2012-03-01, 02:31
welshblob Wrote:Interesting that people got it for £29.46 from Farnell. My pre-order is £26.55 + VAT (£31.86) and the base price seems to include postage. I have also registered my interest at just after 6 with RS.Not that im suggesting theres doubt in the pricing...
As for the load on the servers neither distributor is really geared up for the high street consumer website load at sale time and my guess the only sites that may have coped would have been amazon and ebay. Of course this is easy to say in hindsight.
It was disappointing however esp as RS didn't seem to have a clue what was going on and the foundation thought they were supposed to be selling rather than building mailing list! I expect there will be another ddos on their site when they do get stock and start selling them ... joy joy.
Rob
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20670693/xbmc/pi_invoice.jpg
I do wonder though, perhaps the marginally cheaper price is the Pi-China produced price, and your slightly inflated cost is the Farrell-somewhere produced price? If its costing them an extra £1 to do it their way instead, they're having to pass on the price, but not profitting from the original batch?
Complete guess, but it could explain things. I havent figured out if this now means they'll be UK produced or if they'll still be done overseas? Hopefully Farrell & RS have their suppliers and can get a slightly better deal done within the UK which means faster turn-around for a marginally increased price.
castalla Wrote:It was a shambles - Farrell in Spain seemed to have no idea what was going on, and I never got anywhere near any sort of order form - just an expression of interest form, after hours of 'internal server errors'.
Less time spent blogging to fanboys and more on organising the release sales might have been more productive.
They could have done things far better, although it wasnt quite last minute or unannounced, it leaves a lot to be desired. I signed up for their newsletter for exactly the purpose they said it'd have... thats nowhere to be seen, i only found out because a friend pointed it out on Monday night, though i prolly would have checked every other day for news anyway, and i stay well clear of twitter & facebook, and you'd expect the newsletter to be 1 of their means of communication (should you really need 2-3 just incase?) and that probably let a few people down who werent keeping a close eye on movement.