new rules in RPi "ordering and shipping" forum

The basic issue is one of communications.  I am still in the position of not being able to place an order, in pite of haveing received an email directing me to do so.  This is becomming a fiasco for Element 14, and that is unfortunate, as they have taken on this rather large project that has the potential to become a major shift in the embedded system landscape.   I suggest that they spend a few hours to querry their database and update everyone in each of the following catagories: 

1. people with actual orders- update the order status. 

2. people who have received the "order now" email-  Tell us how to do so, the link in the email does NOT work. 

3. everyone else who registered interest- tell them when to expect to be able to order. 

Letting people know what is going on is critical to keeping the good will of this large list of potential customers. 

People understand supply chain issues.  Many of us have had to deal with them first hand and understand that knowing the real situation is critical, as that allows us to plan our projects instead of just twisting in the wind.

--Mike

With the benefit of hindsight, I think this unfortunate drawn-out saga is a result of rushing together a dedicated process for Raspberry Pi orders alone, and expecting it to "just work".  If one steps back a bit and examines it philosophically, that was wishful thinking.  In the real world, complex systems only work properly after a process of evolution.

On the Farnell side, non-corporate credit card orders were already fully supported before Pi, so they could have embraced Pi as a normal product without conjuring up a new and untested system.  At most this would have required putting a few more servers into place to allow existing support systems to scale a bit higher.  From a user perspective, this would have provided customers with the good quality interface to their order status and history which is standard in Farnell, and avoided all the problems with this new Pi-only ordering process based on emails, FAQs, forums and (lol) tweets.

Anyway, too late now, it's all water under the bridge.

Once Pi is available ex-stock though, I'll be really annoyed if I can't buy boards through my normal uk.farnell.com account with the usual customer control over delivery.

Morgaine.

No doubt the distributors have their share of responsability but all the current mess trying to get a Rpi starts from poor management and execution by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, they created the product, they own the brand, they over hyped and over sold it.

Countless times people told them in advance to beef up the process, to expect more demand than anticipated, etc., but that didn't help, only increased the population of "concern trolls."

-J

No doubt the distributors have their share of responsability but all the current mess trying to get a Rpi starts from poor management and execution by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, they created the product, they own the brand, they over hyped and over sold it.

Countless times people told them in advance to beef up the process, to expect more demand than anticipated, etc., but that didn't help, only increased the population of "concern trolls."

-J

Oh, I'm not surprised RPF got it totally wrong, as a more amateurish approach would be hard to find.

But I am surprised that Farnell has got itself into this mess, as they're a very professional company with a long history of having its head well attached to its shoulders, and the "Best of British" tag really does apply.  Something broke.