If you are in the United States, the situation is a little weird and has changed as the hours have gone on. Farnell is a UK company and their American partner is Newark. (RS is partnered with Allied Electronics, but I digress.) If you go to http://www.newark.com you will see that one of their front page "rotating fade-in/fade out" ads is a blurb about "register your interest on Raspberry Pi" and if you click there you go to a page that will take your email address for future updates. However, if you search on part 83T1943 you will go to a page where you can actually order the Model B for $35. Originally Newark was going to tack on an additional $20 fee that was effectively the drop ship postage from Farnell in the UK direct to your doorstep via Royal Mail. They charged it on me when I ordered online and eventually got a ship date reciept in my email for May 10. Meanwhile, people complained about the $20 fee, so there was a posting from a Newark sales rep that said if you don't want to pay the $20 fee online, to call the sales rep office at 1-800-463-9275 to order instead of doing it online and ask that your order be shipped thru the Newark warehouse in South Carolina which would take 2 weeks longer to allow cargo ship delivery of the American allotment from UK to SC, avoid the $20 Royal Mail drop ship fee to you personally, and still have UPS fees attached from SC to your door. Somebody else posted that they were able to place a phone order from 1-888-827-2203 for $58 (!?!) with an estimated delivery date of April 25 - they placed their order after mine and got a two-week-earlier delivery quote. Then the real weirdness started happening. The sales rep post with this info was pulled from the forum where it was posted and Newark issued a statement that they were dropping the $20 fee for everybody and if you had been charged for it you would get a refund. Um, OK, sounds like they are now routing all US orders via the slow boat from the UK via SC - but does that mean my May 10 ship date I was quoted has slipped? I dunno. All I know is they've taken my money and I'll most likely get a RPi eventually. In the chaotic environment of the last 48 hours, that's probably all anybody can hope for. Hey, bump this post up with a "like" if you think it's useful info. Good luck!
If you are in the United States, the situation is a little weird and has changed as the hours have gone on. Farnell is a UK company and their American partner is Newark. (RS is partnered with Allied Electronics, but I digress.) If you go to http://www.newark.com you will see that one of their front page "rotating fade-in/fade out" ads is a blurb about "register your interest on Raspberry Pi" and if you click there you go to a page that will take your email address for future updates. However, if you search on part 83T1943 you will go to a page where you can actually order the Model B for $35. Originally Newark was going to tack on an additional $20 fee that was effectively the drop ship postage from Farnell in the UK direct to your doorstep via Royal Mail. They charged it on me when I ordered online and eventually got a ship date reciept in my email for May 10. Meanwhile, people complained about the $20 fee, so there was a posting from a Newark sales rep that said if you don't want to pay the $20 fee online, to call the sales rep office at 1-800-463-9275 to order instead of doing it online and ask that your order be shipped thru the Newark warehouse in South Carolina which would take 2 weeks longer to allow cargo ship delivery of the American allotment from UK to SC, avoid the $20 Royal Mail drop ship fee to you personally, and still have UPS fees attached from SC to your door. Somebody else posted that they were able to place a phone order from 1-888-827-2203 for $58 (!?!) with an estimated delivery date of April 25 - they placed their order after mine and got a two-week-earlier delivery quote. Then the real weirdness started happening. The sales rep post with this info was pulled from the forum where it was posted and Newark issued a statement that they were dropping the $20 fee for everybody and if you had been charged for it you would get a refund. Um, OK, sounds like they are now routing all US orders via the slow boat from the UK via SC - but does that mean my May 10 ship date I was quoted has slipped? I dunno. All I know is they've taken my money and I'll most likely get a RPi eventually. In the chaotic environment of the last 48 hours, that's probably all anybody can hope for. Hey, bump this post up with a "like" if you think it's useful info. Good luck!
