We've tracked down an answer for you all - it sounds like the team here is still working very hard to get the Raspberry Pi available in Brazil, but haven't quite gotten there. They say it should be available very soon. You can see here for the blog post and follow for updates so you'll be first to know when it is available. I know this isn't the specific answer many of you were hoping for, but I know the team is doing their best to make this available in Brazil.
In contact by phone with the Brazilian Farnell, they told that only in august will be available here in Brazil costing 2 times more, about U$90,00, and the first batch is only 200 units.
Thank you very much for taking the time to investigate the issue and answering our posts. Unfortunately, after two "answers" and a "blog post," we are still left with no information.
I'm really sorry to say that the sentence "the team here is still working very hard to get the Raspberry Pi available in Brazil" means nothing for us and everyone else that is not part of "the team."
May I help you on helping us? Perhaps you could provide us any information on *why* it is not possible to just change the pre-order form and add "Brazil" to the list of the countries:
1. Is it because of brazilian customs and regulations?
2. Is it because you have agreements with the local distributor in Brazil that forbid you from shipping from the UK?
Almost nobody has been able to get a raspberry pi. Not even people outside Brazil.
Because the raspberry pies are still awaiting certification, they don't know when the rest will become available. So they say "august" to prevent people expecting the 'pi earlier than they will be possible to get.
I'm told that they can make many, many raspberry pies in short notice, once they are sure that no modifications are necessary to pass certification.
I aggree with yours "hold your horses." But everything from the sentence "almost nobody has been able to get a raspberry pi" up to the end of your last post has nothing to do with the problem being discussed here -- no offense, really, but I'm just objectively analysing how your post relates to this thread.
The problem is not "nobody in Brazil has got its Raspberry Pi." We do know that no boards have left the warehouses so far.
The problem is "the whole world can preorder a P-Pi except Brazil, and there's absolutely no reason why it should be this way." People all over the world are preordering, and probably will receive their R-Pis, before any brazilian can even enter their shipping address into a form.
Everybody knows the reason why the R-Pis haven't shipped so far; Farnell and the R-Pi foundation are really handling the delay issue really well, because they are open about it. In contrast, noone knows the reason why Farnell has left Brazil out of the preordering form. We would like to know just why can't we brazilians be treated like everyone else.
Yes. The problem actually is that because of a brazilian branch of Farnell, we will get ripped due to the profit seekinmg brazilian cunts. Why should the board cost 9 pounds world wide and about 99USD inBrqazil?
I have been trying to scrape some bits of information from the Farnell webpages (with the help of the unix tools diff, grep, sort and uniq), since there is no official information from them. Here's what I found so far.
Farnell has an Export site (http://export.farnell.com) that ships internationally. I have noticed that many (but not all) of the countries that have a local distributor are not listed in the Export site. Those are: Australia, Brazil, Brunei, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Serbia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.
Of the countries that are not listed in the export site, but to which the Raspberry Pi can be shipped are: Australia, China, Hong Kong, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand.
Which leaves us with the following list of countries that have a local distributor, but which cannot get the Raspberry Pi from the international site: Brazil, Brunei, Indonesia, Japan, Serbia and Vietnam.
Why only those 6 countries cannot preorder the Raspberry Pi? I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that the brazilian local distributor is a greedy profit-seeking leech since there are other countries in the same situation as ours. On the other hand, why Australia, China, ... can get the Model B board shipped directly to them but not us? It's not a latin-american issue (Mexico is ok, so are all of Brazil's neighboring countries), it's not a "Farnell has no way to send it straight to you" issue (Australia, China, ... are not in the Export site, but can get the Raspberry Pi) and Brazil is not undergoing an embargo.
You, in brazil, are not the only ones having trouble. Spain and/or portugal have similar problems.
It seems the "local farnell" offices are not the ones that are involved in the Raspberry pi project. This means that when I call my Dutch Farnell office they alternate between: "Sure, it says here you'll get your product next week", and "The computer says there is a backlog, you'll have to wait for august".
Farnell is working on getting things straightened out. This Nicole who occasionally posts here seems to be on the RPI project "full time". She WILL straighten things out.
Now Brazil is a very large country. How much would I have to pay someone to get a package to anywhere in that country within half a week? I can very well understand that this might be much more than in a densely populated country as Holland. So when Farnell UK says to their Brazil branch: "This item must cost $35 plus shipping and tax, and expect everyone to order precisely one, because nobody can order more than one for now", I can understand that they might come up with a price close to $99. This has happened in a few countries and has been rectified for most of them. Brazil will follow shortly.
If all else fails, i.e. the brazillian Farnell office is unable to deliver for less than $99, a solution will be found for example by shipping from UK or something like that.
So you want a REASON why farnell-brazil is messing things up? Farnell as a whole is overwhelmed with the requests for the Raspberry pi.
"Now Brazil is a very large country. How much would I have to pay someone to get a package to anywhere in that country within half a week? I can very well understand that this might be much more than in a densely populated country as Holland. So when Farnell UK says to their Brazil branch: "This item must cost $35 plus shipping and tax, and expect everyone to order precisely one, because nobody can order more than one for now", I can understand that they might come up with a price close to $99. This has happened in a few countries and has been rectified for most of them. Brazil will follow shortly."
USA, CANADA are larger than Brazil and both have some very difficult places to get to, and yet, both countries can buy the board for the 39gbp flatrate price...
I live in São Paulo, which is the largest city in Brazil, I can get letter/packages sent to a friend that lives in the middle of the amazon jungle (part of a civil/industrial project) very fast if needed (overnight delivery), using the regular post service. So don´t try to tell me that logistic is the problem with brazil.
