A quick update from RS. We’re just working through the final webpage process into our live sites this morning. It’s taking slightly longer than planned, so please bear with us while we get everything in place. More soon!

Hmm, tried RS selling site – estimated despatch 11 weeks. Plus some time for delivery. Doesn’t sound like much of the improvement. If you are making so much Pi every day, I would expect much shorter despatch time.

I am still waiting on my PI (April 3 from Farnell) and first it was “end of June” and when I emailed them asking what was happening they said “Your order will be despatched no later than the 5th of July”.

Would be great if I would get my Raspberry Pi first. Or at least someone at RS would think about responding to one of my mails and telling me what happend to my prepaid order from 3 month ago.

I placed an expression of interest with RS a long time ago and have heard absolutely nothing from them. Farnell took my expression of interest, moved through to order and delivered on 24th May. Good customer service Farnell – you will receive my volume order today.

I ordered one at RS and one two at Farnell. I now have 3 of them already :-)

The above email states that cases are now being sold on the RS website. I cannot find these cases anywhere. Anyone else had any luck?

Mod edit, you can find the cases here.

I am sure this is good news for a lot of people and organisations, including the educational sector, but it does come as a bit of a ‘slap in the face’ for customers who first expressed an interest with RS the first week in March, and who still have not received their RasPi.
Farnell/Element14 do IMHO appear to have done better so far though, by quite a few weeks.
Still, as the old saying goes “Everything comes to those who wait”… let’s hope so anyway!

Great news.
Just noticed about RS’ cases. They look really good and a very nice price too. When will these cases be available at local RS delegations, so we can avoid shipping charges?
Right now, I’ve got this price:
Goods total 5.06€
Tax 1.01€
Standard Delivery (Despatch expected within 11 week(s)) 6.28€
Order Total 12.35€

That’s far from ideal, IMHO.

Bit [mod edit for language] to be honest, signed up to register my interest, got a bunch of emails every couple of weeks saying “hold on, we’re building more to meet supply” and that was it… Now, i can order, but have to wait 11 weeks… [Mod edit again for language, and also to suggest you read the lead times in the post.]

This is great news.

Liz: I didn’t blab ;-)

Does anyone have Farnell’s _working_ contact email?
They have sended my RPi which I ordered in May to the wrong address.
I have sended them a e-mail to export at farnell.com on July 12 but there is no reply yet.

I’m wondering if RS and Farnell could send an update mail to inform their (un-)patiently waiting customers about the expected delivery time ? Thanks !

[…] other Raspberry Pi flavoured news this morning, Liz Upton reports on the Raspberry Pi blog that: Up until now, we’ve had to restrict purchases of the Raspberry Pi to one per customer […]

Hurrah

Good news, but will there be a mechanism to stop someone ordering thousands and reselling them at a profit to people who wouldn’t be waiting for their order if there weren’t people buying large lots to sell to them?

Won’t there still have to be rationing or at least conditions attached to non-school large purchase orders?

This is completely the wrong idea. Yes, it might make sense from a bottom line standpoint, but allowing businesses with lots of money to purchase multiple units undermines the original intent of the device: to foster a curiosity in programming for those who otherwise could not afford a computer. One order per person was the best way to achieve a high distribution. This policy shift does not mean more people will get RasPis in their hands. I just means a select few will get their hands on a lot of them, just as it is with money, land, and any other form of wealth.

good news :)

are there informations, when model A will be available?!

lol. Allied had sent me my 4 additional PIs about 2 weeks ago. Still doing the happy dance.

when will you come out of beta?

So, what is still prohibiting the QtOnPi devices to be send out?

@Liz: Thanks for all the hard work you and the foundation has done.

@RS: I understand the huge amounts of orders take alot of time and so on but is there any talks about taking in temporary staff?

*scratch ear* so if I order/pay one from e14 now it will arrive before the one I paid for from RS six weeks ago. (fourteen weeks wait for those that paid when I did)
I was going to use the Pi to handle greenhouse lights and waterpump, anyone got any suggestions what I can use a second one for?
(looking for geeky impress-value rather than irl-app)

I registered my interest at RS in April and my RPi is expected to be despatched in 7 weeks, but if I buy one now from Farnell/element14 it is only expected to be 5 weeks. Does RS have so many more people on their waiting list or is there something else that has happened to slow them down? Personally, I’m ok with 2 extra weeks as long as i get my Pi, but it feels like those who have been in line should get their first…

This is dodgy news. I keep trying my Element 13 invite I got on July 3rd. I get the message: “we are currently experiencing a huge number of requests and are temporarily unable to take your order.”
How can they be taking bulk orders now when they can not even fulfill my 1 order?
I now assume this part is rubbish: “Please try the link in your email again later, we still have your place in line.”

If you are in the US, recommend you order from alliedelec.com (RS’ US company) at:
http://www.alliedelec.com/lp/120626raso/
Prices are in $US. As mentioned above they have been accepting quantity orders for at least a few weeks now.

This is crazy. I _still_ can’t _order_ even ONE.

I’m “assured” by Newark that by place is still being “kept” and they even sent me a “You’ve Registered — Now it’s time to order!” email July 3rd. You can’t actually order though. The page you get..

http://piregistration.element14.com/lvl5/rasp_code_ex_US.html
We know you have already registered for this great new technology, unfortunately we are currently experiencing a huge number of requests and are temporarily unable to take your order.

Please try the link in your email again later, we still have your place in line.

Other information pages at Newark suggest updates to the page on July 5. Uh.. guys you are about a week and a half late.

I’ve been “registered” and trying to buy one since at least January (I think even further back like December 2011).

In other news, the newark website is a non-responsive grease spot again. Memories of late Februrary.

Even outside of this “heightened” demand, their site is slow and laggy. You’d think they have upgraded it by now.

I ordered last night (10:30pm PST) and had no problem. I beat the rush this time. I was able to order before the announcement.

The large image being displayed on the Farnell site is of a beta board, with a sticking-over-the-edge SD card holder (which retail Pis don’t have). Oops? ;)

Putting on my Sherlock Holmes cap, the timing of this announcement might suggest that there is a slight possibility that duplicate orders by some are being abandoned at an increasing rate, freeing up some supply. Another possibility is that orders are going unfilled by many who jumped on The Next Thing Bandwagon and were swept up in the early frenzy to get a Pi just because everyone else seemed to want one without having the foggiest notion of what to do with it. Still others who made the leap in order to immediately triple their money on ePrey, etc., are now dropping out as supplies are finally meeting the actual demand, eliminating the profit potential (prices on ePrey are dropping from over $100 last week to around $60 this week).

BTW, for those who think there are ~200,000 Pi boards in the field, that’s off, possibly by a lot. Newark is only now starting to deliver to customers in the U.S. their allotment of the 100,000 built in June, which is probably somewhere in the tens of thousands range, since the first few hundred thousand orders/registrations of interest were primarily from the UK and some European countries. I would take the distributors’ “delivered” numbers and trim them by at least 30% on any given day until the backlog is truly filled.

On the other hand, we have five fingers, and they will be busy putting in bulk orders for U.S. educational institutions that are very interested in acquiring the Pi but, so far, have been hard-pressed to even see one. A lucky few educators and students who were able to order and actually receive one aren’t able to provide the exposure needed to get the word out about what they think they can do with it, as well as their less bleeding-edge, not-so-early adopter fellow teachers and students. The only reason any bulk orders will occur now is because the new school year is a bit over a month away and this is the last opportunity to spend Fiscal Year 2012 money for many local, county/city, state, and federal government agencies. Those orders won’t be overwhelming, though, because so few educators and their technology folks have been able to test drive a Pi. We can hope that there will be many more orders in the hopper before this time next year in advance of the 2013 – 2014 school year.

We’ll be holding what I believe will be the first Raspberry Jam in the U.S. this coming Saturday, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California (just a few blocks from the Googleplex, so, bring your cameras for photos with the new Jelly Bean Android mascot! :) ). We hope that will help expose an influential group of extreme early adopters in both education and business here and help bootstrap more interest in the Pi, especially to inspire new software and hardware projects by students that will help them learn computing fundamentals.

Ironically, some of the worst school districts in the U.S. are intermingled among the gleaming skyscrapers that silicon and software built here in the SF Bay area, and the Pi could help change that status quo precisely because of its price point and wide support thanks, in no small part, to the amazing community that’s sprouting like weeds, at least on-line so far. The success of the Jams in the UK is a positive sign that The Best is Yet to Come, though.

At least now we can order The Best in Bulk … Delivery in Bulk Real Soon Now? Well, you can’t have everything, can you? :D

Does that mean my order will ship faster than the 11 weeks they told?

Farnell has failed to give me any information on the pre-order I made.
I’m one of the people with only a ORP farnell reference number and no way to log on the site. (farnell also failed to answer when I asked in the special post on raspberrypi.org)
I’m really dubious about farnell, is the 4-6 weeks delivery another mockery ?

Ohhh What a Wonderfull News, I needed 55 units for a computer room in a Primary School of Bamako suburb, in Mali West Africa.

Congrats to you Liz and RPi Foundation, Diallo Iam.

That’s funny. I put in an order for 3 during the first batch hoopla. I received 1 a month or so later…then the other 2 came a couple of weeks after that. *shrug*

What happened to the buy-one – give-one, is that also possible now ?
When i ordered i could not find it.

I would *really* like to see a video of the production!

After VAT and shipping plus a 11 week delivery time I don’t see myself joining in this “revolution”. I anticipate a huge number of inexpensive but powerful ARM based dev boards to flood the market soon, if they haven’t already.

How will the Pi compete?

The failure I see is a failure to get enough Pi’s in the hands of the people who are actually doing the work, in a reasonable amount of time. Your FAQ specifically says that it was a “gamble” to produce a large number of units, well I think you’ve lost the gamble by not producing enough.

I appreciate all the work put into this project and it’s important to recognize the impact this project has had but I will be looking for alternatives for my projects.

Another milestone!

Congrats, R-Pi! :-D

To RS: I think you should send items to these customers, that already bought Pi’s from you and not process new ones…..

Buy more than one? i will be happy to receive finally the one I ordered months ago!

@RS Why can’t we buy cases on the business website?

When trying to order more than one on farnell.com (for shipping in europe) I get the error:
There were errors in your submission, please correct them and try again.
Only one order may be placed per customer

Am I missing something here?

If you tape 2 together you can have one that’s twice as powerful!

RS: Thank you for your Raspberry Pi order, your order reference number is: 101xxxx (Despatch expected within 12 week(s))
I hope that this news it will reduce the time for dispatch

MMmm, not convinced that opening the floodgates quite so wide as to let anyone order “as many as they want” is such a great idea, I can see alot of 3rd party retailers and ebay stores etc that will be buying up 100’s or even 1000’s of them and causing the same long delays.
Maybe a limit of 25 or 50 would of been better to allow projects like ours to get enough boards to roll out projects at schools and uni’s etc but to stop people abusing the system by buying up 100’s and reselling for 2 or 3 times the price on their own sites or through eBay.

Those who are still waiting for their first single Raspberry-Pi would have got it sooner if many folk hadn’t ordered two Raspberry-Pi’s, one from Farnell and one from RS-Online. Most of the owners I have spoken to got round the rationing to one Raspberry-Pi by this trick.

Great. still waiting to hear on my original expression of interest. by the time I receive one, I will have forgotten why it was desired.

Just don’t buy from Farnell. I’ve — literally — never had a worse customer service experience than with Farnell. After placing my initial order with them on Day 1, I eventually got notified that my order would ship soon. After missing that date, I checked on my order and found that they had a problem with my credit card (most likely due to an overseas purchase), however they didn’t contact me. I tried to find a way to update the order with another card that doesn’t care about overseas orders, but their site provided no way to do that. I must’ve sent a half dozen emails, asking, begging for a way to fix that. I got nothing back. Finally, they contacted me and told me there was a CC problem. I replied. No response. I checked the site again, and used their contact form. No reply. I finally had it and told them to cancel my order. No response, and they didn’t cancel the order. WTF??

DAYS after that, I got a phone call from them on my voicemail, repeating the CC problem, and asking for me to fix it. I told them I gave up and canceled the order. I figured that was the end, but three days later, I got a call (which I was awake to receive) with a live person who restated the CC problem. I could not believe it! These guys are absolutely clueless. I was almost speechless.

Then, I calmed down and told them what I REALLY thought of their customer service.

I don’t know if this is the “norm” for companies in the UK or what, but it was a huge wake up call to me that there are companies out there (Farnell, in particular) who haven’t a CLUE how to handle customer service, and who really don’t care at all what their customers say.

I’m hesitant to try RS, but they’re the only other source left for a Pi. I just can’t get the bad taste out of my mouth yet. Farnell is the worst. Do NOT buy from them!

I registered ages ago in March and got to place my order some weeks ago. Still haven’t got it and now I hear that everyone can order without registration now. My estimated delivery isn’t even earlier than what element 14 states for new customers. I’m starting to wonder why I registered in the first place. I bet there will be some people who get their Pi, which they ordered today, faster than I will. And even if I get mine earlier, it will probably only be a few days looking at the shipping times. So the whole registration and early payment process was nothing but a hazzle afterall.

Not sure if I like this.

Really annoyed that I registered with RS in April, only got the chance to order end of June with a lead-time of approx 10 wks, then a couple of wks later, they go on open sale with Element 14/Allied saying lead-time 4 wks!!!

Based on this, I could still be waiting for my 1 Pi I tried to order in April, whilst people who order 100 today could be getting them weeks before me.

NOT HAPPY! :C

Explanation please!

Just to provide a positive lean after reading through a comments section largely populated by people complaining about not having received their RPis.

I registered interest with RS on the 29th February (about 2 hours after the announcement as I forgot to set my alarm). I received my invite to order mid-May, and my RPi turned up in France on the 7th of June.

After chatting with my mum, we decided that an RPi might make a nice birthday present for my dad, so I registered interest with Farnell at the end of June, with no real optimism that it would be available before his birthday. Yesterday I received my shipping confirmation and in theory it should be with him by the weekend (where it will be hidden until his birthday!).

This will undoubtedly annoy those poor souls who’ve been waiting since the 29th for theirs, and it does seem to suggest that each company keeps national lists of interest meaning that there’s a separate queue for each country. This would explain the difference in waiting times that are being seen.

In any case, I’m happy with the service I’ve received from both companies. My first order of electronic components in about 10 years has been placed and I forsee many happy hours of hard and software hackery ahead of me. The interest that I’m seeing in the RPi outside of the forums matches the goal of the foundation to rekindle interest in development. All in all. Well done guys and nil carborundum illegitimi.

Well I ordered one from Farnell and one from RS on the first day they were available (the websites were both having so many problems I wasn’t sure if they actually got the message!).. I just never bothered to cancel the other order once the first got delivered…

So now I can calculate the Circumference of a circle with my 2 R Pi

:)

A bit off-topic: On the RS purchase site I saw it’s possible to order also a case (for my pi I already received) and a power supply. I reallyl was going to proceed with the other until I saw the expectable delivery time would be 16 weeks(!). And I did not include a rasp pi on the package… Soo much time if true.

Finally!

Word is out that Farnell customers which ordered after the registration process has been dropped already received Pi’s, while others are waiting since weeks or months. I guess the whole thing didn’t work out very well huh?

I still don’t see how it’s possible to order more than one RPI at Farnell..

When following the link given above:

http://downloads.element14.com/raspberryPi1.html?isRedirect=true&ICID=raspberrypigroup_Europe

I click ‘Order Now’ -> Choose my country -> Select that I’m a Customer and not a Business

… and then the “Qty” is already filled in with “1” and it’s not possible to change the value of this field.

Liz, could you please tell me what I’m missing since I really would like to order 2 RPIs ?!? :)

RS in Greece are a complete steal: they sell (including shipping) one single Pi for 70 euros, 2 Pi’s for 110 euros (that’s US$84 and US$132 respectively), because they ship from the UK, and they only ship via UPS.
This is not a distributor with international presence; this is a UK distributor helping UPS make a buck.

can I order?
I from Indonesia, how to order?
I want to explore more aboout rapsberry pi
thanks

Just cancelled mine (single unit), ordered June 20, as the assured despatch date keeps being pushed back. Farnell are quoting 3 weeks so I will try them

Nice that you can now take general orders. How will the Company manage that when they still have people that ordered over 2 months ago waiting for delivery. Still waiting.

They really need a US distributor setup; import, shipping and tax really kill the attractiveness of this platform since it doubles the price.

I live in vancouver bc and I want to buy one. Where can I get one?

Hello,

So I’ve been trying to purchase a Raspberry Pi (just like the rest of you), however I’m not sure which place I should use.

I’m in the US, so when I go to RS, it sends me to Allied. When I reach Allied, it says there are 0 RPi’s available!

When I head over to Element 14/Newark, I can fill out an order form and all, however they ask me for a Company Name and I do not own a company. I’m just another individual who wants to get his hands on a Raspberry Pi ASAP.

I put my name in the Company Name field and it lets me proceed. Now, however, it states they will conduct a credit check. Why is this needed?!

I don’t have credit, I just use the only debit card I own. Therefore, I’m afraid my ordered will be “delayed” and/or cancelled just because I don’t have credit.

Can anyone from Element 14/Newark or anyone else with previous experience respond to this and clarify some of my concerns?

I would greatly appreciate it!

Thank you!