Raspberry PI $25 PC

Cherry_Cola

Yeah you're in the same position as myself so. When clicking on the order date and time it says back order so I guess it'll be a while before we get it. Think I might cancel and chance getting one on the other site to be honest.

This whole thing was handled extremely poorly.

Doge

Order cancelled here also. The most annoying thing is the fact is says "partially shipped", giving peoples hopes up for a moment.

I wonder if they partially shipped a letter of apology!


I think we've all been thrown some random WTF SAUSAGES at us today!

Unsure how to vent frustration....

theteal

When the site wasn't working I sent them an e-mail enquiring if it was possible to process an order via e-mail. I just now got a reply (that doesn't actually reference my queries) that may have some not good info - the bit in bold.

Thanks for your email about Raspberry Pi.

We’re really excited to be a part of this innovative product launch!

Following the successful launch of Raspberry Pi Board B this morning we’ve seen unprecedented levels of interest in this product – a 300% uplift in web traffic and over 600 registrations of interest, visits or pre-orders every second.

Stocks from Raspberry Pi of the initial production quantity are very limited and these have already sold out. However, we’re working very closely with Raspberry Pi to ensure we can meet the demand as soon as possible. We will be one of the first to have Raspberry Pi’s in stock and delivered to you, so if you haven’t been able to pre-order, register your interest by clicking Register Here.

If you have ordered more than 1 Raspberry PI, unfortunately we have had to limit the initial allocation to one unit only. We are also unable to deliver any orders to non UK addresses.

Farnell element14’s community site, element14.com, also has support and information in the dedicated Raspberry Pi group – download the OS for your Raspberry Pi, see our element14 members helping other members with projects, check out the very latest videos and tutorials www.element14.com/raspberrypi

Doge

Successful my.....

Cherry_Cola

Then why do they have it on the Irish section of their site with the price displayed in euros? Absolute joke of a company.

Doge

Cherry_Cola wrote: »

Then why do they have it on the Irish section of their site with the price displayed in euros? Absolute joke of a company.

It's always that way for their products I'd say.

I'd imagine they'd have to change their whole ordering system to make it more Pi friendly.

Which is why handing the units over to a distributor like farnell is far from ideal.

They may have also decided to ship to the UK only at the last minute, who knows.

TheDoc

So Farnell sent me a mail confirming my order with an attached PDF.

I've been giving a confirmed date of 16/04/2012 for when I'll receive my order

Cherry_Cola

Well I've just sent off a mail to them to clarify a few things.

Pi themselves stated that they went with these companies due to their international distribution networks so as many people around the world could get them so I'd imagine it may have been a last minute change or hopefully it's an error.

It will be interesting to hear their reply, if I even get one!

Doge

I don't know is it wise to have any more hope for todays order.

I am disappoint.

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bittihuduga

i had ordered 2 pieces of pi for 72.50 inc vat from farnell ie.
but got a mail now with a pdf and confirmed one piece will be delivered in april 23th.
looks like they are accepting only one piece per customer.

Cherry_Cola

What time did you guys order at out of curiosity?

Javan

Cherry_Cola wrote: »

What time did you guys order at out of curiosity?

I got my order in at 07:04. Current status is 'processing' with a delivery date mid-March (week commencing 12 March).
The delivery address is in Ireland and there is no indication of any problems.
(That list of order statuses is confusing, but the true order status is in the table above that).

In the madness this morning I was able to register with Farnell almost a half-hour before placing the order, and I think that when I selected an address in Ireland I was directed to a section of their site specific to Ireland.

Doge

Cherry_Cola wrote: »

What time did you guys order at out of curiosity?

7:06 when all systems restored a little .

It was far too late though you can see from the time of this tweet:


"We believe Farnell has sold out already. Blimey.



6:28 AM - 29 Feb 12 via web · Details "


If the PI forums were up now, I would love to put up a polite thread just
explaining how it felt as if we were left in the dark,
and how it wasn't a good idea to not give any indication that
they were completing abandoning the email notification,
and the buying procedure that have told people to read over and over for weeks now.

They've received quite a lot of hate mail, so some honest feedback about how they dealt with it on their end would feel constructive.

theteal

TheDoc wrote: »

So Farnell sent me a mail confirming my order with an attached PDF.

I've been giving a confirmed date of 16/04/2012 for when I'll receive my order

ha ha yeah, i didn't notice that estimated date on the pdf, it is also the 16th of april :pac: it'll probably have a case by that stage!

Cherry_Cola

I'm 7.05am. I wonder if the people who got confirmed shipping dates paid the higher price because all in mine was €27.

However when I first put in an order it was a total of €37 or something like that but it crashed just before the order confirmation page. It was more of an impulse buy to be honest but it's kind of annoying me now as I didn't expect it to be this difficult.

Still though, the shipping dates are much further away than I expected also so I might just cancel and hope that RS-online don't mess up again and get them shipped fairly quickly.

Doge

This is what I got when ordering on the irish site:

Goods Subtotal:

€31.87
Basic Shipping: €0.00
VAT
€7.33

Total:
€39.20


I wouldn't trust the shipping date much, as it's totally dependent on the next batch safely from China and on time.

Will probably cancel mine also, and try with RS. Bit reluctant to go through all this again though, I might just wait til the next batch instead.

theteal

i ordered mine just before i posted in here, sometime between 1 and 2 pm iirc (completely forgot about it do didn't try this morning). it was around £32 inc VAT

i'm assuming that 16/04/12 is the next batch, i can wait

Doge

Here's a little observation I just wanted to make regarding the communications from the RPi team.

Liz pretty much mostly handled the updates on the Blog up until the last 2, which were made by Eben hinting at the launch.

I have always found Liz to be extremely transparent in her Blog posts,
I think she is the best communicator on there and always gives the full details to the best of her ability.

For instance this is how she felt, when she posted that they began manufacturing the boards on January 10th...

www.raspberrypi.org/archives/509

"Raspberry Pis started being made a couple of days ago, but I was forbidden to tell you about it until signed contracts and receipts for payment had arrived – it’s been killing me, especially since I’ve had tens of you asking me when manufacturing would start every day for the last few weeks. I am not good at keeping secrets."

I reckon if she was posting about the launch,
there would have been a better heads up about the change in buying procedure that appeared to be set in stone until today.


After being spoiled with information and transparency from Liz it felt like a great anti climax.

And it's this lack of transparency regarding the launch that is really irritating me,
not the fact I failed to secure a Pi being sent my way asap, I was totally expecting that considering the odds anyway.

GreenWolfe

Cherry_Cola wrote: »

What time did you guys order at out of curiosity?

08:19

The total incl VAT is showing up as €39.20 and my estimated delivery date on the pdf is W/C 26/03/2012.

Doge

If anyone wants to cancel an order soon, then ringing Farnell is the only way possible according to their site....

"Order Cancellation

An order can only be cancelled by telephone by contacting sales on 1800 936 198. Due to the efficiency of the Internet ordering process it may not be possible to prevent the delivery of these items. However you can take advantage of our 21 day no quibble guarantee for return of items."


Might do it myself to see if I can buy one cheaper in the next batches.

I do know farnell offer free shipping on orders over €35, in fact I think that might also be the minimum order amount you can make.

This would explain why it's a bit dearer, but not why others managed to get it cheaper.

RS on the other hand have no minimum order, but they do charge shipping.

I'd imagine we'd be paying more than the $35 for a Model B, to cover shipping costs?

GreenWolfe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mY5P8EwYUw

GreenWolfe

Got an email this morning from Farnell. Seems my delivery date has slipped to 23/04/2012. Lovely.

Fysh

waveform wrote: »

I do know farnell offer free shipping on orders over €35, in fact I think that might also be the minimum order amount you can make.

This would explain why it's a bit dearer, but not why others managed to get it cheaper.

RS on the other hand have no minimum order, but they do charge shipping.

I'd imagine we'd be paying more than the $35 for a Model B, to cover shipping costs?

One thing I've noticed in the UK - RS are upfront about the cost being £21.60 (which is in line with the $35 price tag for Model B, according to Xe.com's current listing). Farnell have been coy the entire time about pricing, which frankly just puts me off using them.

Mind you, in another farcical turn of events, I noticed that UK.farnell.com now has a pop-up that appears when you land on the site that prompts you to choose whether you want the RasPi or the main Farnell site and redirects accordingly. Excuses about unprecedented (or as they spelled it yesterday, "unpresidented") demand aside, they probably should've had that in place at 6am, rather than 5pm...

TheDoc

Farnell have advised my shipping date out to 24th of April.

They have confirmed through Raspberry on twitter they are looking to produce on a 30 day rotation to meet demand.

There wont be too long to wait.

Farnell are also taking multiple orders, not just one per person.

I ordered two more which went through last night.

Allyall

I still haven't received a delivery date.. It still says Delivery date to be confirmed..
and order still processing.

Anyone else have this?

Cherry_Cola

Allyall wrote: »

I still haven't received a delivery date.. It still says Delivery date to be confirmed..
and order still processing.

Anyone else have this?

Yeah same here, did you pay €27 for yours? I wonder if the pricing has something to do with it. Sent a sternly worded email regarding clarification on the different prices yesterday but haven't heard back yet.

Allyall

Cherry_Cola wrote: »

Yeah same here, did you pay €27 for yours? I wonder if the pricing has something to do with it. Sent a sternly worded email regarding clarification on the different prices yesterday but haven't heard back yet.

Yep, I had the same feeling. That the price may be the cause. But that's not our fault, and if they email me, i'll happily pay the extra €10 or whatever it is. I'm hearing of people who ordered an hour or more after me yesterday morning, and they have got dates.

Can you post back if you get a reply?

I'm hoping yesterday morning wasn't entirely in vain.. At this rate i'll be on the third or fourth shipment..

Cherry_Cola

Well I got a response, albeit one which dodged most of my questions regarding pricing, they did however confirm the price of my order.

Here's what I got:

"Due to such a high interest this item went out of stock and isn’t due until late April now , it is on back order for you .
Apologies for any issues you experienced yesterday on the Website with all the hits we had in such a short space of time it crashed , this was worked on so we could get it back up and running as quickly as we could .

The price for this item on your order is €21.95 goods."

So I replied asking why people who ordered well after me have gotten shipping dates whilst I haven't. I mentioned that surely it should be first come, first served.

I also asked if the difference between getting a confirmed shipping date was down to the prices which were charged to different users. It'll be interesting to hear their answers to these. If I don't get a satisfactory answer/resolution for this then I will cancel asap and purchase from RS online instead.

Allyall

That is BS.

Isn't due until late April.

Yeah, i'll wait to see what their next reply is and i think i'll cancel and go to RS too.. That's really annoying. So i could have stayed in bed, ordered last night, without hassle, and get a delivery date before the one it looks like i'm getting now..

Poorly organised is an understatement.

TheDoc

They have to actually manafacture these.

I dont see what the tears is about, I think its typical Irish ( netflix coming to mind) completely misunderstanding the situation.

Yesterday they orders were been taken for the first time.

The initial allocation is 10k

They are now sold, and are going to be produced.

Farnell and RSS have licenses so they can no manafacturer these themselves.

Nowhere did it state that these were already made and ready to go, it was the polar opposite. They were waiting to see demand, and now they have it.

Every 30 days a new cycle will be produced of roughly 10k until demand dies down.

This was all very clear from reading the Raspberry PI blog and viewing the twitter accounts during the day.

Literally no one who ordered yesterday ( the first day to order) is getting one before , and at this stage the end of April. Thats just a fact

I understand hype and panic gets over most of us and we forget to read the fine print, but there has been a garing misunderstanding of how this product was being launched and sold : /

Remember this is a charity organisation who developed this, they were going to manafacturer 20k and hope for the best, they have planning and cost to take into account.

I'm sure that in due time they will be stocked to ship, rather then the current buy to manfacture model.