Farnell - non-UPS delivery method for non-UK customers??? Disappointing!!!

Closing thread:

Farnell, thanks for RPi. It has arrived today to Slovakia (one week later since invoiced). Despite of a little bit of misinformation in your invoicing system and based on the fact, that you never clearly stated the truth - It will be set by Royal mail, even stated UPS on the invoice, we apologyze for inconvinience, it will take generally up to one week - my RPi safetly arrived.

Kindly regards,

Pavol.

Yeah... I have the same issue with non-UPS.

I ordered the RPi, I paid the amount requested, which includes about 5 GBP for UPS delivery (explicitely stated somewhere).

On May 29 they sent the package (I don't know if by UPS or regular postal service - they didn't answer my question). Anyway, the delivery method doesn't really matter, because they didn't print the whole delivery address I entered... they missed the last line, which contained the floor and the phone number, so I suppose the carrier arrived in front of a 12 story building, with more than 1000 employees, and then went home.

After a while they resent the package, this time via regular postal service - so no tracking number, nothing. When I asked about some details (when it was sent, from where etc), they didn't answer. The only answer was that if I don't get it 20 working days I should contact them. I suppose I'll just ask for a refund if the package won't arrive in the next days and order from RS Components, even if I'll have to wait a few months more.

So this is my first and last order from Farnell, and I'll tell the story to all my friends, so they'll know they should avoid Farnell as much as possible. I suppose they won't really care about the small-scale bad publicity, because if they would care, their attitude towards clients will be different, but that's my only way to retaliate when I experience this kind of attitude.

I can reassure you all that no-one has been charged for a UPS delivery in Europe where Raspberry Pi's are being delivered via our Royal Mail Service.

On some of our European transactional websites and paperwork UPS is stated as a delivery method; this is something we are not able to amend purely for the Raspberry Pi. As stated above we are not charging for a UPS service.

Farnell element14 Raspberry Pi Customer Support Team

Oh well.

On the Romanian version of Farnell's site (http://ro.farnell.com/jsp/support/support.jsp?ICID=i-6a41-00001002&formpage=farnell/ro_RO/support/order.jsp#delivery) it's stated (the translation is rough but you can get the idea):

Farnell offers fast same day delivery, the products are normally delivered the next working day.

Standard delivery

* the delivery tax for online orders is only 20 RON (note: about 4 GBP - without VAT)

* same day despatch

* when you order before 18 o'clock

* there is no minimal quantity to order

Tracking

After placing an order, you can check its location.

Online - access "my account" and select "order history", where you can see the reference number for you order. Click on the order number you want to find out more details and get the tracking number, which can be used through UPS.

On my order's page is clearly stated: delivery method UPS.

The price:

You can see there that the delivery tax is 20 RON.

When I placed the order, I got a confirmation email stating:

Metodă de plată: Carte de credit

Metoda de livrare selectată: UPS (nu se aplică pentru produsele Newark cu expediere directă şi nici pentru produsele care nu se află pe stoc)

That means:

Paying method: credit card

Selected delivery method: UPS (not applicable for Newark products with direct delivery or for products that are out of stock)

So, what can I understand from all that? I paid the normal UPS delivery costs or not?

The actual sum paid is a little bit bigger than 169.31 RON, I assume that's because of the exchange rate when the delivery took place.

And my biggest issue is not the fact that it was sent via Regular mail instead of UPS, but that there were a lot of mistakes and even if it was sent more than 3 weeks ago, I still haven't got it; for example, the packages from Amazon UK arrive in 4-5 days.

Please, state it CLEARLY on your websites and not only here in the forum!

Right!

This whole thread I think Pavol was overreacting a bit, but this time I think he's right.

On the raspberry pi "promotion" page and with the order, there should be something like: "Although Farnell has a global contract with UPS for delivery of most orders, due to the extreme cost-pressure on the Rasberry pi product not all of them can be delivered using UPS. Some will ship using ... "

This needs to be reiterated on the invoices, with the addition of: "even though this invoice may say 'UPS shipping'. "

@Customer Support - can you please answer my question? I detailed the prices, I was charged 20 RON+VAT (about 4,5 GBP) for delivery. Is this supposed to be UPS delivery or Royal Mail delivery? According to EVERYTHING on the order page, Farnell help page, email etc, the delivery method is UPS. I didn't receive any message from Farnell stating that the delivery will be via Royal Mail, there was NO mention of this on the order page, there was NO mention of this when I placed the preorder.

After more than 3 weeks I didn't receive my package. I order a lot of stuff from Amazon UK and the packages delivered via Royal Mail arrive in less than 1 week (some of them in 3 working days).

And the biggest issue is the fact that noone cares to explain what happens. I have 5 mails from a Farnell customer representative and she failed to provide me answers to my questions: WHEN was the package sent, WHAT was the full address (they failed to put the full address the first time - they missed the last line, which contained the floor and phone number) and FROM WHERE it was sent (I assume UK but I'm not 100% sure).

Hi Bogdan,

As previously mentioned I can reassure you that no-one has been charged for a UPS delivery in Europe where Raspberry Pi's are being delivered via our Royal Mail Service.

On some of our European transactional websites and paperwork UPS is stated as a delivery method; this is something we are not able to amend purely for the Raspberry Pi.

Regarding your other questions please can you send us a Private Message detailing your order reference number, date you received your dispatch email, and country in which you placed your order so that we can look into this for you.

Many thanks,

Farnell element14 Raspberry Pi Customer Support Team

All the same, there does appear to be a problem with the last line of delivery address, perhaps only for export sales. I've just received notification of despatch for my RPi, but it doesn't seem to mention France on the bottom line, although this is there on the invoice address. I was very impressed with the speed of despatch, but it will be less impressive if the package starts going round in circles!

Postal services get slow when the address is incorrect, but usually they work it out in the end. My mother once got a "thank you" card from someone addressed to: "grazing horse, <town>" ("grazing horse" is the title of one of the little statues she made). Her name has nothing to do with "horse". No country. No street. It took months, but the card finally arrived..... From markings on the card it had been travelling through several middle eastern countries before finally coming to Holland (the Netherlands).

So, if your town sounds a bit French, it's likely to end up in France on short notice and not suffer a noticeable delay.