on retailers when they have their own shop etc. complete arses tbh. they knew the limited stock and massive demand.

Fysh

GinjaNinja wrote: »

anyway one on the way. disappointed in rasberry team pushing blam on retailers when they have their own shop etc. complete arses tbh. they knew the limited stock and massive demand.

Errr....right, so it's the fault of the small charitable foundation that the multinational business-oriented retail partners who signed on to provide international distribution for them didn't make a proper job of the launch?

How does that work, exactly? The Raspberry Pi team were savvy enough to switch their site over to a basic static setup in advance of the launch, but RS haven't even got the product up for sale yet (!) and Farnell's UK homepage is currently still DDOS'd to hell because they weren't clever enough to set up a separate static page to divert Pi-focused enthusiasts away from their core site.

Khannie

Fysh wrote: »

Errr....right, so it's the fault of the small charitable foundation that the multinational business-oriented retail partners who signed on to provide international distribution for them didn't make a proper job of the launch?

Yes. They kept banging on about how raspberrypi.com was going to be the store and that it would be bullet proof. I set up an account in advance of that, believing them. Then launch day arrives. The .com site goes down and you're referred to two companies who were obviously not prepared for the effective DDOS that came their way.

Also, we were told that there would only be 1 per customer. That turned out to be horse sh*t so they were sold out before I could even get on the site. If I'd known it wasn't 1 per customer I wouldn't have bothered my arse getting out of bed.

Thousands of hours were wasted by people getting up early or going to bed late to try and get their hands on these things. It was a massive cluster-f*ck.

Finally, the $35 computer bit was a total lie unless you're buying > 10. I saw one guy saying that he was being charged $45 for delivery!

Fysh wrote: »

How does that work, exactly? The Raspberry Pi team were savvy enough to switch their site over to a basic static setup in advance of the launch, but RS haven't even got the product up for sale yet (!) and Farnell's UK homepage is currently still DDOS'd to hell because they weren't clever enough to set up a separate static page to divert Pi-focused enthusiasts away from their core site.

RPi should have made sure that the people they chose to be distributors were ready to go before announcing tbh. Instead of just pointing to the respective roots of each site, they should have had direct links to the product for sale page.

Overall it was just totally amateur. Really, really bad.

GinjaNinja

Fysh wrote: »

Errr....right, so it's the fault of the small charitable foundation that the multinational business-oriented retail partners who signed on to provide international distribution for them didn't make a proper job of the launch?

How does that work, exactly? The Raspberry Pi team were savvy enough to switch their site over to a basic static setup in advance of the launch, but RS haven't even got the product up for sale yet (!) and Farnell's UK homepage is currently still DDOS'd to hell because they weren't clever enough to set up a separate static page to divert Pi-focused enthusiasts away from their core site.

fair enough thats you opinion, i differ.

they are making a profit from these units, which is grand. but when you move to profit from charity you need to get your duck in a row. they didn't.

Fysh

Khannie wrote: »

Yes. They kept banging on about how raspberrypi.com was going to be the store and that it would be bullet proof. I set up an account in advance of that, believing them. Then launch day arrives. The .com site goes down and you're referred to two companies who were obviously not prepared for the effective DDOS that came their way.

Also, we were told that there would only be 1 per customer. That turned out to be horse sh*t so they were sold out before I could even get on the site. If I'd known it wasn't 1 per customer I wouldn't have bothered my arse getting out of bed.

Thousands of hours were wasted by people getting up early or going to bed late to try and get their hands on these things. It was a massive cluster-f*ck.

Finally, the $35 computer bit was a total lie unless you're buying > 10. I saw one guy saying that he was being charged $45 for delivery!

Right now, RS UK don't seem to be doing anything except taking people's details with a view to sales later on in the week. I can't even get past Farnell's product page at this point, but the UK page is listing it as a pre-order.

Based on that, I won't assume anything about what has, or has not, been enforced - whether it's pricing or units-allowed-per-customer. All we really know right now is that the retail partners dropped the ball fairly massively and in a high-profile way.

As with any other early-adoption launch, it's nobody's fault but your own if you stayed up until/got up at stupid o'clock to give yourself a good chance of buying one. The devices sound great to me, but they are very much a luxury item. I would've liked to get one of the first batch, but it's no great loss to me that I didn't and I really do wish that more of the >>10K people who wanted one of the 10K units available in the first batch would get some freaking perspective and park their entitlement issues at the door.

Khannie wrote: »

RPi should have made sure that the people they chose to be distributors were ready to go before announcing tbh. Instead of just pointing to the respective roots of each site, they should have had direct links to the product for sale page.

Overall it was just totally amateur. Really, really bad.

I'm not arguing that it looked like amateur hour, but as a UK resident who deals with these sorts of companies on a regular basis, I would be confident in guessing that the fault lies with some uninformed suit-wearing gimboid in middle management who agreed to carry the RasPi without paying attention to their marketing efforts or the demand for the units, and who will be hoping not to be caught with their pants all the way down this morning as their lack of planning is made clear. (You might get away with this kind of nonsense if the product launch wasn't being talked about on the BBC news and trending on Twitter...)

GinjaNinja wrote: »

fair enough thats you opinion, i differ.

they are making a profit from these units, which is grand. but when you move to profit from charity you need to get your duck in a row. they didn't.

You mean the small profits that the foundation are plowing straight back into the charity so that they can continue to work on the educational release?

The people who didn't get their ducks in a row are the multinational retail partners who signed up to retail the thing while clearly underestimating demand for the device. You still haven't explained why anyone but RS/Farnell should get the blame for this.

GinjaNinja

Fysh wrote: »

You mean the small profits that the foundation are plowing straight back into the charity so that they can continue to work on the educational release?

The people who didn't get their ducks in a row are the multinational retail partners who signed up to retail the thing while clearly underestimating demand for the device. You still haven't explained why this is anyone but RS/Farnell should get the blame for this.

refer to khannie's post. they set up a shop. then ran away from that concept, in my opinion to move blame for any potential launch day problems to another partner.
look we are going to differ, grand thats life, you've your opinion, i've mine, we'veated them both, lets move on.

Khannie

Fysh wrote: »

As with any other early-adoption launch, it's nobody's fault but your own if you stayed up until/got up at stupid o'clock to give yourself a good chance of buying one.

Garbage. Reasons I got up early:

They had said that the launch day store would be their own. Lies.
They had said that there would be 1 per customer. Lies.
They had said that on launch day, the store would be absolutely bullet proof. Lies.

If they're going to change their distribution model from what they had told the community it would be then it is their responsibility to make sure their distributors have planned appropriately by following up with them.

If they're going to announce at 6am when they know that tens of thousands of people will be getting up early (Europe) or going to bed late (US), they should be bloody well sure that they have a direct link to where people can buy from. They had no such direct link which leads me to believe that they didn't even make sure that the distributors were going to have the RPi available. This is further backed up by the fact that one of their two distributors are still only taking "interest".

It would have been better for everyone if they delayed launch a few days and made sure it wasn't this gigantic balls up.

Khannie

Also, as I said, I wouldn't have bothered my arse getting up out of bed if I had known that they would just be posting a link to a site that they had no control over. I would have been perfectly happy to just let this first 10,000 just pass me by if I thought it was going to be some crazy free for all and slept happily in my bed. My son was up early too. The first one was for him.

Fysh

Khannie wrote: »

Garbage. Reasons I got up early:

They had said that the launch day store would be their own. Lies.
They had said that there would be 1 per customer. Lies.
They had said that on launch day, the store would be absolutely bullet proof. Lies.

If they're going to change their distribution model from what they had told the community it would be then it is their responsibility to make sure their distributors have planned appropriately by following up with them.

If they're going to announce at 6am when they know that tens of thousands of people will be getting up early (Europe) or going to bed late (US), they should be bloody well sure that they have a direct link to where people can buy from. They had no such direct link which leads me to believe that they didn't even make sure that the distributors were going to have the RPi available. This is further backed up by the fact that one of their two distributors are still only taking "interest".

It would have been better for everyone if they delayed launch a few days and made sure it wasn't this gigantic balls up.

*shrug*

They didn't make you get up, they told you when a launch announcement was going to be made. Unless they've got control of your alarm clock, you're the one who decided to try and get in at the very first moment of launch. Which, yes, is annoying if it doesn't work out, but let's all be big boys and acknowledge that we all know this is what early adoption entails? Like I said earlier, if there are >>10K people wanting to buy the first 10K units, a majority of those people are not going to get what they want.

Yeah, I'm kind of disappointed they went through those particular partners (RS have a fairly long tradition of a crap web presence, AFAIK, at least in the UK), but on the other hand I've lived in the UK long enough to know that, well, if the public|private collaboration behind the Olympic games can't properly organise a ticket sales site, it's going to be bloody hard to resource a purchasing portal for a product like this, where demand gets very highly concentrated at particular times.

Khannie wrote: »

Also, as I said, I wouldn't have bothered my arse getting up out of bed if I had known that they would just be posting a link to a site that they had no control over. I would have been perfectly happy to just let this first 10,000 just pass me by if I thought it was going to be some crazy free for all and slept happily in my bed. My son was up early too. The first one was for him.

How was it ever not going to be a free-for-all?

Doge

I think a heads up that the Store and mailing list would not be used would have been much better alright, without giving away the suppliers name at the same time.

I didn't have a f'in clue what was happening this morning, as both Pi sites were down.

And when I saw duffman's post, I assumed Farnell was just offering a pre-order for a few months down the road!

So that's one thing that can be blamed on the Pi Team.

However, RS totally ****ed up the launch by not selling the item!

You can't really blame the team for what happened after it was passed into the hands of the distributors imo though.

oflahero

Khannie

No, they didn't make me get up, of course that's true, but I only got up based on things they had advertised about the launch and subsequently knew to be untrue. That's what I'm annoyed about. I felt like I was going to have a fair crack of the whip. That that was not the case is their fault. If they had said yesterday:

We're going with a different distribution model and you'll be able to buy multiple units (as they knew to be the case) I would have happily slept like a lamb, ignoring the crazy mosh pit.

Fysh wrote: »

How was it ever not going to be a free-for-all?

1 per customer (as they said it would be) would have been a good start. At least then 10,000 homes would have had one. Instead, today we have < 5000 being sold to a limited (and unknown) number of people. There are people offering 50 units for sale on ebay at an inflated price. Anyone with two brain cells could have seen that coming and in fact did, so they asked the foundation how they would prevent it up front, repeatedly (their forums are probably down with the static site as it's not the best at the best of times, but there were topics discussing this). Their answer was the 1 per customer rule.

Cherry_Cola

It's an absolute farce alright. I haven't a clue what's up with that Farnell site. I've gotten about 4 emails already stating everything except a delivery date. Also my order was €27 all in while others here have paid more so not sure where that leaves me.

My date is only listed as to be confirmed, does anyone else have that? I reckon it means I'm on the pre-order and if that's the case then I think I'll just cancel.

cian1500ww

Cherry_Cola wrote: »

It's an absolute farce alright. I haven't a clue what's up with that Farnell site. I've gotten about 4 emails already stating everything except a delivery date. Also my order was €27 all in while others here have paid more so not sure where that leaves me.

My date is only listed as to be confirmed, does anyone else have that? I reckon it means I'm on the pre-order and if that's the case then I think I'll just cancel.

Check the attached PDFs, my estimated delivery date was in the PDF itself and not the email.

Cherry_Cola

cian1500ww wrote: »

Check the attached PDFs, my estimated delivery date was in the PDF itself and not the email.

Just double checked there and both the PDF's I received just have date as to be confirmed.

Fysh

Khannie wrote: »

No, they didn't make me get up, of course that's true, but I only got up based on things they had advertised about the launch and subsequently knew to be untrue. That's what I'm annoyed about. I felt like I was going to have a fair crack of the whip. That that was not the case is their fault. If they had said yesterday:

We're going with a different distribution model and you'll be able to buy multiple units (as they knew to be the case) I would have happily slept like a lamb, ignoring the crazy mosh pit.

1 per customer (as they said it would be) would have been a good start. At least then 10,000 homes would have had one. Instead, today we have < 5000 being sold to a limited (and unknown) number of people. There are people offering 50 units for sale on ebay at an inflated price. Anyone with two brain cells could have seen that coming and in fact did, so they asked the foundation how they would prevent it up front, repeatedly (their forums are probably down with the static site as it's not the best at the best of times, but there were topics discussing this). Their answer was the 1 per customer rule.

Well, you seem to be assuming that multiple unit sales to individuals will be allowed. Since the distributor sites haven't said anything about this yet, and appear to be offline/DDOS'd so far, I wouldn't take it as a given (though if it does turn out to be the case, I hope the Foundation takes Farnell/RS to task over it). Just because the badly-organised retail/distribution arms seem to have allowed this option to the relative few that got to see an order page doesn't mean they won't then get contacted in a couple of days saying orders have been revised to one per person/billing address/whatever.

Nor would I assume that just because some scummy opportunist on eBay has claimed to have 50 of the things in their possession and ready to ship in a week, that they actually have them. (Though the twits buying from them deserve a karmic kick in the knackers too, IMO).

I remember the rush for devices when the eeePc was launched, and figured that since I don't need a RasPi right now and there are probably >>10K people who want them, I don't particularly mind waiting until the launch-day lunacy has ended before trying to order. I looked at the page this morning, tried to get to RS while having breakfast and gave up after about 2 minutes of the page timeout. No harm as far as I'm concerned, because I would've been up and browsing the web anyway at that point.

I'm confused as to why they set up the mailing list and then didn't use it, but it's still their call - I'd seen mutterings elsewhere about some sort of issue with whatever mailserver they were using actually delivering to all recipients, and assumed that was part of the rationale.

Doge

Fysh

Hmm, Farnell's UK site is now pulling the same stunt as RS with the "register your interest here (PS giving us your info implies agreeing to let us spam you to hell and back)". Farnell's forum has people saying they've been given delivery dates ranging from 12th March through end of April.

theteal

page monitor on farnell's site just gave me a "cuckoo" and i've just been able to put through an order. £31.86 inc VAT

Allyall

I have no idea if my order went through or not.
Mine says CANCELLED now!! :mad::mad::mad:

What the F*@()&amp;*£% is going on?

If Farnell decide to email everyone that bought more then one, saying:

Sorry, These are limited to one per customer, Your order will be suitably reduced,

Thank you for your interest in Raspberry Pi.

Then i should get one, my order went through as soon as the site was active the 2nd time, and was processed at 07:11AM.

RS never sold any, and i registered my interest at around 06:40AM, so i'm hoping i would get one of them if they are using the interest registered, as a way of sorting first come-first served.

Something weird i did notice, on the Farnell Website..
The date..




WTF? Why is it showing December 2011?
More to the point, why is my order showing as cancelled?

TheDoc

My order on Farnell went through no issues

However I was charged €38 for model B

I'm not going to have a whinge over a few quid, but weird there was so many prices today on the same website : /

Guess being they are the license manafacturer they can do as they please

Was tempted to buy a few, but I'll go with one and see how I get on.

Can immediately see about 3 of these replacing some old laptops I have i nthe house used for automating certain thigns

shizz

I'm pretty happy to let this slide by and get it when things calm down but I remember signing up to a mailing list to be informed about this? I could only check this page today but check my email regularly and not a sign of an email. Anyone else the same?

theteal

TheDoc wrote: »

My order on Farnell went through no issues

However I was charged €38 for model B

I'm not going to have a whinge over a few quid, but weird there was so many prices today on the same website : /

yeah, the price fluctuations are strange, mine works out at a close enough price to yours, well worth it by all accounts

my description is a fair bit different from the one posted above though

Allyall

I wish i had never got up.. I normally let these things slide, and wait until they calm down, but with this, i had already been waiting months, and now i'm just tired and cranky..

from this

To This


I hope it's not actually cancelled, and they are still sorting the site out..

AnCatDubh

shizz wrote: »

I'm pretty happy to let this slide by and get it when things calm down but I remember signing up to a mailing list to be informed about this? I could only check this page today but check my email regularly and not a sign of an email. Anyone else the same?

Yep me too.

Happy to wait and hear how people get on with them. I'll pick one up when things settle a little.

nothing on the email list either. i had caught it here through this and other threads on boards though.

Can't wait to hear how people get on and what inventive approaches to casing the thing that people will find.

Cherry_Cola

This whole Farnell situation is a bit strange. Here is a log of my order status.



I ordered at 7.05am (should have been 6.01am :mad:) and as you can see it's a little all over the place, even partially shipped, then cancelled and now on hold! What a mess!

TheDoc

They have a phone number....anyone rang?

theteal

Cherry_Cola wrote: »

This whole Farnell situation is a bit strange. Here is a log of my order status.



I ordered at 7.05am (should have been 6.01am :mad:) and as you can see it's a little all over the place, even partially shipped, then cancelled and now on hold! What a mess!

i thought that was just a guide describing what the status types mean



edit: yup on a second proper look at my own order, i'm certain that is just a guide of the "Line Status Definitions", and not your actual order status

Cherry_Cola

theteal wrote: »

i thought that was just a guide describing what the status types mean



edit: yup on a second proper look at my own order, i'm certain that is just a guide of the "Line Status Definitions", and not your actual order status

Well I'm an idiot. In my haste I didn't even see the heading. I was wondering how a company could be so all over the place

Allyall

I take full responsibility. I blame tiredness.
Mine now looks the same as everyone elses, but still says €21.95 before VAT.