Raspberry Pi Stock

I visited the Corby base of RS yesterday.  I live 9 miles from there and 35 from Cambridge.  I was told by the staff there, after they had  "checked upstairs" what to say:

1) RS never had any stock.

2) RS have therefore not shipped any to anyone.

3) If you have filled in the form on the RS website you should get an email in 5 working days informing you of the situation. 

4) They expect to be shipping some "this month".  As this was 1st March I was not impressed.

Personally I am not impressed that the Pi website is still showing essentially the same information that was there 06:00 Wedneesday, although they have obviouslybeen in and tweaked it to include Element 14 in the Farnell link at the bottom of the page.

I feel they should have a update on the site explaining what is going on.  And what the plan is!

Also not impressed by the RS corporate site news item titled:" RS Components responds to huge customer demand for Raspberry Pi"  ----  truth is the response includes site crashing, having no stock, not shipping anything,  not informing people. 

BTW, I had registered an interest months ago on the Raspberry Pi site, and didn't even get the courtesy of the email that was supposed to be sent!  Seems also those that registered months ago via the Pi site are just in the mix with all the late comers who piled in to the RS site.

Great british engineering, but then...............

Neither RS or Farnell have stock. I thought that was clear from all the press releases over the last couple of days. The Pis are still on their way from China. The only difference is that Farnell is taking concrete orders while RS are asking people for their details and will contact them shortly. A bit frustrating all round but there is no reason to suppose that either company will get a Pi to you any sooner. I registered with RS soon after 6:00am on 29th and got a generic confirmation from them yesterday.

Well you are doing better than me then.

I registered months ago with PI and got no email.  Prior to Wednesday 6am was the story that it was only pre ordering?  Not clear at all, just teasing posts on a website.

I have registered via RS and got nothing other than acnowledgement I had registered.

My son's DT project, designed around the Pi, which at the time of design was expected end 2011, will be submitted with a Intel inside sticker in the next few days.

I think it is fair to say that many of the people who registered on the Raspberry Pi site did not get an email, myself included. It would have thought it was clear that they just got swamped in the end. They are a charity and have no staff as they all have full-time jobs, except Liz, who is an unpaid volunteer. In the end the infrastructure could not cope under the strain and they have been frantically been trying to keep their heads above water for a few weeks now. The server certainly could not cope with the demands and constant timeouts have been a feature. What started as a small charitable project has turned into a monster. RaspBerry Pi has been trending on Twitter, it is on the radio, TV, newspapers, etc and I gather perhaps over a million people have now expressed an interest globally. I would imagine that the team are shellshocked and is currently planning how to upsize the organisation to cope with the demand.

Why companies go for pre-ordering, when the reality is that they've not got anything to sell while the product is in a container somewhere between here and China, I'll never understand. It's bound to lead to frustration and, nowdays, endless emails from fed up customers. it reminds me of the halcyon days of Sinclair. I waited 6 months for my QL and when it did arrive half the gummins were hanging out the back... Those were the days (wistful sigh)...

I'd love a Raspberry Pi, but I'll buy one when someone actually has one to sell me.

The factory in China let them down. I think in the end there was so much in progress that they could not move the launch date.

It's reminding me of ordering my Acorn Atom as well.

I wonder what Acorn or Sinclair would have done if they had orders for a million units within two days of the launch.

Richard,

     I don't believe that the factory in China let them down.  The foundation stated long in advance that the first order would be for only 10,000 units and that these first units would be somehwat of a first-come, first-served sales.  The foundation also said that the would already be getting the next orders built while the first were being delivered.

     I guess the only mistakes that were made were related to not doing any contingency planning.  Firstly, the foundation said that they wouldn't take any money without actually having stock in their hands.  However on launch day it seems that the original 10,000 were still somewhere between China and the UK.  I don't think that the launch should have occurred until Farnell and RS actually had their share (what it was, like 5,000 each) sitting on their warehouse shelves with staff and infrastructure in place to take orders.  Secondly, did the teams at RS and Farnell really look to see if their current network was ready to handle an international onslaught?  I think not.  RS doesn't really have a direct to consumer setup and their international partner/resellers (at least in Canada) don't have any clue about the R-Pi.  Farnell's website doesn't even have clear links for their resellers in North America.  You have to had known that Newark is their team on the other side of the pond.  Thirdly, the teams at RS/Farnell and the foundation are all smart people.  They are high-tech gurus with years of technical, marketing and financial experience.  Being told that they couldn't have foreseen the demand or couldn't have the servers in place to deal with the traffic is really not acceptable.  The fact the "raspberrypi.org" moved to a static site proved that at least some thought was given to traffic issues.

    In the end I hope at least that from a manufacturing point of view that there were contigency discussions as to what the capacity of the manufacturer is.  I personally want to order more R-Pi's in the future and really don't want to wait months to get them.

I'm another one that was registered on the Raspberry Pi site and didn't get the expected email from them. The first I knew about anything happening was when I saw the news on Yahoo that the website had gone down. By that time it was probably turning in to a feeding frenzy for all the news media. It makes me wonder how many of the people that have expressed an interest in RPi, since then, will actually buy one in the end. In the meantime the people who were genuinely interested - before it became a worldwide news headline - have effectively been pushed to the back of the queue. I would certainly be willing to pay for one in advance, to ensure that I got one as soon as possible, and not be slowed down by all the people that have jumped on this latest bandwagon.

The factory in China let them down. I think in the end there was so much in progress that they could not move the launch date.

Sorry, but that would have cost them two phone calls. One to RS, another to Farnell, calling it off. And I don't think that neither Farnell or RS would have incured any cost from postponing the launch date. Both were apparently not prepared at all for the launch.

And then they could have retracted their statement on their website about that big upcomming event, and that would have been it. I mean, they are working on this for six years. A few more weeks until the ship sailed into the harbor would have been nothing.

I think Farnell have handled this a lot better than RS - at least there is some idea that you've placed a pre-order, or that they've stopped taking them, rather than being told by RS "thank you for your interest, we'll get back to you at some point".

I rather got the impression that with RS, they will notify you when they have stock, then it's first-come-first-served so I think (if I'm right) they will get another feeding-frenzy on their site, and not even a fair one, if those that registered first have to fight it out amongst everyone else to get their order in.

I think Farnell have handled this a lot better than RS - at least there is some idea that you've placed a pre-order, or that they've stopped taking them, rather than being told by RS "thank you for your interest, we'll get back to you at some point".

I rather got the impression that with RS, they will notify you when they have stock, then it's first-come-first-served so I think (if I'm right) they will get another feeding-frenzy on their site, and not even a fair one, if those that registered first have to fight it out amongst everyone else to get their order in.

I have one of those emails from RS. I will wait to see whether they stand by their statement. /sobs.

I haven't, (despite filling in the form within minutes of 0600) *sobs harder*

I am a bit angry that I didn't get an email, and even though I registered it obviously didn't work but due to a lack of confirmation I had no way of knowing.  I phoned up earlier, they said if you try to register again it won't work if your first registration went through.  It obviously didn't so I will probably wait six months for mine now!  Glad I got up at 0600 for nothing, what a crock!

I phoned RS as well when I had not heard from them. They also said that if you have already registered it won't let you register again. Rubbish. It lets you register aninterest as many times as you like. I have had one confirmation from them but whether that relates to 6:00am on Wednesday or Thursday afternoon after I phoned, I just don't know.

On the other hand, if you think this is frustrating and confusing, just wait until your Pi arrives and you have to get it going. That will definitely sort the Roys and Maurices from the Jens.

Well, I will just have to wait and see then.  Maybe the first try did work, but I am still waiting on an email.

When I spoke to RS earlier, they said they had only been allocated 900 raspis from the first batch!

What is the purpose of this email; it says nothing about stock or anything

else.

Thank You

Robert C Davis

I also registered just after 6am with RS and haven't received any sort of confirmation email.

Was I supposed to get one and doesn't this mean I now will not be contacted when stock does arrive?

STOP SUBSCRIPTION

Sent from my iPad