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Pricing updates (good news!) from Element 14/Premier Farnell and RS Components

As you may know if you’ve been reading our Twitter feed or hanging out in the forums here, we asked our worldwide distribution partners, Element 14/Premier Farnell and RS Components, to offer you a bit of clarification about pricing around the world for the Raspberry Pi and its shipping, because some of you were getting some confusing feedback. Using the information below, you should be able to make a decision about which supplier is the best choice for where you live.

I’ll start with RS’s response, because it’s a bit shorter:

In response to your request for a breakdown of the RS prices and shipping across the world for Raspberry Pi Model B…

With demand running at such a high level, and in an effort to keep things as simple as possible, RS have decided to set a single global price and a single global delivery charge! This should help you communicate to the Raspberry Pi community very clearly.

We will allow all orders to be placed on our website using this universal pricing mechanism, which will ensure that we ship on a first-come first-served basis to everyone that has registered, in the order that they registered with RS following the launch on 29^th Feb. It will also enable us to ship one Raspberry Pi to each customer who places their order, until availability eases and we can ship multiple Pi’s to anyone requesting more. We will be in contact with our registered customers with instructions on how to place their orders over the next few days, as we will soon be able to provide accurate availability information based upon volume manufacturing.

So, in every country that we are legally able to ship to, where we are not restricted from selling to private individuals*, we will apply the following universal £GBP selling price, shipping charges and VAT:

Raspberry Pi Model B = £21.60

+ Shipping Charge = £4.95 (this shipping charge also covers any accessories ordered to be shipped with a Raspberry Pi – Customers will only pay ONE charge of £4.95 per shipment)

VAT @20% = £5.31

(Liz edit: if you’re in the EU but outside the UK, your VAT may be calculated differently. Outside the EU you will not pay VAT, but will still have to pay any local sales and import taxes.)

Total inc VAT and shipping = £31.86

PAYMENT: We will accept payment via PayPal and Credit Cards. Any customer ordering with a credit card will be charged in local currency by the bank issuing the credit card, in accordance with the bank’s exchange rate policy.

The single Shipping Charge of £4.95 will apply to all orders and will also include any Raspberry Pi accessories ordered from RS at the same time as the Raspberry Pi Model B board (eg. Memory Card, Power Supply, Cables, Keyboard, Mouse etc.). We will not charge a further shipping charge for any accessories that are ordered and shipped with the Raspberry Pi board.

* Currently we are restricted in selling to private individuals in Austria only.
[ADDENDUM : This means the only place individuals cannot buy from RS is Austria.]

Just to let you know that we now have in excess of 200,000 registrations of interest. This was still growing at 10 per minute yesterday!

Element 14/Premier Farnell, knowing the Raspberry Pi consumer’s love of a good graph or table, have come up with some tabulated data:

March 27 update: the pricing information below is superseded by the information from this new matrix. I’m leaving the text below, but struck out, so you’re still able to make comparisons. Please note the text at the very bottom, which is still relevant.

~~element14 Pricing Update~~

~~As we work with Raspberry Pi to distribute the Model B $35 boards globally, there has been some confusion and discussion around our worldwide pricing.~~

In an effort to simplify our pricing and communicate transparently with our customers we have produced the following grid for consumers which shows for each country the price per device, including delivery costs in relevant currency, avoiding the need to calculate back from GPB to local currency in most instances.

The variable element is local sales tax which still needs to be added to the delivered price. This is proving hard to simplify!

For countries where it is straightforward to do so we have added local sales tax to the grid below, for example the UK where VAT at 20% has been added giving a total price including delivery and tax of £29.46. However for countries such as the USA where there are different sales taxes for every state we have added a link to help customers calculate the final price in local currency, in an attempt not to over-complicate the information below!

This simplified pricing structure will apply to all credit/debit card orders placed with us and includes those from customers who have already registered their interest or intent to buy from any of the element14/Premier Farnell Group of companies, unless they were previously quoted a LOWER price, in which case we will honour the lower price.

If a customer has already ordered from us at a HIGHER price than those listed below we will ensure this is corrected at point of shipping to reflect the cheaper prices below.

Also other Raspberry Pi ‘bundles’ and accessories ordered and shipped at the same time as the Model B will not incur any additional delivery charges.

We hope this is clearer for our customers and as always appreciate feedback and suggestions to improve.

element14

http://www.element14.com/community/groups/raspberry-pi

element14 Consumer Pricing for Raspberry Pi Model B effective 12^th March 2012

Region	Territory	Price (including delivery & excluding. tax)	Sales Tax	Total Price (inc. Sales tax)
Europe	UK £	£24.55	£4.91 (VAT)	£29.46
	EU £ Credit Card TransactionsAustria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden	£27.25	£5.45 (UK VAT)	£32.70
	Other European £ Credit Card TransactionsNorway, Switzerland, Turkey Russia, Israel	£27.25 £38.65	Plus import VAT and duty that may be payable
Americas	Mexico	$50.75	Subject to local state / provincial taxes & regulations – (please contact salestax@newark.com for details)
	Canada	CA$47.00
	USA	$40.00
APAC	Australia	Au$ 50.95	Au$3.80	Au$54.75
	China	RMB 265	RMB 39.95	RMB 304.95
	Hong Kong	HK$ 309	0	HK$ 309
	India	Rupee 2550	Subject to applicable national and local taxes and input duty
	Korea	Won 70050
	Malaysia	MYR 145	0	MYR 145
	New Zealand	NZ$ 63.21	NZ$ 7.24	NZ$ 70.45
	Singapore	SG$ 55.00	SG$ 3.15	SG$ 58.15
	Thailand	Baht 1492.50	Baht 103.95	Baht 1596.45
Rest of World		Subject to destination, delivery, tax and duty will be confirmed at point of order

Rev 1 07.03.12 element14

1. Why have you changed your prices now?
The incredible demand for Raspberry Pi and discussions with our thousands of customers has highlighted the need to simplify pricing, making clearer any additional charges and as a global distributor put these in local currency wherever possible to help our customers. We want to make our pricing globally transparent in keeping with our commitment to make the Board accessible to all at a base price no higher than $35 per board. By changing our prices now, with the first delivery of reworked boards due to go out next week, we can ensure that all customers have the benefit of the new pricing structure.

2. I placed my order at a higher price. What does this mean for me?

Your order will be charged at the new, lower prices automatically, you do not need to take any action.

3. I placed my order at a lower price. What does this mean for me?

We will honour the lower price you were previously quoted. You do not need to take any action.

4. I am a trade customer, not paying by credit/debit card. What prices will I pay now?

Customers who have a trade account with us at any of the element 14 / Premier Farnell companies will be able to buy the Raspberry Pi model B along with their normal purchases in their own country, either on-line or via their local contact centres. Prices for these customers will be list price net of delivery or local sales tax as these vary for our trade account customers

5. Your web site is still showing the old price? What should I do?

We have been working all weekend to get all of our local country websites updated without impacting customers, so there may be a few changes not yet finalised. Please bear with us. We didn’t want to take our websites down to make these updates and so it is taking us a little longer but all orders placed from now on will ship at the new price we promise!

6. If I order other accessories at the same time will I pay additional shipping on those items?

Accessories that are ordered and shipped with your Raspberry Pi Model B will not incur any additional shipping charges to those already quoted for delivery of your Raspberry Pi.

449 comments

The Australian element14 site still has the Pi at $38.76:

http://au.element14.com/raspberry-pi/raspbrry-pcba/sbc-raspberry-pi-model-b/dp/2081185?Ntt=raspberry+pi

Get in before they put the price up to $50+. I wonder why the rise?

Have you ever heard the economist’s term “whatever the market will bear”, or “price is determined by supply and demand”?

Based on the Farnell/Element 14 post above, only lower prices on orders already submitted will be honored, but, if you can currently submit an order at the lower price, go for it while the gettin’s good! :)

If so, it’s a bit of a shame. The new price (excluding tax) clocks in at US$53.80, where the old price converts to about US$41, which is a good match for the US price, and very reasonable indeed considering the foundation’s target price of US$35. I’m sure it’s a bit more expensive to ship here, but still it’s a 30+% premium.
Can’t whine too much though – I can’t possibly find something similarly capable at anywhere near the price. Mostly just annoyed that new Australian customers would be paying a fair percent more than folks in the UK or US. I’d hate to think this is profit taking on behalf of a distributor.
But I can’t help but wonder if element 14 have made a copy/paste error?
The reason I say this is that when I originally ordered, there were two Raspberry Pi listings on their Australian site. One that listed the last place of manufacture as the US (costing about AU$50 ex tax IIRC – now disappeared from their site – may have been the same as in the table) and the other from China at $38.60 ex tax (which I believe is what I paid and is still available). This seemed odd at the time.
Given that the expensive US-sourced listing has now seemingly disappeared, is it possible that the $38.60 is now the correct price for AU folk and that the table is wrong?
Meanwhile if element14 are indeed taking a bath on the previous price, I’ll refrain from putting in another order…

If you look carefully, you’ll see the AUS price includes freight of $12.95. If the order is over AU$45.00 then freight is free.
In fact the Pi has had enough force to change E-14s shipping policy in Australia. It was, until Sunday, all ononlineonline orders were shipping free, now there is a minimum spend to get the free frieght.

AU Farnell….

Goods Subtotal: $38.76 38.76
Shipping Charge: $12.95
GST: $5.17
Total: $56.88

And this is for a trade counter pickup.

So in the short term, add a $7 item to your order (cable, power adaptor maybe?) and save yourself $6.
Long term, order 2 or more at a time.
Could be worse.

Yep right now it would be cheaper to buy it from RS in Australia, approx. $AUD 43.85.
I bought mine at element14 before the shipping cost was added so it was only $AUD 41.80.
But as JasonS said, you could just add a $7 item to your cart and save money.

When I saw the Australia price in the list there was a What The F… moment. When I looked at the comments and found there are so many Aussie Pi’s down here I felt better. Now I just hope they fix the price problem soon.

The sales tax of $3.80 (10%) in the table show that it should be $38 for the device which is the correct exchange rate. Another confusion for this simplification post.

Well spotted :-) There must be an error here with the device price. Hopefully the currently price on au.element14.com is the right one.

No we read it wrong, they say $50 Shipping price which is correct cause they r charging $12 shipping. So it is cheaper to buy of RS for 26 GBP with the exchange rate that makes it $38 AUD shipped. Bye bye Element14 over charger.

Dang. I’m more confused than ever. Hopefully there will be a clarification for the clarification.

Meanwhile, congratulations to the Pi folks for a truly spectacular level of interest and sales. Hopefully the distributors can be true to your attempts to get this thing out to people at a reasonable price.

Yes, you must be right. I didn’t notice the mistake until after. $3.80 gst shows the correct price must be $38 + $3.80 gst and that is certainly all I would be paying them.

Profiteering in Australia again. 51 AUD for a 40 USD device where an AUD buys more than one USD. It is bloody disgusting. No wonder everyone pirates media and buys goods over the Internet. I ordered mine at US parity prices. I guess the 2nd, 3rd, 4th will be bought from Hong Kong or somewhere via eBay.

Actually, fellow Aus buyers. Once we get out parity priced original orders how about we boycott Element14 for further orders and send them emails letting them know why so there can be no doubt that they are a bunch of greedy bastards.

everyone needs to make a $ somewhere but…..

The oz site says $38 ex GST/mwst/vat… which brings us up to $42.

This link points out free shipping. http://australia.rs-online.com/web/generalDisplay.html?id=promotions&file=freedelivery.

$55 is still cheap…. but USD35 is about AUD32… where do they get to 55:-(
I am really interested in teh pi and whether $55 or $35 it is still a low price.

$150 for a mx53 direct from Freescale is much better value for money for a dev board. Or a Roku2 if you want a media center. The lack of ram and slow CPU on the Pi would rule it out of contention if not for the amazing price. And the amazing price has brought the amazing community.The price is the clincher. Go to a teacher or parent and say $25 or $35 per head vs over $50. If the foundation can’t control profiteering their vision will die. Fortunately the prices quoted make no sense as the GST amount is much lower than it should be for the total so I expect it must be a mistake.

I’m also wondering why sales tax is charged on the items being imported to AUS, as the GST does not apply to imports under $1000, why is a $50 piece of electronics going to be the first thing i have imported that i will be taxed on?

I am not certain, but I think the Raspi’s are to be imported in a large batch which exceeds the $1000 limit, so tax is charged on that batch, which is then passed on to the customer as you would expect. I presume this is what happens with most stuff imported to to Aus. If you can import it as an individual item from elsewhere cheaper, you may wish to do that, but I’m guessing postage might get a bit high.

The $1K floor price for duty/GST is for individuals, registered importing businesses have to pay whether the item is 1c or $999.99

Thanks for the clarification.

If they are being imported in bulk then that means the postage should be much cheaper. We should only be paying $12 if its sent from the UK and this means no import tax.
Screw raspberrypi I’ll just wait until some chinese company catches on to the idea that there is money to be made in these boards and makes a clone that is sold at a resonable price. Cut out the middle man I say

You do realize that the base price is identical regardless of whether the RPF is selling it or “the middle man” right? In fact, since they have a world wide presence in most cases we’re ending up paying *less* in P&P. Additionally, any chinese made clone would be significantly marked up. The RPF is selling these puppies with an extremely low overhead margin. You know part of the whole “non-profit” deal.

Thanks! This is very helpful info.

Thanks for your efforts Liz, you’re the best.

I’m a bit relieved by what i saw, price wise.
Thanks again.

Art.

Kudos for the Foundation and your selected distributors to slice through the Gordian Knot of worldwide distribution by holding true to your low price point philosophy that is so key to the RPi’s success. You have created more than a computer, you have started a movement. Keep up the GREAT work!

200.000 and growing…
ya you get nowhere with little hobby batches of 10k! ;o)

What is your guy’s expectation for this first year??

Breaking news… raspberries outsell apples….

/Kyndal

And remember – for now, only 1 RPi per order, when in reality I would get 4-5 for the start ;)

am waiting till can order 3 or 4 pi in one go… come on open the floodgates :)

Nice!

Could you please ask Farnel about RaspberryPi pricing on Brazil?

Thanks

+1 on that !

Their Brazilian website (farnellnewark.com.br) don’t even have the Pi listed….

It would be very nice (and a lot easier) if we could buy it from their local distributor. They would also possibly be able to consolidate shipping and make a little more $$.

Could someone at the Foundation please contact them about it ?

There are no way to buy on Brazil.

We are looking in to various issues with certain locations around the world.

I contacted farnellnewark.com.br and they said that they’re doing an interest registration.

I asked to farnell argentina (http://www.farnell.com.ar) and they sent me some scary pricing, 77USD + Taxes, any official response would be nice.

Liz, I read you’re a full time volunteer for the Foundation… but c’mon… it’s 2 am :)). I’m working night shifts, what’s your excuse?

I’m in California this week!

Any chance you all are stopping over in Denver on your way back?

That’s great! The total price for Thailand seems to have dropped significantly.

It appears that Farnell have dropped the 750 Baht delivery charge which is VERY good news, (but this being Thailand, I would not be surprised if this is a mistake and local delivery WILL get added on)

Farnell stated all in price 1596.45 THB

RS may be cheaper, but it will depend on whether the post gets ‘hit’ for duty collection.

21.60 + 4.95 = 26.45 GBP (Around 1280 THB), but IF you get hit for paying duty, this will add 40% and VAT of 7% which will then end up as 1920 THB

Here in Thailand prices still 48.4 $ (1485 thb) for the PI (VAT 7% included) + 24.4 $ (750 thb) for shipment, total 73$ = more fees and taxes than the product price. Too bad for a charity project, here peoples win just 300$ monthly, that’s all I have to say.

Kudos to RaspPi for designing this amazing SBC.

But now the price gouging begins (not blaming Raspi here, but the choice of retail channel). RS and Element14 are just not set up for effective retail level distribution of a high volume of single items.

A key tenet from my perspective was the fixed price points of $25 and $35 US. Those were quoted as retail prices so that was always going to include suitable handling, distribution, retailer fees, and some way towards postage and tax.

$35US is $33.33AU, add GST thats $36.66.

Element14 have hit $55 AU.

This is true to form. They are not a retail channel, they rely on price gouging single units to operate.

As far as I am aware, the “retail” price simply means the price of the item itself… Every place I have heard the $35 price stated, it was referring to the unit itself, not including shipping. To quote the FAQ, it says “The Model A will cost $25 and the Model B $35, plus local taxes.” So, at the very least, taxes are not included.

Another indication of the fact that the $25/35 price is for the unit itself are the replies made to the posts of people complaining about the “increase” in the Farnell price… (I was looking around, can’t find the thread at the moment) Anyway, the response was that the unit itself was $35, and Farnell just added shipping and handling on automatically, rather than showing the base price ($35).

From the very beginning it has been crystal clear to anybody who bothers to read anything here that the $35/$25 did NOT include taxes or shipping.

Farnell/14 Original Price Paid Order…
March 9, 2012
In CDN$?
Merchandice Total:$38.96
Freight:$12.00
Tax: $6.63
Order Total:$57.59
—————————-
Confirmation E-Mail…
March 12, 2012
Your Merchandise Total $35.00
Your Freight Total $12.00
Your Tax Total $6.11
Your Order Total $53.11
Sale in CAD
—————————–
I really gotta ask one question…
$25 Model-A/$35 Model-B
Is the “Set Price” really what should be charged to people in US$ or CDN$?

I don’t understand why those in the US would need to pay sales tax when neither corporation has distribution centers in the US. The sale should be tax free, just as sales on most other websites are tax free providing they don’t have distribution centers in your state (see Amazon, NewEgg, etc).

While it is true that most states do not charge a sales tax on items ordered from other states, unless the company has a presence in the state, what many people don’t know is that there is a “Use Tax” that is required to be paid to the state buy the customer in such conditions. While in most cases this isn’t heavily enforced, for very large purchases I can imagine it can land you in some trouble. You can read about it here: http://www.ecommerce-blog.org/archives/the-myth-of-tax-free-internet-sales/

I believe US sales are through Newark, which does have distribution centers in the US, hence sales tax applies. (I live in CA and I pay sales tax from newegg also.)

AFAIK, that’s correct; RS’s sales are through Allied Electronics, who are in a similar position.

This is incorrect. They do not have to collect sales tax unless they actually have a distribution center in that state. Please fine a US distributor or volunteer to ship in the US or accept shipping directly from china for $4USD or please call this the 27pound or euro computer if you are going to continue to collect US taxes that you shouldn’t be collecting….

The Foundation does NOT collect sales tax (if we did we would have to give it to the government anyway). That is a governmental thing. If you have a problem with tax levels, you need to check with your local governmental department which deals with it.
There are US distributors – RS and Element14 both distribute in the USA.

“The Foundation does NOT collect sales tax (if we did we would have to give it to the government anyway). That is a governmental thing. If you have a problem with tax levels, you need to check with your local governmental department which deals with it.
There are US distributors – RS and Element14 both distribute in the USA.”

You’re saying If I have a problem with your UK based distributors collecting US states sales taxes illegally I should contact my government? Ok…

Gre, you seem to be deliberately misreading what is being said. The distributors in the USA are subject to USA law/tax regimes. And yes, if you believe they are doing something illegal, you MUST contact your government/whoever should be told. I seriously doubt they are though, they certianly have enough commercial lawyers to make sure they stay on the right side of the law.
IANAL, so I don’t believe I am qualified to say much more than that.

They do not HAVE to collect sales tax for out of state sales. If they choose not to it is up to the consumer to pay that tax themselves (under penalty of law!). There is no rule stating that they cannot and if they do they relieve you the consumer of the burden of tracking those purchases to pay tax on when you file your state taxes. But feel free to continue not declaring your untaxed out of state purchases, I’m sure whatever state you live in will never invest in using computers to track it’s citizens.

Sweet! Thank you so much for the update :)

I’m confused about the RS price. Do we convert the GPB amount into our own currency? If so it comes to under $40 delivered for Aussies, a stark contrast to the element14 gouge.

You do, but you also have to add sales and import tax, which they haven’t calculated for you.

Actually, I’d be really grateful if any of you Aussies could find out for us exactly how much sales/import duty is where you are – I have a feeling they’ll draw the two prices pretty close to each other.

Sales and import is only valid for orders above $1000 (as far as I know) so RS has my order.

Official link: http://www.customs.gov.au/site/page5549.asp

Thanks Liz. And yes, as Reuben says, tax is not an issue for Aussies when importing something this small. :) Years of personal experience confirms this.

E-14 and RS (Australia) for that matter, fix their exchange rate once a year for the life of their catalogue, hence some things appear OK and others that they don’t want to bring in from the UK expensive (BC109 for $500 anyone? RS price 3 years ago).

There is no user import duty (that is taken care of by E-14 and RS in their pricing) but GST of 10% has to be paid.

If an individual were to buy from a different UK company, then they may or may not find they are charged 20% VAT **, but so long as the purchase is under AU$1K there will be no GST or import duty added.

** Some UK retailers still charge the VAT and put it towards freight or so some large companies say.

If Rs/Farnell are importing a bulk load into Australia then duty would seem to be applicable. The example mentions 5%. ($1.75) . this gets to USD 36.75.

If I order parts form os then I pay $5 for shipping a small parcel or sometimes nothing from ebay.

this gets us to around the AUD38 that is advertised by RS. add gst and we have AUD41.80.

Precisely. That is what my backorder states I’ll pay at E-14.

Liz (and all others), the issue here is not sales/import tax. Both Element14 and RS have similar pricing before GST and shipping cost which is AU$38.76 for Element14 v.s. AU$38.00 for RS.

The price for Element14 listed above (Au$ 50.95) includes the shipping cost (AU$12.95) – given that the total order amount does not reach the free shipping threshold (AU$45.00). To avoid paying for the shipping, just add another item of value (AU$6.24 or more). In contrast, RS offers free delivery for order of any value.

Overall, RS offers a better deal for the public who are only looking for the base Raspberry Pi.

Why is the Canadian price $7 more than the US price, when the Canadian dollar is stronger than the US dollar??

I was unhappy seeing that, too. Looks like we Canucks will be giving our business to RS (AlliedElec).

I am quite pleased with Farnell / Newark myself. No more ridiculous export fees, and to make things even better, my expected ship date recently moved up about a month and a half from when it once was (it moved from the middle of May to April 3rd)
I’m really hoping that change was intentional and not just an accident

At some time in the past you indicated the Gertboard would be available.
What availability, what price?

Gert’s working on it – I’ll ask him to do a post here later this week, if he has time.

Hi Liz, I just send you an email about this.

C’mon Liz – tell all, LOL
T.

Gertboard?? (Ray does a rapid search through the Forums and the Wiki) I feel like I walked in on the tail end of a conversation. Rather than ask you to rehash what’s already been said, can you give us latecomers a link/pointer to the discussion that gives the specs/conception/evolution of the GB?

I found the Gertboard discussion in Education, but I still feel like I walked in late. (Used to do that in college, too. It left me just as confused, and in addition it annoyed the professors.)

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/411 and http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/500 Might help :)
Regards,
Michael

There are a few channels an order can go through:

1) Consumer orders individual items from UK (or an RPI subsidiary), most likely avoids VAT, GST, Duty. Postage extra.
2) Retailer (RS/E14) have a bulk wholesale deal and Duty is based on the wholesale price. Retailer re-splits profit at cash register (as it were) with wholesale supplier based on some nefarious licensing etc scheme to avoid tax (ala movie distribution versus manufacturing).
3) Retailer (RS/E14) claims all costs based on marking up original retail prices and gouges customers to infinity (traditional retail model in far flung Australia).

Let me be clear, I have nothing but the upmost respect for that Liz, Eben and all the RaspPi guys are achieving – its hard to imagine where they find all the energy from! But I think the distribution channel is something that will take lots of effort to tune over the months – particularly when aiming for a low price point. It would be a tragedy if any price inflation doesn’t go straight into the foundation’s pockets but instead gets siphoned off by the middle men.

Retail in Australia is in a dire state. Lenovo make a lovely laptop, the top model costs $1000-2000 depending on configuration in USA. In Australia the exact same configuration costs between $4000-5000 (despite a stronger currency). Its drop shipped out of singapore.

Apple have also been big on the gouge, but even they have been squeezed into a retail price here in Australia of within 10% of the USA price.

Well I can see that Farnell will be getting my business! A few quid cheaper. better than nothing. :)

Based on RS’ simplified pricing, its computed price (PHP1,978) will be lower by 19% compared to the total amount I already paid (PHP2,436) to the local agent of Farnell (Manila, Philippines). I guess Farnell’s local retailer has to earn somewhere in the chain, and I will therefore go for RS if it can keep that simplified pricing.

Hi, thanks for the update!
Yesterday i talked to farnell, the woman i talked to told me that probably i have to wait till June to get my RP. Is it true? Are there any news, when RP will be in stock, again?

I have just tried to order raspi on farnel, here is what I saw:
“Supplier lead time 135 days”
WTF?! is it a joke?

No, demand is very high and they are being made as quickly as possible, but there are limits to how fast you can make this many devices.

The early bird gets the worm.
It’s no joke, but expect the lead time to improve.
You really should of ordered on launch day.
T.

… but it’s the second mouse that gets the cheese! :)

LOL

RS came up with the two payment methods i can not provide… i hope for Farnell but fear the worst. I am getting more and more frustrated.

Strange, the DesignSpark (RS forum) website mentioned RS would now accept PayPal, and i wrote about that on th eE-14 R-pi forum, and yet the actual RS websites don’t reflect that, as yet.

Found the post- the last entry states:

Q – What methods of payment will you accept? When will you take payment?

A – We will accept payment via PayPal, Visa or MasterCard credit and debit cards. Any customer ordering with a credit/debit card will be charged in local currency by the bank issuing the card, in accordance with the bank’s exchange rate policy and charges.

http://www.designspark.com/knowledge/orders-raspberry-pi-your-questions-answered

Crikey. Thanks for that. Going through to the checkout I now see they want to charge me $56.88 including delivery and GST if I were to put in a new order (impressive lead time of 143 days!). Didn’t spot this as when I ordered delivery was included, as you note.

$12.95 is an erm, impressive delivery charge for an online merchant in Australia for something like this. I plan on ordering multiple boards later on (and will therefore avoid this charge) but meanwhile this is bound to annoy folk. Especially those other element14 customers that just want a bit of ttl logic and a bunch of resistors…

Sorry – this posted in the wrong place – was meant to be a reply to:
“bodgyuk on March 13, 2012 at 4:29 am”. Apologies.

Does the Farnell/Element14/Newark $40 US price include the $20 “handling” charge that I thought was removed, but is still on my order? Or is it now $60 + tax + import fees?

No, the $20 originally placed on newark orders was an error in their ecom system. There is info in another thread here about this (also on the newark forum). It looks now to be $40 (board + shipping) + whatever sales/use tax your state requires them to charge.

Mexico $50 bucks?! Wow, that’s robbery.. that’s why I asked them to deliver it to the US :D

$50 is mucho for Mexico, is the half of my salary :(. I think i have to save some money to buy this cheap computer for students.. Deception

Deception by whom? Not us I can guarantee.

Half of your salary? Yo need to be prepare better, don’t you think? It is cheap… but I can get to the US easily, so that’s why I sent it there. Remember, $35 bucks without taxes and shipping… nobody thinks about that

Is not cheap, an Atom motherboard costs the same, im a student i have a half time work.

An Atom motherboard doesn’t have RAM included, nor HDMI, nor VGA output, nor SD card reader, doesn’t need a huge PSU, and the most impressive thing: it’s size.

– Can I help you sir?

– I’d like the $35 Model B please

– That will be $59.

Clearly.

Monty Python or Fry and Laurie?

Real life

If everyone who Pre-Ordered their RaspberryPi’s post their cost details here it would be more transparent on what is going on. Clearly there is more cost than just the product itself. Shipping + Tax! If you buy a new computer or even try to get something similar it would cost $100-$200+… Some people are computer enthusiasts and pay close to $1000-$2000 for the very best laptop or base computer!

Has anyone got a reply back from RS yet? I’ve applied twice, once on the day and then a few days later but, so far, nothing about ordering an RPi?
Is it my bad luck or is this the same for other people?

Liam, I have the same experience – not feedback, no nothing!

I did exactly the same thing. Registered with RS on the morning of the 29th – no acknowledgement. Registered again the following Monday, after RS claimed all their e-mail acknowledgements had gone out – no response to that one either. And that’s applying in the name of our company’s account, not as a punter. So I still have no idea whether I’m even on the waiting list or not. :(

I’m in the UK, BTW.

I too didn’t get a single E-Mail from Farnell or RS yet. No idea if I am supposed to get one though…

Yesterday I got an e-mail from SR.

I have had 3 identical emails since I filled in the form on 29th, only filled it in once, first one one was a week after filling it in.

I think there email system is completely confused :)

I expressed interested within one hour of the launch and all I received so far is a terse “Thank you for your interest” email from RS – on march 9th. I had already given up on my order having registered with them at all. No specific info at all about the process, my order, pricing however … nada. Guess I should still consider myself lucky to get some response.

excitement – I received an email from RS yesterday! – shame it was a “holding” letter “thanks for waiting…we’ll get back to you soon…first come, first served…” but at least I now know that they have my email address and that I have an unspecified place in the queue

All Australians using Element14 should buy the Pi at $38.76 and then add a bit to the order to get over $45, then shipping is free, so +$7 of stuff, -$12.95 shipping.

Element14 in Spain cancelled and deleted my credit card order. They’re talking now about credit card orders wich is a nonsense if you don’t allow customers to pay via credit card.
I cancelled my order (they cancelled ir for me) when they asked me to pay via bank transfer now after changing my estimate delivery from April to the end of June without any reasonable excuse. A lot of people will just stay quiet and pay whatever they’re asked to recieve one but I’m not supporting this kind of bussiness because I believe it’s contrary to the aim of the foundation.

I think you will need to contact E14 for details on why this was cancelled. We have no visibility of that at all.

I was trying just to give some feedback about how payments are being processed. Farnell/Element14 is asking spanish people to pay by bank transfer now for a product the spect to send in the end of June (29th June in my case).

Data in this post talks about credit card payments and options Element14 is currently banning for spanish orders. I’m ok with my order been cancelled but the way they (as in Element14 in Spain) are handling this is way absurd. I recieved a nonsense answer from the e-mail they send me asking for the bank transfer. I’m waiting a little before a contact them again because I need to check how is the situation with other people. It seems is the same chaos everywhere… I made my “request your interest” thing the first day and I’m out of luck: Delayed (cancelled finally) 4 months with one of the “partners” and still waiting to see what’s the plan with RS.

Hello, I placed my order in farnell in spain 2 weeks ago, and give my credit card details as that was the only allowed method for payment. some days later, they wrote me saying that the raspberrypi should be paid by bank transfer, as David says. But I was more stupid and did it…
By the way… This was for a pre-order, not for one from the first batch, so I’m paying for a RPi that does not even exist…

The worse is that they don’t even know WHEN they’re going to have but hey want your money NOW and they are not being legit. I cannot imagine the chaos it should be if you want a refund of your money if in 2-3 months from paying there is zero improvement and constant delays…

When I asked about why I needed to pay for something that I was going to receive in 2 months(at that time it was april I think) they told me if I didn’t pay my order would be canceled.. I paid, and they canceled it anyway.

The customers service is so awful I had to send them 2 emails to get an unofficial (no receipt) confirmation that they received my money. Also.. in Portugal by law they have to present the prices WITH VAT, and they don’t… I know the reseller it’s from spain, but if they have an online portuguese shop, I think they should also respect the portuguese shop.

I know the foundation can’t do much, but this kind of stuff should be talked with farnell, since the image of the foundation is on the line to..

Don’t worry, I’ve been collating a list of stuff, and this sort of stuff does get sent to the appropriate people. Meanwhile, I’m sorry about the service you have received, I hope you stick with us during these trying teething troubles.

I will no matter what;) and that’s not just because I wan’t a raspi but because everyone from the foundation always treated me(and everybody) right.

Tks,

Guilherme

I tried to buy at Farnell Spain also, but they wouldn’t let me pay by credit card because the RPi doesn’t reach the minimum charge for CC. Given that everything else (SD cards, etc.) cost around 4 times normal prices, I asked what to do and was told to do a bank transfer. However, that option is only available if you have a special account number that only seems to be available to regular clients. I also had to provide a company VAT number.
Farnell Spain very clearly does not want to do business with non-company clients.

OK, we will look in to the Spanish issue.

Same here! I’m from Portugal, but the pt.farnell website is from the Spain reseller.

They’ve asked me to pay through bank transfer. I did, and they canceled my order. I sent them an email and what they’ve said is that they’ve canceled that order and created a new one.. however my new order number that they told me by email is not on the website, and is a LOT bigger.. so I guess I lost my place on the queue!

I woke up at 5h40 GMT in the 29th to place my order.. was only able to do it at 7h02 and now they are also telling me that it will take until the end of June! how come :S?

I’m really disappointed.. not with the foundation but with the path the project have gone through this bad service, at least from farnell..

Don’t know what to say.. I feel kind of powerless with this situation since I really wan’t to get my hands on a RPi, but at the same time the treatment farnell is giving to their customers is not right at all, and the customers service is not as nice and polite as they should be.

Best regards,

Guilherme

Just for the record:

talked to farnell spain on the phone. It seems that since they didn’t accept payments or visa numbers in the pre order and want us to pay with bank transfer the process is “very simple”:
1. You pre-order as soon as possible in the 29th
2. When they feel like it they send you an email requesting the bank transfer
3. You pay
4. When someone at farnell processes your payment manually (this might take some time) they cancel your old order and make a new one.. guess what? All the people that ordered in other contries and paid with paypal/visa/etc between step 1 and step 4 got in front of you on the line! YAY!

If anyone that ordered from spain farnell was wondering why they didn’t got a slice of Pi, here is the explanation :)

Nice way to loose my sleep in the 29th. The day was not waste however since I got to meet and talk to Richard Stallman in a conference.

Best regards,

Guilherme

Thanks for the clarification Guilherme, we’ve noted it down. Not sure what we can do though.

As for Richard Stallman, is he as, er, ‘odd’, as is generally thought? (I’m being polite – words I have heard to describe him are generally less forgiving)

Well, he’s not the kind of person you would consider ‘normal’ but I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.

First of all he’s a hippie of modern society and he doesn’t like to follow the normal rules of etiquette.. not by trying to be rude, but it’s just he’s own way.. very informal.. if you can handle that he’s just fine.

The speech he gave at my university took 2h30 of pure talk, a lot of info to process. He’s point of view is very interesting and if you’re interested for both software and politics it’s really mind-blow. I do agree with him at almost everything, but the difference is I don’t give speeches passing the word of free software for living..I’m studying computer engineering and I do pretend to make some money out of this, so I’m still trying to find a way to fit free software into a good business model so I don’t go against my moral compass.. it probably won’t be too difficult since I would prefer to be more connected to infrastructures(mostly sysadmin) than the software market (not that I don’t like to code, I do).

What I can say is: if he ever comes in town, take a bit of your time and go listen to what he has to say.. you might not agree with everything but it’s worth it :)

Guilherme

Oh one last thing I forgot:

I did ask him what he thought about the raspberry pi, and if the foundation(free software) would be interested in supporting it.
What he told me was that he was aware of the project, but he didn’t like the fact that Raspi needed binary blobs.. so if one day you guys can get a free (as in libre) driver for the Raspi (with the actual GPU or with another one – check mali’s GPU they’ve released an opensource driver for it.. didn’t know about this, it was actually RMS who told me) if you’re interested, you might just get free software foundation support.

Guilherme

We are already in contact with the FSF. Unlikely to choose Mali tbh – all the tech experience revolves around the Broadcom chip which is why so much tech support comes for free. FSF support isn’t as good as top level technical support for a project like this.

Italy is missing from the list of EU country (Farnell).
I hope this doesn’t mean they won’t ship here.

They ship in italy, but the shipping is 9 euro + VAT.
Why here the shipping is not included? Italy is a european country like the others!

You will need to contact Farnell – its possible they haven’t finished updating their data yet.

i ordered from them on 29th. they confirmed my order:
r-pi 27,07€
delivery 9,00€
IVA(VAT) 7,57€
TOTAL 43,64€
later they sent me an email without delivery charge, so IVA changed to.
they will send to my around end of april/begin of may.
to order i had to use a “partita IVA” (VAT Reg No)

Last night I got a big surprise.. when I checked my Farnell, my order was CANCELED! :S

I don’t know why, since I already payed for the Pi.. already sent them an email, but not answer yet. I just hope when they solve this I won’t go to the end of the queue, since I was able to place my pre-order at 7h02 GMT (~1h later) of the 29th.

Someone else has had this problem – you will need to keep contacting Farnell – we cannot do anything about that from here.

I understand that.. Do you perhaps know how things got solved? I really don’t want to lose my place on the waiting queue :\

I don’t understand the part about Switzerland in Farnell’s table because they have 2 prices in the same cell. Do we in Switzerland pay £27 or £38? But for me it’s not that important since I guess the first board we get will be bought for the company I work for (since I left that business card at the embedded world) which means our conditions may be different anyway…

PS: It will be bought for the company since the company wants one – I will place a private order too for sure but I guess that will be a bit later (I am a developer here so I can play with the companie’s Raspi until I get my own one ;-)

Very disappointed. The EU (Non-UK) price is over €35 and that is more like $50US.
I really thought it would be a lot cheaper.

Well, $35 is without taxes, and without shipping. Since they’ll have to pay a few euros for shipping abroad (I expect 6+ at least) and VAT is roughly 20%, I think the 35 euros is reasonable. Americans might get it for $40 shipped to their door, but then they have to deal with the local taxes.

Don’t forget that for small items, shipping is expensive. Order a new mouse or other stuff at the same time, and spread the costs over multiple items.

Not good for India. It’s increased by another $4 USD equivalent.
Base price for India (as advertised, without tax) is INR 2550 or $51 USD.
But if you order from Element14 India, you’ll be charged another additional shipping charge over the tax. After the tax is applied, the system asks for shipping method selection.
They are charging “Standard Delivery, 6-7days UTI” at INR 200 or $4 USD
And if you choose UPS for premium delivery option, it adds INR 999 or $20 USD.

element14 says that the simplified pricing included shipping+unit-cost and just applicable tax needs to be added. But in actual they are charging shipping extra, making the bare $35 board to sell in $50 and making addl. $15 profit.

This is ridiculous, I was interested at £20ish price level but elevating it to above £30 just that the Americans can again get hardware almost for free is beyond me. I’m moving with my project to a different platform, yet slightly more expensive, but x-times more powerful, hence the money are justified, which is no longer the case with Raspberry Pi.

Sorry, what has this to do with Americans getting hardware for free? And please remember that the price is still $25 and $35, *excluding* shipping and tax. If the place where you are getting the board from says something else, you need to contact them, as it may be an error on their website.

Why are the European prices in pounds? All (or nearly all) of those countries use the Euro, you’re quoting other continents in their currencies, why don’t you put the rest of the European prices in the regular European currency?

By the time the goods are actually being shipped the Euro may no longer exist :-)

The euro still exists?

Great product. Great price. I’m amazed that for $35 I can get a machine of this spec.
The foundation has done so well to keep the cost down to this. Hell anything sub £100 would have been pretty good.

Isn’t it a pity then that RS are charging £4.95 for UK shipping.
assuming they have the same numbers as Farnell (200k and still growing) and assuming that a decent % are UK orders. That equals a healthy profit for ‘The Man’ off the back of all this good charity work.

“Isn’t it a pity then that RS are charging £4.95 for UK shipping. assuming they have the same numbers as Farnell (200k and still growing) and assuming that a decent % are UK orders. That equals a healthy profit for ‘The Man’ off the back of all this good charity work.”

In this kind of economic climate, the foundation could search far and wide and never find a distributor who genuinely gave a shit about anything but immediate monetary returns. Hopefully, they won’t be brazen enough to attempt profiteer from sales to educational institutions too.

Whilst £4.95 might seem a bit high for shipping for a small item, actually its quite cheap for a lot of suppliers in the UK. If you look here ..
http://uk.rs-online.com/web/generalDisplay.html?id=services&file=OrderDeliveryCharges

you will see that its a standard “per-order” shipping charge for non-account customers. So you could view it more as a handling and shipping charge .. you buy more things on a single order and you get better value for money. Look at Argos for example they charge £5.95 or £8.95 for home delivery … and a lot of things from Argos can now only be home delivered.

There is only one thing we need to stop the confusion: A link to a ordering page that works globaly. Haven’t seen that yet.

No more register interest or sign-up-to-signup-to-sign-up-but-can’t-order-page .

Not easy. Even Amazon don’t have a single page that works globally. Made more difficult by the fact that these companies both have distributors worldwide, so all that needs to be coordinated.

Unlike Amazon you can at least buy this worldwide (or will be able to once product flows). I thought of Amazon as an alternative channel but almost all their tech stuff is country-limited. That may relate to agreements with suppliers. I wonder how low a margin they could tolerate, but selling through them instead of a components shop would put you back in the space of finding someone to fund inventory. Although RS and Farnell are less than ideal, I haven’t seen a better idea yet.

RS Components Netherlands is STILL asking for a VAT identification number when registering an account. Please ask both suppliers to stop requesting a VAT identification number. I’ll want to buy a raspberry pi as soon as they actually e-mail me and I don’t want to set up a fake business just to do business with them

Also, I can’t believe nearly 50% of the total price is tax and delivery costs. There was so much work put into making the Raspberry pi as cheap as possible; trying to save one cent at a time, yet UK tax and corporate delivery charges totally destroys all which they worked for.

I agree on postage costs – always frustrate me. But when you think what is required – warehousing, packaging, postage costs themselves (diesel is expensive), employing someone to pack them, it all adds up. Perhaps not quite as much as some people charge, but it does add up.

I have been purchasing from China for some time on Ebay.
Prices are cheap. Process time is fast. Postage is peanuts. And there is no tax ( for items < $1000 in Australia )
Farnell in Australia is a rip off. Maybe you should look at supplying from China.
I think the foundation is doing a great job, you have a good product and I'm grateful of the volunteer time you people spend on this.
But, the release and choice of suppliers is a mess. A fact is a fact. Could I do better, maybe not, but that does not change the
facts.
So far the RaspberryPi is "Pie in the sky" and it looks like it will stay that way for some time for a lot of people.

It will stay Pi in the sky for some time due to the very large demand – there is not much that can be done about that! Its just not possible to make them fast enough.

I wonder how Book Depository manages to make postage free for most of the world, even on small orders (I think the smallest I bought from them was < $10).

Coming up with a new supply chain model for this class of product should be worth an MBA or two. How about asking a business school to research it?

Quote: “Maybe you should look at supplying from China.” – this is a suggestion which can be pursued to make available a central ordering site when the RS/Farnell channels do not work. There are many companies distributing goods via aliexpress, which may be happy entering into another contract with the Foundation. From my own experience, aliexpress (the payment gateway) holds payment until the good is received by the customer, and that is a good deal. There are delivery options, too. The EMS option works for me, and I don’t pay the large taxes for small items like the RPi.

Since the product is currently made in China, and presumably sent from the factory to various RS/Farnell warehouses, its difficult to see how yet another distribution arrangement could make much difference, apart from making the support burden at the Foundation higher.

“rumour has it” that The Book Depository show different prices to different countries (hint: they look at your source IP address and adjust their prices to still be able to offer “free” delivery 8-)

@RichardH: I’ve ordered from Book Depository in country A to ship to country B and the price didn’t change after I put in the shipping address. My best guess is they’ve negotiated an extraordinarily cheap bulk rate with the Royal Mail, possibly based on doing presorting into countries so the UK mail service only has to put the packages on a plane, and the real cost of handling is on the other side (who don’t get to charge, because of Universal Postal Union agreements), where the packages have to be split off to their various destinations. Here in South Africa I am still seeing plenty of books listed for well below $10, postage “free”.

All speculation though, and doesn’t help us get R-Pi cheaper.

The Book Depository – which is owned by Amazon – isn’t an entirely direct comparison.
It sells to about 120 countries, around 100 of those are delivered “post-free”. They can provide over 6 million unique titles from stock. Their prices are available only in Sterling, Euros, or US, Canadian, Singapore, New Zealand and Australian Dollars. Their website states: “Please note you are responsible for any local taxes and shipping. For countries within the EU then VAT rates will be applied in the checkout.” Also, books are often heavily discounted within the supply chain and at the retail end, and – in the UK at least, don’t attract VAT.

The postage costs and tax aren’t even so bad compared to what I (and probably lots of others) had to deal with previously. I once foolishly bought something on ebay for about $100 thinking it was super cheap! Once I actually had it in my hands it was almost $140 due to ridiculously high import tax, shipping rate and additional courier costs. From that point onwards I really made sure there are no additional costs when buying online…

As for the China comments you’d normally get; I really wouldn’t want the Raspberry Pi being shipped from China. For some it might be really advantageous; for MOST others it’ll end up being 20% taxed (+ additional tax collection costs) and eventually be more expensive than Farnell or RS components. Tax collection costs are usually flat, and in my case they’re like €10. Really not desired

Anyway, what I wanted to say is that it’s pretty bad when shipping rates are like 50% of the item’s costs. But whatever, it’s a lot cheaper than the competitors and I’m still getting one even if it’s 50% taxed

When you think about it, if the Raspi wasn’t so damn cheap, no-one would complain about shipping costs! We could sell it at $5, and still people would complain about the cost of taking a small device, packaging it up for transport, getting it on to a truck, driving many miles, unloading from the truck, putting on a plane, flying somewhere, unloading from plane, putting on a truck, driving many miles, unloading device, keeping it in a warehouse, running a website to take payment, pay for bloke running around the warehouse getting it ready for dispatch, putting it back on a lorry, driving many miles, and finally delivering it TO YOUR DOOR, where you won’t be because you are at work, so returning it to warehouse, then redelivering it at your convenience.

For $5.

Will RS & Farnell make sections on their websites which specifically show which components are compatible with the Raspi i.e. the correct power cables etc.?

Yeah, this launch is a disgrace for those purchasing the device, having to pay a lot of tax and other expenses defeats the purpose of this project.

I’m happy to wait 6-8 months for things to settle down and full production to begin so I can get one cheaper without all this nonsense ^_^.

Chris, You can wait for years, but although the supply bottlenecks will ease, the tax won’t go away! What do you mean by “a lot of tax and other expenses”?

My previous comment was deleted. there should be no US states sales tax for states that RS/Farnell do not have their distribution center in. I see why a third party forum is needed this one is heavily CENSORED FOR NO REASON.

As far as I know no comments have been deleted on this subject. This forum is NOT heavily censored AT ALL.

Posts will be deleted if they are abusive, agressive, offensive or make personal attacks. This is not “censorship”, it’s moderation.
(In case anyone is wondering, phrases such as “RIP OFF”, “robbery” and “f*** this” are not acceptable. This is not an exhaustive list ;))

So If I say These companies are ripping off US customers by charging a tax they shouldn’t and that other online retailers do not charge then its gets censored for the word rip off??? I am losing faith in you guys more and more everyday…

Sorry Greg, you are confusing me. As far as I can tell, most of your posts have been let through, there was one with foul language that wasn’t – I don’t think it was the word rip off!
With regard to your complaint, I think if you do the calculation you will find that you are not being ripped off – at least, other US customers seem to think its OK. If a company charges tax they should not then that is a very serious accusation, and I seriously doubt these companies are doing it. They are both multinational corporations with lots of commercial lawyers, so would not be getting something like this wrong (unless its a mistake)

Yes, because the term “rip off” is slang for depriving somebody of something by deceit, implying that a criminal offence has been committed. This potentially exposes both you and us to possible legal action if your accusations are ungrounded.

As James says, there were other reasons for moderating your post.

James has told you more than once that RS and Farnell both have a presence in the US – they are called Allied and Newark. Anybody from the US knows there is sales tax and shipping when buying online if the company has a legal “presence” in the state it’s being shipped to. If the company doesn’t have a legal presence in your state you most likely won’t pay sales tax, BUT there are still exceptions to that depending on STATE LAWS and YOU STILL ALWAYS PAY SHIPPING unless the company is running a special. I don’t get what your problem is. I’m in Texas and ordered from Newark. There is no charge for tax on my order and shipping won’t be calculated until the item ships.

Since when can you buy anything anywhere without paying tax or shipping?

I agree, though the Hong Kong company dealextreme.com doesn’t charge either of them. However, it IS in Asia and a China S.A.R. (???)

Greg, simply because you wish these companies to help you break the law by failing to pay sales tax does not mean that they have to. If your state charges a sales tax you are required to pay it. Period. If an out of state company does not charge it you are REQUIRED by every single state that charges a sales tax to pay it when you file your income taxes. You complaining that these companies are charging that tax (and helping your state to fund schools, a priority of the foundation) is like me complaining that I got a (always deserved) speeding ticket because most cops don’t bother to pull me over.

How about going to Hong Kong, talking to a Shenzen company to produce the RPi, then distributing it with Paypal as gateway? That might save you 5 months off the waiting time and you help others, too. Wait, I can do that, too, can’t I? :)

I don’t think it would reduce waiting time. There is still the time needed to source components etc and get factories up to speed.

Model B stated to be 35$ is being sold for £32.70 which makes 51$. This is a price difference of over 45%. Thats in my oppinion unacceptable price increase. And I dont know how and where from element14 get their info but the official currency in EU is EUR not british pound. So giving the prices for EU in £ is also a big fail.

Maybe because they don’t have an actual Farnell/E-14 in much of Europe the Pi would be exported from Farnell Export in the UK so they’ve quoted the GBP price, which your credit card will convert to euro at the exchange rate of the day.

OTOH, they may have just cocked up and forgot to convert it for their table.

If that’s the case then there should be no tax to pay.

They would still have to pay VAT

Indeed, the fact they list the whole of Europe as 20% VAT suggests to me that everything (as I think both companies have stated) is in the first instance being dispatched direct from the UK.

And thats another confusing point. As far as I know for goods traded between EU countries VAT is to be paid by the customer at the rate which applies in their country. That means for example Germany(19%), Spain(18%), Netherlands(19%). So VAT in those countries should be lower that the one in UK which is not the case according to the table.

Hmmm Stephen,
You could have a point there. The distributors may need to revisit that area. According to the European Comission

“VAT on goods moving between Member States

No frontier controls exist between Member States and therefore VAT on goods traded between EU Member States is not collected at the internal frontier between tax jurisdictions.

Goods supplied between taxable persons (or VAT registered traders) are exempted with a right to deduct the input VAT (zero-rated) on despatch if they are sent to another Member States to a person who can give his VAT number in another Member State. This is known as an “intra-Community supply”. The VAT number can be checked using the VAT Information Exchange System (VIES).

The VAT due on the transaction is payable on acquisition of the goods by the taxable customer in the Member State where the goods arrive. This is known as “intra-Community acquisition”. The customer accounts for any VAT due in his normal VAT return at the rate in force in the country of destination

I’m no tax lawyer, but I’m sure the distributor’s legal teams will sort this out by the time the units ship, bearing in mind that 1% difference in VAT on a ‘Pi is only about £0.22

Sorry for my “tone” in advance, but:
* We have heard about a fedora release
* Lady gaga searches
* Open Elec….
* Info about the first 10k units (which will be enough for like <10% of us, i.e: not interesting information)
* And now also pricing…

The _only_ information, that at least me and my friends want, is the only one not available.

Whats up with manufacturing? When will you be able to meet the market demands? Do we really have to wait until May/June? How many units can be produced in the factories/plants per week? When is the first unit from "batch #2" produced? Can you speed up / get more production-lines? Etc etc etc…

That information is not yet available. Sorry.

You mean it’s not available to the public or to the foundation?
In both cases, what?

The Foundation has a well established record of being as open and up front as it can be. Something it has recently been pilloried for, rather unfairly in my opinion. Also, and bearing in mind that some of the things you are asking are commercially sensitive, and/or still subject to current negotiation, I think it best to wait until they feel it appropriate to make it public – even if they do know themselves, which in some of the above, I’m guessing they don’t.

@Martin

Did you miss the ‘yet’ in my post? And many of your questions are commercially sensitive, so you may not get answers to them.

All of this is very academic given that Farnell is now showing a 135 day lead time before new rPIs are available.
You now run the risk of turning people off of what could be a very nice device but impossible to get a hold of.

And what can be done? The two companies involved are ramping up production as fast as possible. People ordering now are in a queue of perhaps 200k or more people. That’s a lot of product to magic out of thin air.

You project demand and ramp up to suite.
I’m sure the list of people who pre-registered would give you a clue of the potential demand

Demand was well over double the initial projected demand. Pre-registrations on RS and Farnell are being used to determine how much product is built. It’s going to be a lot. So basically, RS and Farnell are doing exactly what you suggest.

You’re missing the point, how many people registered interest in rPI with raspberrypi.org, I did and having got up for 6am on the day of launch could not get one on order.
So going from being an avid follower I now feel cheated as its another 4 months, according to Farnell, before I can get one.

About 120k registered for mail on the Foundation website.

Current preorders from RS and Farnell, probably nearer 500k.

10k boards made in first batch. Future batches, up to RS and Farnell, but if I were them, I’d be making a lot.

re: Feeling cheated? Approx 200k orders on first day. That’s a ratio of 20:1, so you had a 1 in 20 chance of getting a board. Better odds than the lottery – but still not great.

I’d like to know where you think all the capital to cover such a huge contingency would come from. Just because the foundation bears the name of fruit doesn’t mean it has vast leverage.

I for one would have been happy to pre-pay if that option had been available. This could have funded quite the build. Oh and in case you dont realise it the more you make, the cheaper it is to build them !!!!!!
So increasing the build level to say 100k would have considerably reduced the cost of the build especially with expressed interest.

So if you want the pricing to be consistent and “globally US$35”, why is the Australian price equivalent to US$53.60? Disappointing, can I order from the US in USD?

The AUS price is odd. We will be looking in to it.

The price looks about right.

Assuming the UK price is GBP 21.00 (I miss keyboards without the GBP key) that equals at current exchange rate about AU$32.00 (1.486/0.672) add on their exchange safety margin and the Oz import duty (5%), that equals close to 388888AAU$AU$38

sorry – wordpress stopped me from editing.
that equals close to A$38.00 (customs define their own exchange rate) plus 10%GST + 12.95 P&P. At most I guess E-14 have rounded up by $2.00. So $50.00 is about right.
RS as of this moment are still offering free freight in Oz for online orders.

Should add, Australian customs include the cost of shipping and insurance in the duty calculation and then there are custom clearance fees which obviously are dealt with as a bulk item by RS and Farnell.
ebay australia has a good article on fess.

Your calculation isn’t right because the goods are coming from China, not GB. Also the duty is on the value of the goods (what Farnell pay the manufacturer), not the retail price (what Farnell charge you). So the calculation is (((cost in RMB * customs weekly RMB-AUD exchange rate) + shipping + marine insurance) * (0.05 duty + 0.10 gst)) + (brokerage fees * 0.10 gst).

At the point of sale add ((retail price + retail shipping + retail packaging + retail insurance) * 0.10 GST).

Now for the tricky bit, the GST paid to Customs and the brokerage prior to the retail GST is fully refundable, this makes the effective GST rate (0.10 * what the customer pays for (goods + services such as packaging and shipping)). So when developing a pricing model you must take care not to double-count the GST, even though is paid twice.

I am a bit disappointed with RS as a UK customer. I was up at 6am on 29th and tried to order from them on the basis that they had a nearby trade counter and I would not need to pay a delivery charge approaching 25% of the cost of the RasPi. Now they seem to have “standardised” this charge which makes them £2.40 more expensive than Farnell (who are now quoting 135 days delivery) and I can’t even order yet! Please could the Foundation try to persuade RS to sell via their trade counters to UK customers without this charge which rather undemines their whole attempt to make a great product at a low price point.

Well, trade counters require stock behind the counter. Stock isn’t expected to be built up for some months given the very large backlog of orders.

Could you look into the Norwegian price as well? Over £16 in delivery charge sounds a bit… pricey?
At $35 the Pi won’t even incur local taxes with the current exchange rates, but it seems Farnell more than makes up for it…

Crap. Replied to wrong post (Obviously). But the question still stands

Surely trade counters also receive customer orders from a central warehouse for local pickup?

That’s up to RS, you will need to contact them about that.

Thanks for responding James but that rather misses the point I was making – I appreciate you are very busy and I still have great respect for all that the Foundation members and moderators continue to do.

As I understand it RS ships out customer orders to their local trade counters for pickup. This is an economical distribution method as used by the likes of Tesco to minimise delivery costs. (I don’t think they can possibly stock their entire range locally and obviously not RasPis given the supply situation.) Unfortunately, they now appear to be saying they will add a Europe wide delivery charge of £4.95 to all orders on top of which VAT is added making a total of £5.64 which is a large slice of Pi cost (sorry!)

My request was that the Foundation, who obviously have more leverage with them than an individual customer, ask if they could make this economical delivery method available to RasPi customers in order to reduce the percentage added on top of the unit cost for “delivery”.

they are *trade* counters. it is a courtesy that they provide to trade customers as part of their warehousing facility, not a shop.

they are rarely, if ever, zoned for retail – they *can’t* offer this facility to you if you are a retail customer.

I am not sure what “zoned for retail” means but the Southampton branch near me is located in a large retail park area and is larger than a typical Screwfix (who are quite happy to accept all customers). The 15 strong RS UK branch network is close to population centres so is reachable to a considerable proportion of UK customers in their normal travels. If the company is unwilling to extend “courtesy” to RasPi customers it is a pity it has been chosen rather than more retail focussed operations like Amazon or Play who can deliver a tiny £26 item without adding a whopping £6 for “delivery”. Or is this more about adding profit margin over and above the “profit inclusive” price agreed with the Foundation?

Raspberry Pi is amazing but I need more USB ports. Can I plug in the USB Hub into it?

Yes

What about Italy?

Indeed, Massimo, a very perceptive question, and one that deserves a full and complete answer, but I suspect that to do it justice we need a little context.

If you are referring to the pricing of credit card transactions at Farnell, there appears to have been an omission from the list of EU countries. I believe that Italy is still a member state (but I don’t claim to be an exert and you may like to check this point at your local town hall), in which case you can purchase goods at the UK rate of VAT and import them without further costs or (with more paperwork) you can buy at the VAT exclusive price and pay the Italian rate of VAT, but you need to be registered for Italian VAT. If you are not a business it is probably easier to just buy at the UK shipped price of £32.70.

RS in South Africa is still advertising http://za.rs-online.com/web/generalDisplay.html?id=raspberrypi at R259.20+VAT, which is a shade under $35. Also just under £21.60. Nice if they can hold to that.

Regarding the FARNELL prices, what about Greece? Is it the same (the price) as the other European countries or does “Rest of the World” apply in this case?

I just checked, Greece isn’t listed in the list of countries drop down box on Farnell’s/E-14 website, so I’d guess you and Cyprus are ‘Rest of the World’.

Bedtime for me!!

We have to contact Farnell to check it…

Sounds like UK users are subsidising world wide sales by paying unfair postage amounts and yet the charity was set up I thought to aid UK computer education as its no.1 priority. I thought the foundation originally planned to despatch the pi’s themselves. I’m sure all these issues will be resolved in time but I don’t understand a lot of decisions made.

The Raspi foundation gets the same amount of licence money for every board sold, wherever in the world. We did intend to distribute ourselves. But a zero employee charity isn’t really set up to sell multi 100k batches of product. We certainly cannot fund it. This distribution model takes a lot of strain from the Foundation, and means much larger batches can be made as Farnell and RS have much deeper pockets.

The Raspberry Pi is not really being provided for education users yet. That was never the intention. Personally, I would expect that limited numbers would go to educationalists and educational establishments over the next 3-6 months, but that serious use for teaching in the UK wouldn’t begin until the 2013/14 education year.

This first tranche is for early adopters and developers to have a chance to get hold of one in advance of them become available for mainstream education. That is when they will start to fulfil the Foundations aims. I’d hardly say the UK postage (which is what it is) is likely to subsidise ROTW prioces at all. The foundation DID originally intend to despatch them all themselves, but then plans had to be changed. Even with the much larger resources available to RS and Farnell, there have been early difficulties (now thankfully mostly resolved). Just imagine the situation had the worldwide distribution been based on somebody’s dining room table in Cambridge? I’d be surprised if anybody who wasn’t intimately involved with the decisions made would understand them – they don’t know all the facts and factors that had to be accounted for.

Dining room in Cambridge – yes definitely bad idea. Shipyard in China – yes definitely a much superior logistics distribution arrangement than RS and Farnell and shipping would have been $5 worldwide!

To be honest I’m a bit annoyed at the amount of Nerd-rage out there on this post.

I mean I’m as prone to Nerd-rage as the next man but SERIOUSLY? Did people seriously think that Tax and postage wouldn’t come into it? What part of “Base price” did people not understand?

The classic one for me had to be the guy complaining about being conned into paying more than the US as if this followed the same pattern as other shocking purchases. When Adobe software prices mean a £500 difference in price between US and the UK then I cry foul – but a £5 difference between the RS price for UK and US? I’d say it’s just down to different tax and delivery costs.

What people need to understand is that
a) Raspberry Pi need to make sure they have trusted distributors
b) Those distributors can’t be operating at a loss. It may surprise you to know that they need to pay for packaging and they need to pay the post offices or couriers real money for their postage. So go ahead and accuse them of profiteering if you will but I think you’ll find they are not. Raspberry Pi are a charity, but their distributors are NOT. Even a Chinese company would face tax, postage and packaging problems.

Of course if the R-Pi team had gone with a Chinese distribution then people would be moaning about something else – like possibly longer wait-times for their preordered R-Pis. Or maybe the price would be the same kind of price as now and everyone would be saying that they should have gone with a worldwide company.

I’d say even the most expensive option from Farnell is a heck of a lot cheaper than you used to have to pay for this kind of hardware. It’s tough that taxes and delivery costs in your country make it more expensive. It’s tough that Farnell have to have a minimum charge to stop them losing too much money from posting large amounts of small individual items but don’t confuse business logistics with corporate greed.

This is a CHARITY trying to work with big business but I might also add that they’re a charity who probably knows a bit more about how business works than the average person who posts comments here (Eben Upton most definitely does). Their main eventual aim will be educational, presumably with the schools and other educational establishments bulk ordering R-Pis in larger numbers.
They could have done this COMPLETELY differently. They could have waited for an educational release and sold only to schools, colleges etc.

Instead they spent a long time and a lot of care in trying to find a solution which gets R-Pis out to the general public in the most trustworthy, cost effective and efficient way they could and all the community can do is whine about stuff that the foundation have no control over.
Does anyone SERIOUSLY think that the R-Pi team didn’t look at all the price and distribution options before arriving at their decision?

You’re like a load of football fans moaning at their favourite team as if you could do better. Grow up!

Shame on you! Shame on you all!

Thank you, Sir!

You speak a lot of common sense. Unfortunately, common sense isn’t quite as common as we should perhaps expect!

Being a non-commercial organization, can you share with us the real cost of producing one board (BOM + production)?

No.

Might be worth making making an FOI request for that kind of information.

What? Why? You won’t get it as it’s confidential commercial information, which I believe isn’t covered by the FOI requests stuff (could be wrong – but try sending one to Apple for their BOM’s and see what happens). You will be able to look at the Charities financials when they are reported.

Yes there is a specific FOI exemption which covers commercially sensitive information. Also the FOI act only applies to public bodies and not companies or charities!

The Foundation is wasting enough time dealing with lawyers already. Adding to that burden would just make things worse.

I’m happy, as long as they can keep the per unit cost below what they charge for them. If they were to lose money on each one, that would kill the Pi.

I don’t know UK law, but I assume they will have to make some public filings every year to keep their charity status. Please, try to just patiently wait for them.

All of those unpaid volunteers won’t be getting rich off of this.

However, if any of them are going to be near Dearborn Michigan, USA, April 27-29th 2012, I will buy them a membership for Penguicon, an Open Source and Science Fiction Convention. Or I’ll buy them food or drink, in the likely event that they can get a free membership.

Careful, I’m proper British, and can drink my own bodyweight in beer.

re: BOM and profit. Raspi make a licence fee on every board. The distributors have a bit of margin. Neither is particularly high.

Insert American beer joke here.

I suspect that for the first few batches, the license fee, and margin are more than consumed by added costs. Everybody needed new servers. The Foundation and the distributors are repeatedly sending people to the factory to deal with issues. Every Pi from the first batch will have enough air miles to get an upgrade to first class.

This act can, of course, just spiral out of control.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is both a charity registered with the Charity Commission for England and Wales, and a private company, limited by guarantee, registered at Companies House. Both these HM Government agencies provide online details of the Foundation.

Finally, PayPal! I tried to order a PI from Farnell, but they wanted to store my CCard number. No way, Jose.

Why is the price in Canada so much higher (17.5% higher) than the USA? the CAD right now is about par with the USD. In fact, this morning, $40 USD = $39.61 CAD (http://www.xe.com/ucc/convert/?Amount=40&From=USD&To=CAD).

Canada probably has higher duty (so as to exploit other country less)

So this bare bones circuit board for $50-something, or a Roku 2 XS which is the same base hardware but comes ready to go with power supply, nice case, built-in WiFi and Bluetooth, great Bluetooth remote and the MPEG2 license for $99 delivered – or $89 if you use one of the frequent $10 off codes that show up.

The Raspberry Pi might have made sense at $35 or close to it, but at this price I think the Roku is better value. A decent power supply – remember the 700ma requirement – and decent case will push the Pi’s real price close to $70, that’s before you add WiFi and the rest.

Plus the Roku is available straight away!

Okay, so if the Roku is a better fit with your requirements, go buy it. That’l leave another ‘Pi for somebody who does want it.

So, if you want a Media device, the Roku is a good bet. Agreed.

If you want a Linux device? Not so good.

I’ve already got 3 Roku’s… I WANT PI!!! :)

mmm, can you guys check with Farnell/Elements14 Italy why they charge the “shipping” so much? As someone said before, it’s 9 euro + 21% (vat), which amounts to a wopping 10,89 euro for shipping a credit card sized piece of HW. This “shipping” cost is an extra cut to their profit -I’m almost sure it is- cause shipping I usually pay is like… less than half… Really, for equivalent price/size, that cost is outrageus. If I can get a 7 euro phone charger or a 50 euro printer free of shipping, I think you guys shuld check with them. Just so you know, over 19 euros amazon.it does free shipping, and big businness like farnell or RS does have conventions and discounts… /me ends rant, goes back to wait the RPi mode… [I’ll buy it anyway, but it’s a matter of principle. You guy did what you said, there shouldn’t be sinks in the middle. Right?]

i don’t see greece anywhere!

Odd, been in the news a lot recently……

It will go on the list of things that need investigating.

Greece is still a part of the E.U. and the VAT is 23%

Don’t think it’s the Foundation’s vision that is poor here.

Not sure how anyone imagined that a zero employee company ever promised to finance hundreds of thousands of ARM computers, ration them with perfect fairness, and drive down shipping costs world wide.

The foundation’s promised to design a computer that could be used in classrooms at $25/$35 per pop, which is exactly where they’ll be when schools can buy them in volume. In countries where free shipping for small orders is common or wherever retail locations eventually have stock even single orders will eventually be on par with bulk orders.

In the mean time early adopters buying single units have to queue up and pay the freight. Enjoy the ride or wait for volume orders in the Fall. If this isn’t your cup of tea leave it to the early adopters.

Hi,

Just out of interest, how much profit are the distributors making on each board and how profit are you making on each board?

Many Thanks
Stephen

Sorry, that is commercial information, so not going to be made public.

Can you tell us whether the phrase “take it or leave it” was used by either distributor during the negotiations? ;-D

James gets a shilling for every reply. That’s why he appears so helpful and tolerant. He’s rolling in it.

LSD and raspberry pie, who’d have thought? :)

Showing my age there – (Librae, Solidi and Denari), don’t remember farthings though.

Is there any word on when the Model A’s will be produced/be sold? Been holding out for those since I missed the initial rush and don’t really need a Model B now that the A has the same amount of RAM.

None yet.

“Currently we are restricted in selling to private individuals in Austria only.”

What’s up with that? I pre-ordered on the release date at RS. Does this mean that I won’t be able to order one considering that I live in the US? Will I have to wait longer?

Thanks in advance for any help.

That means that RS cannot sell to private individuals in Austria ONLY. Some sort of weird law they have. I agree, it’s badly worded.

Oooooh haha interpreting that way never crossed my mind. My question seems silly now. Thank you.

I think the issue was they needed to display prices inclusive of VAT to sell it to normal volks.

But this can’t be a serious problem. RS is running one global site serving all countries.

It doesn’t seem like RS wants to sell to private persons in Norway either.
While registering they’re asking me for company name and organization number (which you will have as a company or a registered organization – certainly not as an individual).
And they’re not optional.

I did have a similar problem with Farnell too, but can’t recheck right now since they’re down for system upgrade.

Pity if I can’t order without being a company (or org.).

You should be able to order as a non-company. I’ll add Norway to the list.

Hi James,
Thanks, can you add Farnell in Norway to the list too?
It’s possible to register and log in there, but when trying to check out it is asking for an account number (with Farnell) or, if you’re a new customer, an organization number.
Text on that same page states; “Note: Farnell is only selling to businesses (or organizations) [
…]” (translation is mine).
So no dice (nor Pis) in Norway it seems. :-(
(Unless there’s a ninja trick I don’t know about – not counting faking being an organization.)

The price update sounds nice, but when will RS actually be selling? All I can find, still, is the page where I can show my interest. I registered there on the morning, but no word. When will they actually start selling?

Farnell won’t sell to me because I’m in the Netherlands, where they only sell to companies. Will this be changed?

I missed out on the start of the sale because the announcement went out only a few hours before the actual start, both happening while I was asleep. Why no earlier announcement?

Secondly, in firefox the spam free plug in does not work for me, I have the password pasted in the password field, but it keeps giving me an error that I need to type in the password.

The Netherlands thing should be fixed soon if not already.
Sales will ramp up with production – which is hopefully getting going soon. There are a lot of backlog orders to get through.
There were plenty of warnings on the website that something was happening – about a weeks worth. Sorry you missed them.

I understand things were happening and the release was soon, but not everyone checks the website daily, and most that don’t at least expect to be able to get major updates by the mailing list, which is why we signed up for it in the first place.
Goodluck with the sales.

Polish price looks OK(it’s a bit lower that int he beginning) both from Farnell and RS. It’s also good news that the shipping will be the same if I buy additional accessories :-)
Hope to here some information about starting mass production.

This post might be a bit long but hear me out… (I’m getting on my soap box now…) I know a lot of people are complaining about shipping costs and taxes. Some people are angry about total cost and confusing practices between different distribution points of the R-Pi. I can’t explain every country’s import tax policies or every company’s shipping policies but I can give you some insight as both a consumer of goods of a foreign country as well as a seller of a few items (on e-bay) A company wants good customers which will make large purchases and would rather spend their time servicing those customers. Those customers will get preferred treatment like free shipping and discounted pricing. When someone makes a small purchase like the R-Pi you’re not going to be one of those preferred customers. You’ll pay shipping as a subsidy to those better customers who make repeat large orders. When I sold things on e-bay I can tell you that I would much rather sell a large quantity and provide free shipping because even when I pay shipping my profit margin is higher due to quantity. The selected distributers of the R-Pi are going to act in their own best interest to maximize profit and retain preferred customers. Unfortunately we who are buying one unit of something are not going to be on that preferred list of customers. Unless they want to perform an act of good will as a charitable contribution and sell the R-Pi for zero profit (for which they will get some benefit such as a tax deduction) I don’t think they’ll change any of their current policies around shipping charges.
As far as import taxes go, I’ve imported into and exported items from the US and can say that cross border tax duties are at best confusing and unfair. Sometimes it comes down to bribe in some countries to get lower import taxes and often it’s the whim of the tax inspector at the entry port as far as how much you might pay on an item. Everyone has to make a buck somewhere. Someone mentioned that here in the use we get “free” hardware. I think that the US has some very interesting import tax rules (the same as the UK which is why they were basically forced to manufacture in China.) As an example I ordered a small laser pointer from a US company which dropped shipped from the China manufacturer and paid only $US 0.60 delivered (yes that’s 69 cents.) You must consider that China has Most Favored Nation status for many imported items so we pay on duty on those items. As far as the $US 0.69 laser pointer I think they must be giving it away as I don’t see how they can cover their shipping cost.
I know things might seem to be out of control but the dust is still settling. Think about how things will be when the open source community figures out how to get enough parts to make clones of these boards and they’ll be available everywhere for a good price (and I hope they’ll give some back to the R-Pi foundation.) Running a business is a complicated process and from an outsider perspective I think that the R-Pi foundation is doing as good a job as can be expected. Don’t lash out at them for things beyond their control. (I’m off my soap box now  )
P.S. JamesH: Based on some replies you’ve made to posters I believe you have infinite patience and control.

I have three young children. This place is a picnic. Usually.

I have three young ones too. A boy 8 and two girls 5 years old. That’s how I recognized your patience.

Oooooh haha interpreting that way never crossed my mind. My question seems silly now. Thanks.

Hi all – One more data point. From USA. Newark emailed me and I ordered yesterday. Price and delivery details:

Your Merchandise Total $35.00
Your Freight Total $9.00
Your Tax Total $2.64
Your Order Total $46.64
Sale in USD

Expected Ship Date: 07/31/2012

No complaints, but I hope that delivery time will shorten up.

steve

Fourth attempt to reply … (This one from a win7 box; others were from Mac.)

Yeah, I am from Mexico, and I also ordered it to the US… cheaper, and faster

Some People need to get a grip.

To me it seems like the foundation has moved heaven & earth to make this as globally available as possible and at as low a price as possible. If you don’t like the price go elsewhere… oh hang on you can’t because it’s by far the cheapest SoC board out there even with tax & shipping.

Big, no, GIANT +1 on that!

Got a mail from RS 4 days ago that I was within the first batch and was wondering when my ‘buy now’ button would appear… Guess I’ll have to wait a few more days :)

Farnell keeps telling me that the price i should pay is 42€ and not the 38€, they just did today on email. Which one is the correct one? The one in this post includes all the taxes right?
Its my first time buying from Farnell and i have to say the experience is not the best and RS, even though i never used it before, also is not giving any news and doesnt let us put any orders ( i registered my interest on the 29th)

Sorry things are not going well. I suggest you contact Farnell to confirm which is the correct price.

Thanks for the reply.
I emailed them after the new price chart was posted on Farnell website(the same as in this post) because i didn’t want to pay the new or old price for nothing since it was a change and ask them which one was the price i should pay because the new one was lower and it specifically said that any higher price would be wrong. I provided them with the link to the chart/farnell page(just in case they didn’t know lol) and they still replied back that i should pay the 42€ and i should do the payment in order to secure my raspberrypi. Im really confused about what to do and i would just buy from RS, especially since they acept credit cards and is not just bank tranfer but they are not giving any news on it or when to do the order.

OK, will go on the list of things to investigate.

Thanks. I have been trying to get the sense behind the 42€ but i have done some math after the new prices and it doesnt make sense =/

The raspberry pi foundation doesn’t seem to understand that these companies are price gouging their customers by inflating shipping costs and charging US states tax for states that that they are not required to collect sales tax in… This will hurt all the hard work they have done so far. You need some one onboard that can understand this simple fact. – no offense to JamesH but you are severely unqualified to comment on half of the issues you have been addressing on behalf of the ‘Raspberry pi Foundation’ in this comment section. You know nothing about US states sales tax but are happy to confidently post incorrect information because you are friends with the ‘charity’ ? When US customers place an order from your UK based distributors they will wonder why they are being charged an illegal states tax. Mouser doesn’t Digikey doesn’t amazon doesn’t newegg doesn’t no one any US customer has ever heard of charges instate tax for states they do not have a distribution facility in….

please change your caption to Raspberry pi An ARM GNU/Linux box for $56 and all the confusion will be lifted. Good luck.

So special I’ve fired up virtual box just to reply…

“The raspberry pi foundation doesn’t seem to understand that these companies are price gouging their customers”

The foundation are a damned site more aware of business practices than a) you think. b) you.

“no offense to JamesH but you are severely unqualified to comment on half of the issues you have been addressing on behalf of the ‘Raspberry pi Foundation’ in this comment section. You know nothing about US states sales tax but are happy to confidently post incorrect information because you are friends with the ‘charity’ ?”

Wow, I’m not him, never met him, possibly never will. But, you comment should not start with no offence. Because you statement is certainly offensive. You know what JamesH knows? Clever trick.
Also, why ‘charity’ and not charity? And, volunteer worker would be much closer to the mark than friend.

“When US customers place an order from your UK based distributors”

It has already been pointed out that US folk will be ordering from US distributors (regardless of which website you use). Farnell certainly have a base in the US, and apparently RS do too (just under different names – face it Premier Farnell comes from the US Premier and UK Farnell merger). Therefore it’s most likely that the distributor you use will have a bricks and mortar* presence in your state.

“an illegal states tax…. amazon doesn’t”

If you’re so sure it’s illegal contact your local officials. And, as for Amazon not honouring the US sales tax system, please go backover the news from the past year or two. Amazon’s tax avoidance was quite noticeable at one point.

“please change your caption to Raspberry pi An ARM GNU/Linux box for $56 and all the confusion will be lifted”

The Raspberry Pi is still just $35. Plain and simple. postage and handling is more, appropriate taxes are more. That’s life, and as much as people may dislike it – that’s FAIR!

*Okay, it’s probably tin foil and cow dung, or whatever modern buildings are made from.

JamesH, you may have 3 kids and have learned patience. I have idiot managers and have lost it…. Also, there are issues with
posting under anything that isn’t IE! (damn it man, I’m a Gentoo user – life’s hard enough with out this type of hassle ;P )

I dunno about IE. I’m posting fine with Chrome (although pasting in to a comment window scrolls to the bottom of the page for some reason, but it does do it).

Steady_Bear said:
“So special I’ve fired up virtual box just to reply…”

That’s commitment – if there was a little thumbs up, you would get one :D

Why thank you :)

I tried Chrome under WinXP with no luck (although it won’t be up-to-date). I’m now also having trouble with IE.

Definitely doesn’t like copy and pasted passwords. Would it be possible to force just the password field to Courier or a similar fixed font, because I’ll be jiggered if I can tell the i’s from the l’s etc.

The trick is to log on in the forums. Then you can post comments on articles without the annoying and buggy spam free wordpress filter.

OK Greg, I’ve been really patient and tried to explain the concept of tax, handling and shipping to you, but now you are getting insulting. SO I am going to ban hammer you if you continue to post terms including the term ILLEGAL. I presume you are not a lawyer or a member of the law enforcement community, otherwise you would be a little less cavalier with your use of the word illegal. Accusing people of illegal activity could be regarded as libel and would lay you , and us if we didn’t do anything about it, open to a law suit, so I suggest, unless you have direct proof you are willing to put to your local police force, then you desist IMMEDIATELY.

As I said elsewhere, if you think a crime is being committed, I suggest you approach your local police force, or you could even approach Farnell/RS themselves to ask them the question you have been asking us – after all, they are the ones you are accusing of illicit behaviour. Note that the Raspberry Pi foundation is NOT responsible for the postage and packing cost of the distributors of the Raspi or their methods of tax collection. They have however contractually ensured that the price of the Raspi from the distributors is $25 and $35 BEFORE TAX and shipping as we have ALWAYS said. So our headline still stands.

i just want to touch on this quote
“They have however contractually ensured that the price of the Raspi from the distributors is $25 and $35 BEFORE TAX and shipping as we have ALWAYS said. So our headline still stands”

i think you need to change this to 25/35 GB Pounds NOT dollars.

there is not one price from either supplier that is under $35 before shipping and tax in ANY currency.

$47 Canada
$40 US
$50 Aus
$63 NZ

how exactly does $50 AUD equal $35 ? though it does convert to just under 35 GBP.

The boards are manufactured in $, so the translate the price to pounds involves a currency conversion, which would change the price ever second of every day. By having the price in dollars, only one currency conversion is required – that from the base price to the currency of the buyer. This conversion may be where you are seeing the disparity.

what is the currency of the base price? (which country)

The components are bought in US$, which is why the device price is in US$.

(it wont let me reply below your comment)
“The components are bought in US$, which is why the device price is in US$.”

ok, so how does $35 USD from the headline convert to $40 USD from the suppliers?

Are you sure your figure is correct? Which supplier, which exchange rate?

sorry James you are correct, the $40 USD from element 14 includes postage. so if you allow $5 for postage the raspi is indeed $35.

though if you use this method with the element 14 prices the postage is pretty inconsistent.

$47 Canada -$35USD = $12USD postage
$40 US -$35USD = $5 USD postage
$50 Aus -$35USD = $17 USD postage
$63 NZ -$35USD = $16 USD postage

Apparently Newark does have physical employees (sales staff working from home) in 40 out of the 45 US states that collect sales tax. From a post on Resellerratings.com:

“You were charged NJ sales tax because Newark does have physical presence in the state of NJ via work at home sales staff located there. Newark is registered in 40 of the 45 states that have a sales tax and is therefore required to collect sales and use tax in those states.”

Yes, it’s weird compared to other companies, but it’s certainly not cause for libel, and it takes about 2 seconds to find the above quote on Google.

and along those sames lines… if you wondered about sales tax from Allied Electronics, they have sales offices in these states (from their web site):
Alabama
Arizona
Phoenix
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Florida
Tampa Bay
Georgia
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Missouri
Nebraska
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New York
North Carolina
Raleigh
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
South Carolina
Texas
Utah
Virginia
Washington
Wisconsin

When did Phoenix, Raleigh and Tampa Bay become states? Did they secede?

They are not UK based distributors. You are purchasing from US companies if you are in the US. Look at my post above and Andrew and Dean’s posts below.

Greg, you ignorant slut. It most certainly isn’t an illegal sales tax. Please speak to any professional tax preparer about the illegality of you failing to pay any sales tax on out of state Internet based purchases. Better yet, write to your state’s treasury department and complain that you buy lots of things from out of state and pay no sales tax but these companies are trying to collect it from you. Be sure to include your address so they can easily track you down to reply and audit you.

Greg, stop being such a twat

Good Day! I know that most people even dont know about Belarus..
But…. can you say about price for my country? Thank you

Please contact RS and Farnell directly, my reading of the information Liz provided is:

RS
£21.60+4.90. Plus any tax, customs and duty that is payable.

Farnell element 14
£38.65. Plus any tax, customs and duty that is payable.

Again, please double check with RS and Farnell.

Looks like I may be one of the lucky few to actually get it for $35. I ordered from newark after they stopped adding the $20 fee with a free shipping coupon, and Oregon has no sales tax. I hope they keep or better their original 30-day delivery.

Sorry to be bordering again, but I don’t seem to understand the ‘fair’ in all this situation:
I just saw a post in reddit of someone that ordered at 7.14AM and another guy at 7.10. They are getting the first batch. My order that was canceled was made at 7h02 (not my clock, this is the information in farnell’s website).
My question is pretty obvios.. wasn’t I supposed to get one from the first batch to? Or because my order is from Farnell-Spain I don’t have the opportunity to have one from the first batch?

I’m asking this question here knowing this is not directly your business, but would be great if when in contact with farnell/element14 to ask if different countries have different priorities.

I’d suggest following up directly with Farnell, supplying them with a copy of the order confirmation you received.

What do you mean by directly to farnell? I’ve sent a ton of emails to them(farnell-spain).. they answer when they feel like it, and the answers are like very very short and kind of rude.

Is there an email of farnell that’s not the local distributor?

Their head office is in the UK. Try http://uk.farnell.com/jsp/content/freetoair.jsp?content=contact

^^ there is live support and twitter contact details on that page as well as telephone, snail mail and email contacts.

I was not sure they’re head office was in UK.

The live chat is pretty useless.. tried it two times, and they always told me they didn’t had access to my data..

Will send them an email but I have a feeling it won’t solve anything.

Tks for your help :)

Sometimes, life just isn’t fair. Through no fault of my own, I couldn’t even get on to either distributors’ site all morning, but hey, It’s not the end of the world. As long as I get my ‘Pi by Dec 21.. :)

That would be kind of fine, if I hadn’t paid already for it, when the delivery date was acceptable (26 of march)

They’ve actually charged your card for it? Sorry, I didn’t realise thay had taken the money. In which case, you do need to speak to them directly.

Just received confirmation of registration of interest from RS, having registered with them and confirmed with chat to customer representative on 29/2 …

21.60 GBP = 41.2731 NZD. Also, as the Australians have been saying, sales tax should not apply for items in this price range.

It seems to be excessively over-priced for NZ, coming in at NZ$ 70.45.

I have ordered much larger and heavier products from China and did not have to pay so much for delivery. Shame about the price gouging, it kind of takes all the respect away, which tarnishes the experience and reduces my desire to purchase thru these channels altogether.

From Element 14s Terms and Conditions: For all orders over $45 where the weight is less than 20kg, delivery is free.

That $70.45 quoted here *includes* $14.95+GST delivery.
It should be more like $55.50 NZD

It costs me 20 bucks more to buy from element14… whats with their Aussie hate? Lucky I registered with RS, save me a heap!

Different companies – different delivery protocols, different company structure, different price.

Simples.

Has anyone actually got an email from RS yet to say right you can now order your rpi on date X and using instructiond Y.

I registered interest around 6.08 on launch day and received a few acknowledge emails and updates from RS but nothing to say right you can now buy it now.

RS are just being so vague at the moment.

This whole situation with the distributor issues is why I decided to wait this one out.

Probably by the time this thing is actually shipped in adequate volume for me to even “start” to consider ordering one there will be a new “Improved” model, or, better yet, a Chinese knock-off at half the price with FREE shipping!

First adopters of technology always lose from a value prespective. . .

I already have several ARM devices so I can wait out the mess. . .

Please post a note next year on the blog here when the Raspi can actually be ordered and shipped with no waiting.

Admit it Liz and Eben, this whole release thing has been a bit of a mess – sorry to say.

@JamesH

You seem almost as good at damage control PR on this post as you are with the tech stuff! You should get a promotion to VP! ;)

AU Farnell still hasn’t updated their price. Just ordered off the site; Pi, HDMI cable and USB hub for $50, hopefully they honour that price.

Last week they had the part# and pricing for the bundle and accessary pack live. It has now been removed from public view, though if I could recall the part#’s they might still be searchable.
IIRC correctly, the Pi ‘B’ including keyboard/mouse, hub, leads,Wifi adapter, 4GB SD card was around the AU$65.00 mark and the accessary pack around AU$29.95.

Before this post this was started:
http://elinux.org/RPi_Buying_Links_By_Country#Pricing_and_ETA_By_Country
It’s probably still useful to anyone who falls under on the “contact us” part of the chart.

Great product! Hope everything calms down with the pricing.

Looks like Element14 got the math wrong on sales tax for New Zealand. 7.24 is approx 11.5% of 63.21. Sales tax (GST) in New Zealand is 15%, it used to be 12.5%.

RS Components price is a lot sharper about $NZ10 less when everything is taken into account.

A little surprised to see the $35 is pre-sales tax. I guess I didn’t read the fine print. And have to agree with other comments, that both suppliers seem to be gouging with P&P.

One way to get goodwill back would be to announce a third distributer that is dedicated towards matching the expectations of your fans.

Hmm I hadn’t noticed that but I believe I can answer. They missed calculating tax on the $14.95 delivery charge as well. because 15% of $48.26 is $7.239

In Thailand (http://th.element14.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?sku=2081185) nothing has changed, they still overcharge 750 thb for shipment. (15,60 UK £). I am still waiting this issue to be solved before placing an order. Thais love money ;-)

Shipping tax gone ! :-) Happy !!!

I would like to say that this is taking way to long for the 2 distributors to start shipping these. I would really like to have one and every day the price gets higher here in the US. This is now pushing me to buy something with a more robust ARM processor here at a lower cost and install Ubuntu on it. I can buy an Xbox and install Linux on it for allot cheaper than this board is now costing. There are phones out there that have Screens, USB, Bluetooth, and better Arms. Great job at ruining a great product with greedy Distributors. Real thinkers there.( Note: i was really excited about this Just so you know, Now i see the greediness in it.) Please look back to why you made these in the first place. The sale boom will only last for a bit and those suppliers will not sell them if people don’t buy them.

Think you are being somewhat over dramatic tbh. Its not just a question of shipping stuff, they all need to be manufactured first, and that sort of thing has a lead time, esp. in the large quantities required.
If you would be so kind as to post a link to the cheaper more powerful device, I sure many would be interested. And just a quick footnote – at this stage, the distributors are making very little profit whatsoever. Greed doesn’t come in to it.

An Xbox for under $35 (+ shipping etc.)? I might even get one at that price.

JamesH et al: my guess is the Foundation, when initially planning the launch, expected the first batch of 10k to take a while to sell, with a slow ramp up of demand up to the school year, and the growth of the mailing list to 100k plus was a welcome but unnerving surprise.

For those who expected an Apple-style launch, with enough product to meet 80% of demand on day 1, with a few weeks wait to the next batch, Apple has $100-billion in the bank. I think the Foundation members would have had to mortgage a few more houses to do this any better. Or bring in vulture capitalists, most of whom are not very charitably inclined.

80% on day 1 in hindsight looks like 400,000, but let’s be conservative, and assume the size of the mailing list suggested 100,000 at most needed to be ready to ship on day 1. With a ballpark manufacturing cost of $20 per board (I hasten to add, I don’t know the actual number), making 100,000 requires either $2,000,000 up front, or the ability to persuade suppliers to grant that much credit. If the Foundation had the market research $$ to work out that demand on day 1 was 500,000, the cost of a batch that size would be of the order of $10-million.

How would all those who think the Foundation bungled the launch have gone about getting that right, including allowing for contingencies like production glitches in the first batch? Practical answers please, we’ve exhausted the other kind.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. This is much better; by which I mean it is cheaper, simple to navigate, and gets rid of a large uncertainty. I’m still not sure the excessive shipping has disappeared on the Farnell sites, but I think I’ll order now, and trust this page to resolve the differences.

These suckers!
Why in the World is Austria the ONLY f***ing country where you can’t get the Pi as an individual?

Why? To keep people dumb and force them to buy overpriced bloated hardware?
Or maybe it’s only a trick of the Government? Keep them (people) dumb and they’re still happy with an incompetent Government …

I don’t know why just Austria. You would need to ask RS that, but it’s going to be some weird law or other.

Do you have any further information from RS on this topic?
As you probably know Austria is not the only country that has laws requiring tax to be included in consumer prices. In Austria it’s called PrAG (Preisauszeichnungsgesetz). Germany has the PAngV (Preisangabenverordnung) which would prevent the German RS Components from selling to consumers as well.

No.

I could claim an unfortunate crystal ball failure. But its not that, just the usual amount of time it takes to get information out of people/companies. At this stage, Austria is the only place RS say they cannot sell to private individuals. They know lots more about it than we do, so you really need to speak to them.

Why would a law requiring taxto be included stop you from selling to an individual? Sweden has it and it doesn’t stop companies here. Not selling to individual is a business decision only as far as I can tell and has absolutely nothing to do with taxes. If the company prefers it can list prices for individuals with tax and for businesses without tax. As done by many companies.

Why are you asking us that? It’s RS who are not selling to Austrian individuals, not us. Bearing in mind Austria is the only country in this situation…

Aaccording to RS Austria website: http://at.rs-online.com/web/generalDisplay.html?id=raspberrypi
It is (or will be) available, for €27,43 and “company name” is not a required field on the express an interest page, which would indicate it WILL be available to individuals. Can anybody explain where this “Austria can’t sell to individuals” claim originated? It is probably not a legal point, as Austria is covered by the same harmonisation rules as the rest of the EU.

From the message from RS on the Raspi home page (and presumably on the RS website somewhere as well)

“* – Currently we are restricted in selling to private individuals in Austria only.”

Furthermore Farnell Austria seems happy enough to sell to individuals as it seems you can pay by credit card and when you register at the site you can even register as Priva/Bastler i.e. Private/DIYer.

James, my response was not to “us” but the original poster that claims a Raspberry Pi cannot be bought in AT by an individual. The original post does not mention RS as far as I can see and Farnell sells to individuals. Just trying to be helpful and point out that there is a possibility to order for individuals in AT as well…

@UrSv From the mail RS sent me after I filled out their form:
“Aus rechtlichen Gründen ist es uns nicht erlaubt, Bestellungen von Privatpersonen zu bearbeiten und auszuliefern, da unsere Preise exkl. MWSt. ausgewiesen sind.”
On legal grounds we cannot accept orders from private customers because the prices displayed do not include value added tax. (my translation)
I agree with you that it’s a business decision not to sell to the general public. In my opinion they should write that into their mails and not hide behind the law.

Can I venture a guess?

Here in Holland we have “retailers” and .

Historically, the non-retailers do not WANT to sell to individuals. They like big boxes of many items at a time.

The companies that are in that kind of business get founded into a construct that allows them to do that what they want: sell to other businesses. Apparently they are able to deliver to normal individuals just fine in most countries.

For example, when your primary customers are individuals, you HAVE to publish tax-included prices. If your primary group of customers is businesses you can quote tax-excluded prices.

Here in Holland, Farnell is still selling mostly to businesses. So they are allowed to publish tax-excluded prices. But it seems that they are legally allowed to do so, as they have been doing this for some time already. On the other hand, they clearly don’t LIKE doing it. Minimum order quantity and you have to order by Email, cannot use the website.

So, in conclusion: what I think is going on in Australia is that the way their company is registered does not allow them to sell to individuals.

Just had a look at the german RS site. The prise given there is € 27,43 which is a bit less than $36. Furthermore in the delivery section of the site it is clearly written that online purchases with standard delivery are free of charge. That would be just amazing if true.

Italy not yet updated raspi 27,07, shipping 9,00, VAT 7,57 –> total 43,64 €

OT: Happy Pi Day to everybody at Raspberry Pi

And I was hoping to get my Pi on Pi Day…. I guess I’ll have to wait patiently for Pi more Months to get my Pi… :)

£4.95 standard global shipment price is a joke, especially if your in the UK, the real cost of sending something that small would be around a pound and most online retailers don’t even charge for postage.

They have clearly done this to make more profit as they know this is hot ticket item and what to get as much as they can out of people near to or in UK. Of course they cleverly sell it as making the process more ‘streamlined’, yeah I’ve heard that one before!

Was going to order the minute these were back in stock but might just wait till they are common place available everywhere because I can already see this aim of keeping it accessible and a charity scheme is being exploited with inflated prices.

Also I don’t see why VAT should be charged on the item if the charity doesn’t have to pay any VAT to sell it. In such a short space of time this couldn’t have moved further away from the $25-30 aim. I want it in my hand for £19 as it should be.

You seem to misunderstand VAT. That has to be paid on anything (whoever sells it) at the rate applicable to the item. In the UK, VAT on devices like the Raspi is 20%. No exceptions. If you have a problem with that, you need to talk to your MP. The VAT is charged at point of sale, and the money is passed from the distributor to the government. The Foundation doesn’t get involved.

£4.95 for postage and packing doesn’t seem to bad to be honest. Try thinking of what is involved in getting that device from the factory in China, via a plane, many lorry trips, various warehouses, all the way to your front door. £4.95? For something that came from China? Not bad.

JamesH, I wish I could have your level of patience, I really, honestly do.You are to be commended.

You were never going to get one for £19, at exchange rate your looking at over £22 to start, and you were always going to pay VAT. Shipping is up for a little debate, but its a standard sort of fee. Guess what, you dont have to pay it, either dont buy one or wait until theres a more fluid supply and this item is in the normal.

You think the Foundation could have arranged shipping for 10k items to the four corners of the world? Three or four around Liz’s Kitchen table, stuffing jiffy bags? How many weeks would that have taken? Then add cost for Royal Mail/TNT/Parcel Force/ParcelNet to ship…? oh.

The aims of this project are not effected at this point as the educational groups will bulk buy from source, probably 2013 (realistically) with all this way behind. Those buying now aren’t the target, they are tech-junkies wanting the lastest toy. Few Pi’s will end up in the hands of those developing and documenting the seed applications. Complaining about shipping fees and no VGA port instead.

Frankly, th mistake the Foundation has made is making the item available world wide, over promoting, and not managing expectations. The lesson learnt is to not announce anything to the world, they should have emailed through the list to allow those genuine interested first dibs, tell everyone else to wait 3 months.

/rant. sorry, just annoyed at two paged of needless complaints from people who probably just want a toy computer.

Well said, Sir!

Totally agree…..ebay will be full of RPi’s soon bought by people who have no idea of what they’ve got or even bothered to read the FAQ. As you said, it’s a total shame the the people who have contributed to the forums and understand what the device is have not been favoured (for the first batch) over the people who just want a cheap toy.

>100k people on the mailing list (ie those who expressed an interest before the release). Still too many people for too few boards. There were always going to be problems with people thinking they are more of a right to the boards than others.

It’s not a case of “having more of a right”. I have no more “right” than anyone else. I would have thought that it makes more sense for the Foundation and the community at large to put the devices in the hands of people who will run with them and feed their experience and skills back to the forums than to someone who will sit it on their coffee table and use it to watch films.

Agreed….

Also, for the record.

Farnell ES that sells Raspberry PI to Portugal charges:
Raspberry Pi, Model B 27.07€
S&H 9.00€
TAX 6.49€
Total 42.56€

Payable via bank transfer, and as they don’t normally sell to private buyers, nothing else can be put in the shopping cart. Not even the board extras like SD card…

Yep.. that’s what I paid for mine. And for your information so you won’t make the same mistake as I did (if you don’t want to), your pre-order is canceled after they receive the payment and they make you a new one. So basically when this happens you just loose your place on the queue. I ordered at 7.12AM 29/03 and my ETA is for the end of june (just great), when I know of people who ordered from uk.farnell minutes later and are receiving one of the first batch.

Im glad you mentioned this because I didn’t paid for mine right away because of all the discussion about prices and all that but i have been considering just paying and forget about it but if its like this i will wait for RS to let us order, i even registred my interest before i placed the order on Farnell ( i could probably had one from the first batch because i was there at 6.00 but i read that wasn’t the correct page =/)

It’s nice to know now when we can expect to even be attempting to possibly, maybe, place an order. If we were in the first 5000.

Oh wait. We’re absolutely no closer to knowing that. At all.

Yup, my patience with RS is starting wear thin. If there is bad news, I’m a big boy. But being kept in the dark for so long is starting to wind me up.

I ordered at 37$ CDN, but element14 said they’d charge me for shipping when ready.
I assume that means it’ll be something like 5-10$ shipping, and not something like 25$?

likely $57.59 total, look at the wiki link just up the page

Will there be any way to not have to pay the 57$? I assumed it wouldn’t be anything like that much, considering nothing else I order that weighs more or is more breakable costs that much…
If it’s actually more than 45$, I’d rather just not buy it yet anyway…
Sadface.

Farnell is unpuzzling the Aussie quote:

@Raspberry_Pi Good news for Australians – @element14 have just been in touch to tell us they’re reducing the price of Raspberry Pi to $38 AUD.

I was up at 6am to get a board (actually at 5:45).. but didn’t have the good luck. I wound up calling RS, and was told that they can’t sell to me because I am not a business. :( They asked me to send them an email with my info, which I did, and now have recieved a very non-binding email about how they are glad about me showing interest in the RPi, and that they will let me know when I can order, without being any more specific as to say that they will go through their list in the order that they recieved the requests. I don’t want to sound critical of the RPi team (you guys are awesome!), but I hope in the future (like with the camera) there might be some different way of doign this? I was planning since last summer to us a RPi/camera setup for a project this summer, and now I really have no idea if I will be able to get the components by then. Information is so important, even if it is to say “no, you won’t be able to”.

Maybe Liz or someone else from the Foundation go onto Dragons Den? They would soon sort out all this for ya. :D

Why would the price for mexico before taxes be 25% higher than mostly any other country?

I’m in California, just bought 2 from Element 14. Total is $83.84 including tax and shipping.

Expected ship date is August 2, 2012. So much for planning to use it before summer…

Can anyone from the Foundation indicate when the reworked boards will be arriving at RS and Farnell?

The Korea price, W70,050, is particularly egregious. In Korea we get to pay $62 for the $35 computer.

As many of us are aware the RS website failed to record a lot of the early registrations. Looking at their FAQs RS appears to be saying that anyone affected should re-register and effectively go to the back of the (long) queue. Surely there must be a better way…

Sorry to put the hassle on the poor RP people (I know you’re doing all you can to help) but I have been unable to get a response from RS on the subject.

I’m not quite sure what a better way would be. Those initial registrations were lost, permanently, so it’s difficult to see what else is possible.

After reading the entire 2 pages

All i can think of is….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-j3xITvYQY

Of course, Pink Floyd are also a Cambridge phenomenon….draw your own conclusions.

@JamesH

HAH! I hadn’t even thought of that! Brilliant.

Why? as has been mentioned on here many times already, although there have been some wrinkles, which are being ironed out, after tax and distribution overheads, NOBODY is making inordinate profits on the sales of Raspberry Pi – in fact, it is only a very modest profit – if any.

You’ve answered your own question. Tax goes to the government and the reset is overhead and a bit of profit. It takes people to put these things on the shelves and take them off the shelves and into boxes. Even if the warehouse is automated you have to pay for machinery and maintenance and electricity, etc. If you think of the cost of something and think of every hand it passes though from the manufacturing to the customer, every step of the way someone is taking a bit of the money to cover their own costs and a few pennies profit. No one makes a ton of money off sales unless you either own the whole process from manufacturing to delivery or you make something for about nothing and mark it up to a very high price.

I cannot believe that people are quibbling over loose change. If it works out as $40, $50 or $60 after shipping and taxes, I don’t really care. I’d have been happy to buy 2 and be forced to donate 1.

I agree.
I spend more than this on beer with friends on a friday night ;)
It’s peanuts.

If a factor of 2 or 3x is loose change, then you might as well pick up a BeagleBone for $89 (including accessories: 2GB microSD/adapters, cable). You gain a more powerful ARM processor (although you downgrade the GPU to SGX530). And it’s currently stock at all of your favorite electronics distributors.
The value of RaspPi is the ultra low price and the snazzy graphics.

Sorry….I perhaps didn’t make myself clear (there’s no perhaps!). I would be happy to pay $40,$50 or $60 for a $35 board or be obliged to buy 2 and give one away for the first batch to get the Foundation established. After that I would want to pay $35 + shipping + taxes. The idea of a $35 is probably the most appealing aspect of the device. It opens up the world to a whole new set of products. I dreamt of a TomTom type device a long time before they were available, as I’m sure a lot of other people did. Satnavs only became a proposition when the LCD displays and 32bit embedded processor came down to a price point that a consumer would pay. This is why RPi will be a game changer. The killer price will, I’m sure, lead to killer products.

Hi Liz !

just to let you know

https://twitter.com/#!/tariqkrim/status/180274813628203010

hope your knee is fine !

Guys,
I think that it is time to move on.

The rs website in Australia shows me AUD38.

This is about USD40 so guess that this covers import duty which is applicable if the goods are imported into Australia by RS.

10% GST is payable if I buy in Australia. If I order direct from a company OS then it is not.

an additional charge of $12-13 for shipping is ott but RS says they have free shipping on their oz site. http://australia.rs-online.com/web/generalDisplay.html?id=promotions&file=freedelivery

If I understand all of that then I can get a model B for $42 AUD in my hand in Australia.

The posted price of $55 in this thread (provided by RS) seems to be out of line with what they are actually doing and has provoked some long discussions.

[ADDENDUM : This means the only place individuals cannot buy from RS is Austria.]

Is this temporary?

We are not sure why this restriction is in place (it may be a legal or commercial decision), so cannot comment on timescales I am afraid.
However, I believe another Austrian said that the other distributor was able to sell to Austria, so I suggest you try there as well.

I asked this of RS Austria, and got the following reply:

Thanks for your question.
Due to legal requirements we are not allowed to trade with private individuals.
Our customers here in Austria are aware of that as this is the case for the whole product range, not only for the Raspberry Pi.
We’re currently reviewing all options and try to find a solution for those who are interested in the Raspberry Pi.

I suspect it may be something to do with the way the Austrian company was originally registered with the Austrian authorities, but they are aware of the issue, and the demand, and are doing what they can. ;)

[Edit: I wonder if purchasing from RS Germany is an option for those in Austria?]

“[Edit: I wonder if purchasing from RS Germany is an option for those in Austria?]”

It sure is an option, if they really ship to Austria.

Não se percebe porque tem um preço diferente para uk e para o resto da europa.
The price are diferent in uk and europe because….

Great news from Farnell (UK) ! Mid April delivery !
http://imgur.com/lvu88

For what it’s worth, i got the email below from RS about an hour ago. Doesn’t do me much good because I’m in the US and have already placed an order with Newark (the US Farnell connection) on Feb 29. Over on the Newark site, my order is still listed as expected ship date of March 30, with follow-on stock available on August 4 (!!!).

Dear customer
Congratulations! We’re contacting you to let you know that we’re shortly going to invite you to place your order for a Raspberry Pi. We now need to get a few more details to tell us where you want your Pi delivered to. This will help us get a Raspberry Pi to you as quickly as possible.

Add my details now!

To help ensure as many people as possible can experience the Raspberry Pi concept, we are initially limiting boards to one per customer, on a first come, first served basis. To make sure we’re able to invite you to place your order soon, please complete this information by Tuesday 20th March 2012. Please note: we will be accepting payment via Visa, MasterCard (credit or debit cards included) or PayPal.
To get the latest updates on Raspberry Pi from RS, follow @RSElectronics on Twitter, or visit our FAQ pages at RS Online or DesignSpark.
Thank you for your continued interest and once again many congratulations.

Could you please specify the exact means of shipping? What companies are used by RS?

Royal Mail?
DHL?
UPS?

Regarding shipments to Germany, Royal Mail or DHL would be great choices as both companies can ship to Packstation addresses, a great way to receive packages without the hussle to wait in line to pick it up in a postal office, if delivery at home is not preferred or possible. UPS / FedEx / and similar companies can not ship to Packstation addresses. More info about Packstation at http://www.packstation.de .

You’d have to check that with RS. for example, HERE

We have no influence over the distribution method used by the distributors. And I don’t know which methods they are using.

Check this for more info on delivery in Germany.
http://de.rs-online.com/web/generalDisplay.html?id=aboutRS&file=delivery

Italy is missing! Is part of europe xD

You all are just lucky. I registered myself on 4th of March. And I haven’t even been contacted.

need to buyusb port

I want to buy Raspberry Pi Model B, but I was in Viet Nam how to buy it

You need to go to the Farnell or RS website linked on front page of the site here. They should be selling worldwide.

model a has 256 mbram,one usb port no ethernet(network connection) and model b has 256mb ram,2 usbportsand one ethernet port. order and price

Sorry? Not sure what you are asking.

I am sure that a lot of us don’t know exactly where we are at the moment, particularly here in the U.K.

I ‘expressed my interests’ with both Farnell (Element 14) and RS at about the same time early in March… although not as early as I should have done. Neither initially came back to me, but I did eventually manage to place an order with them, for an estimated delivery date of mid-June.

RS did eventually contact me and although I have now received a couple of emails from them, I have not been allowed to actually place an order with them yet.
However I have a feeling that when I can eventually do so that I might in fact be given an earlier date than the one I have from Farnell.

Presumably I am not the only one in this position?

I don’t seem to be able to edit the above post, but just to clarify, it is only Farnell with whom I have so far been able to place an order.

Probably not. We are trying to sort everything out.

Placing an order with Farnell means nothing. I did it once and they cancelled without any reason (asking a bank transfer instead of my credit card). Then they cancelled it because someone didn’t read my e-mails and started doing things without my permission.

I wish RS experience will be better. If not there is not going to be raspberry Pi in my agenda. I was really trying to give my little help to the foundation but I cannot do it if I have to pay this kind of nonsense companies in the middle.

Do we really want to know where we are in line?
Spoiler Alert! (from Beetlejuice) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPwGvzhUkB0

Probably the sellers are holding off on taking orders so that they are able to fulfill orders within a certain time period.

Any news on the refitting of the initial batch?

Hi All,

Liz and James you are Trojans. Keep up the hard work of dealing with people that neither read not think. :)

I had a long chat with a lady from Element 14 in Australia last week.
She confirmed that they will be supplying the Pi with no freight charge here.
BTW: Official clarification of this should be forthcoming in the next day or so I believe.

So current Australian pricing should be……
AU$38.76 + 3.87gst = $42.63

We need to keep in mind, companies like RS and Farnell (Element 14) normally pick and fix an average exchange rate for a period of time (ie: it may not be the best available right now) and also they have to pay fees to exchange currency.
So hypothetically if us$35 = au$35 then including exchange costs it would end up more like us$35 = au$36.5 (about 4% costs)
On top of this we need to add import duties and freight costs to import.

All in all au$5.73 is a not unexpected (and IMHO very reasonable) price to pay for currency exchange charges, import duties, and import freight.

i am so confused ??? where is the us vendor for purchasing of the raspberry pi unit ?

See in the blog entry:
“our worldwide distribution partners, Element 14/Premier Farnell and RS Components”
and follow the links from there…

WOW! crazy for a non-profit! raising the price way up ! madness, I don’t don’t even want one now, there are a lot of other devices out there that can do way more for only a fraction more in price, and guess what? they don’t keep raising the price up and up and up! just bought a zbox nano ad10+ it runs slackware 13.37 awesome, my wife bought me a openpandora witch also is way awesome! yeah I spend a lot more but guess what? the price for the zotac zbox nano was pretty much set and the openpandora was set too! VERY DISAPPOINTING!

What are you talking about? We haven’t raised the price. $25 or $35 plus appropriate taxes and shipping, as has always been the case.

Well, one of the distributors is showing it for $40 + shipping and tax, the other is in Sterling at 35+ shipping at taxes, witch is about U.S. $55 + shipping and tax, so pretty sure that’s not the U.S. $20 it was suppose to go for originally maybe you can help me with the math., so like double?

The $40 USD price from Farnell includes shipping. RS charges £21.60 GBP not £35 GBP. £21.60 GBP is equal to $34.31 USD. The price quoted on this website has been $25 USD for model A and $35 USD for model B. Model B is the model that RS and Farnell are selling at this time. Shipping and taxes were always going to be extra because they differ for different people around the world. I have never seen $20 for model A or B quoted anywhere on this website.

Let me explain again, the base prices have always been $25 (Model A) and $35 (Model B) (where did you get the $20 figure from?). You need to add shipping and tax to that, which will depends on which country you are in.

Can you post a link to the distributor that is saying the BASE price is $40? You do appear have got some completely wrong figures there. I suggest you look again at the correct websites and prices for YOUR country so you avoid having to make any exchange rate calculations.

You need to read again!!! IT says $35 SHIPPED!!!

The $400 Nano AD10 plus does, indeed, run slackware awesome. And is that the Open Pandora that took preorders in 2008 but didn’t ship till 2010 and some preorders have still not been fulfilled and then they increased the price for “premium orders” i.e. queue jumpers Open Pandora? Way awesome indeed :D

I’m not sure, but I think I may have detected a touch of sarcasm in that post.

openpandora was not a premium price, just paid the full price when the email came out, got it with in a week of full payment, that was about three weeks ago. found out about openpandora back in August, its super awesome!

How come no one told you about the Allwinner SoC?
http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/

Try aliexpress and search for “allwinner android 4” – that could help you while away the time while waiting for the RasPi to arrive. :)

Seems nice. Does DDR3 controller mean that memory is separate and thus the system cost will be higher?

I don;t think anyone knows about system cost, because there are no systems available to the public. AFAIK.

why is sales tax being charged in individual states in U.S.? In U.S., only if you have a physical presence (store front, warehouse, sales office, etc.) in a particular state can a state force a manufacturer/distributor to collect taxes on its behalf. Otherwise, Supreme Court ruled more than ten years ago (quill case) that companies can’t be forced to collect “use” taxes for other states. That fight still goes on today (because the ruling still stands). Please stop collecting taxes for U.S. states when it isn’t required, it only raises our costs on this great hardware….now, if I can get it to work with asterix for a soho…

It is, as you say, because the distributors DO in fact have employees present in the majority of US states. It is therefore necessary for these taxes to be collected. I’m not a USA citizen, but whilst it is possible for individuals to declare the tax themselves in their annual returns, it is, I believe common practice in the USA for companies to collect and declare sales tax accordingto the local rates determined by each state, and RS and Farnell are both doing so as part of their established business processes across the USA. This is not something that is under the control of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. The blog entry gives the following contact for the USA regarding local taxes; Subject to local state / provincial taxes & regulations – (please contact salestax@newark.com for details)

RS and Farnell (Element 14) do have presence in most US states. If you feel this is not the case for your state you need to approach the distributors and ask them about it.

Hi Guys

Is there any update on when the reworked boards will arrive back in Blighty?

My order stated the my Pi would be shipped on the week commencing 12/3/12 which has obviously overrun.

Anyway keep up the good work.

Yours patiently

Mike

I agree…An indication of where the boards actually are would be a start. China/UK.

I deal with difficult customers every day. Invariably they are patient even in the face of bad news. The only time they get annoyed is when they are kept in the dark. If there is bad news, let us know. Just don’t keep us in the dark, otherwise you run the risk of undoing all of the good will that you’ve generated. Has there been no news at all to report in the last week as the last entry page was 13th?

Well I believe Liz went on holiday last week. She updated twitter a few times, but not with anything related to news about RPI, and the last tweet about a cat was on the 16th. No sign of life from any foundation member that I can find since then.

Getting so depressed everytime I go in here as I think about how great it will be to have a RPI, and then I remember that I won’t have one for several months to half a year judging by available information.

I really hope that the recent lack of communication from the Foundation and extended lead times from the distributors doesn’t result in the forums losing their momentum, but I feel that it will. If hardware doesn’t start to get into people’s hands in the next month, I feel that large numbers of people will start to turn away from the RPi and there could well be a backlash in the media. I certainly hope that this doesn’t happen, but I’ve a horrible feeling in my water that it will….I will try and stay positive, but it’s hard.

Looks like the Pi is going into the space :-)

http://thepiratebay.se/blog/210

You guys how got the luck to be one of those 10000 who gets a peace of the Pi from RS Components, have you got yours yet or recived your “invite to buy” url from RS components. I’m still waiting for mine.
Have anyone here any news about this?

i had got 3 emails from RS Components Denmark, but no buy-URL, yet.

I think i will phone RS tomorrow, and ask some questions. The sales/support people is doing a very good service is my professional experience.

Ahh ok, reply the answer if you get hold of them. ;)

element14 what about Italy, did you forget about us?
Whatever, the project is cool and I’d like to get some boards, I’ll wait ’till I can get some from a reasonable seller[1], let’s say Amazon or Futura Elettronica or Watterott.

1. One that did not let me dry after waking up at 6:30 and never respond to emails and has some clue about customer management.

Amazon is a smaller company than RS Components and Farnell.
Amazon is only selling already manufactured electronic, RS Components and Farnell is capable of manufacture RPi’s from scratch.

Please understand that everything has a lead time. I guess that you, as an end-consumer, really don’t understand the amount of time it does takes to produce stuff from scratch.

Amazon is about ten times the size of RS components. Not that that necessarily makes them good at building Raspberry Pi thought…

I’m happy to wait as long as it takes. I am also happy to pay what seams a reasonable amount for delivery. Keep up the good work.

It’s been a full day since Retrode pointed out the Allied stub headline (“Raspberry Pi not really real”) and it’s still there. You might want to report this to RS or Allied. Looks like Allied got ‘slacked’ or ‘hacked’. The link is on that headline is just circular.

Retrode : @Raspberry_Pi http://www.alliedelec.com/images/Products/mkt/lp/1203/resources/news.html Strange headline in distributor’s news, “Raspberry Pi not really real” – someone a bit frustrated there?

Pithonica: @alliedelec hacked? RT @Retrode @Raspberry_Pi http://www.alliedelec.com/images/Products/mkt/lp/1203/resources/news.html Strange headline in distributor’s news, “Raspberry Pi not really real”

As mentioned above here’s the “current” situation with RS ordering.

Those of us who got the “congratulatory” email and provided their details as requested by yesterday (presumably meaning we are the ones to get to order…)… well, we’re still waiting today to hear anything further.
It’s still annoying to not know *when* we might get to do so…

Got mail from Farnell.
My order will be delivered in week 31 :-(

While I have an order # from Farnell exports and I had an estimated delivery date of April 16th, I recently emailed them and got this reply:

Hi Matt

At present we cannot guarantee any delivery date for the Raspberry Pi, as there have been production issues with the initial batch. We are not expecting to be able to meet the 16/4/12 original delivery date due to these problems, but are also unable to give a revised date at this time. Plkease accept our apologies for this and any inconvenience this may cause.

Many Thanks and Kind Regards,
Simon Holdrick
Service Team, Farnell

I just ordering a board from Newark, it shows the price to be $35.00 for the board, $3.63 taxes and $9.00 shipping!! for a total of $47.63

I was under the impression, from reading the Pricing Updates posted on Mar. 13 2012 and from Newark’s own webpage, , that the price was to be $40.00 shipped, plus any tax??

Did I missunderstand?

it says “Price (including delivery & excluding. tax)”

What about Greece? Why is Greece not concidered as an EU Country?
We are still here guys!

This is crazy. Farnell is now charging me over 50% in taxes alone (14GBP) with a shipping address in New York. There is no way shipping or duties even begin to approach that number. I’m still emailing them, so let’s see if they’ll explain themselves.

Did you order from the UK distributor – if so you might be paying for international shipping, which would make more sense of the numbers.

I have a problem and my problem is:

Me and a friend both received an email that stated we could buy the Pi.

BUT

I dont see any reason why we both should pay the shipping fees. This is a waste of money and by no means economically.

How about some sort of SERIAL NUMBER system? So my friend can order 2 PI’s by typing in mine and his own serial number? This would not affect the “only 1 item per customer” rule.

I was considering the Pi because it almost drains no power but wasting money on shipping that for no reason increases the price and at the same time pumps more CO2 into the atmosphere seems stupid.

Please consider the serial number system

Thank You

I’m afraid there is no way for you to combine shipping until the one-per-person limit is lifted.

I registered my order (interest) on India address, is it possible that i pay usa price and ship it to usa address?

what is the price in india

element14 forgot Italy ?

Amazing, what I have learnt from this site, Australians are the greatest Wingers in the world, Peoples comprehension of the world of business is somewhat below zero. If a company says free post and packing, it means they have included it in the overall price not that it’s free, it’s convenient no customer addition required and what you see is what you pay, the use of the word free is false advertising, Do you believe you can take a parcel into the post office and say nothing to pay I am sending this one post free. Most of what bothers people is so much puff and really they are crying because the new toy is not instantly in their hands,
What bothers me far more are the many vendors on Ebay who will sell you one for currently between GBP70 and GBP199 plus, I notice, P&P , This means the true money grubbers got orders in quickly and somehow got them serviced, and this makes me very angry!

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