Preorder?

As with Serban, placed the pre-order from the UK (had to go to the export site as a consumer) and received an e-mail stating the same:

Thank you for ordering via the Farnell web site.

Your order has been given the following Farnell reference number: XYZ. Please refer to this number if you contact Farnell regarding your order.

 

When stock is allocated to your order, we will send you a full order confirmation including prices, availability and expected delivery date.

So once they have enough stock to fullfill the pre-order, they'll send another confirmation with a proper invoice and when to expect it at your doorsteps. The card has not yet been charged, just checked for validity.

a site with exporteurs for Element 14 and i couldnt find Germany under the listed countries

The UK isn't listed either, though I successfuly pre-ordered it. On that site, in the upper-right corner, you will see "Farnell Export". Then you will be directed to Farnell's own export site - again in the upper-right corner, you can now select Germany, UK, Spain, etc.

When I click on the link from the email. I get both UK and Germany in the list? and I placed my order @ 12 pm

I too have received the same confirmation email.

I have lots of countries to choose from in the dropdown list. When i choose i.e. Hong Kong, i could order it, but thats obviously no use for me, since i'm in germany....

I have lots of countries to choose from in the dropdown list. When i choose i.e. Hong Kong, i could order it, but thats obviously no use for me, since i'm in germany....

What was the mailadress from witch the mail was sent from?

I got a mail with a link from news@e-marketing.premierfarnell.com

Is it safe to place the pre-order?

Yes, that was the same sender in my case as well.

For me, there were four odd things about the preorder process resulting from the email received from Farnell:

• One is that the link redirected to the export.farnell.com site, which was a little wierd since I'm in the UK already and hence there is no export necessary.  I think this is merely the effect of consolidation though, ie. make all Rpi preorders be  handled by a single site.
• Another oddity is that after clicking the Submit Order button, it directed me to the list of countries.  Well that made no sense at all because UK doesn't figure in that list, since there is no export from UK to UK.  Since there was no "UK" to click, I just clicked Back, which did indeed take me back.  (Yay, unlike so many clueless webbies out there, Farnell's web devs respect the Back button and don't reset the forms -- well done. :-)
• Since I was back at the details screen where I'd been before, the only thing I  could do now was to click Submit Order again.  Amazingly, this time it worked, no pointless redirect to the export countries screen.
• And finally, not an oddity but not what I expected:  it provided no opportunity to use my non-trade Farnell account login, which would have been preferable since my Rpi order would then figure in my order history.  It's not a problem, but would have been useful.

So, definitely some odd behaviour in the preordering, but it got there in the end.

Morgaine.