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Raspberry Pi Update: Early Bird Gets the Lemon

karma

Feeling a little better about not being among the first to order now. From their blog:

It’s inevitable, isn’t it – you’re freewheeling along perfectly happily and then you get a puncture.As you’ll have noticed, there’s been a bit of a delay in shipping the first batch of Raspberry Pis out to people. This is because of a hardware parts substitution that was made in the factory by accident: specifically, where we’d specified jacks with integrated magnetics in the BOM and schematics, the factory soldered in non-magnetic jacks. No magnetics means no network connection. We’ve known about this for four days now, but we haven’t been able to tell you about it because it meant we had to do some further tests to make sure that nothing else was affected.

MagjacksAn illustration of where the factory went wrong - one of these jacks has integrated magnetics and the other doesn't. Which do you think is which? (I'll leave the answer in the comments later when you've had a chance to guess. Don't be misled into thinking there's information in the colour of the connectors.) It's actually very hard to tell unless you look at the insides of the part, either by doing what Gordon did and using pliers to take it apart when he realised something was wrong ("tin opener method") or...

Top view, x-ray
Â…by taking an X-ray. The jacks in this image are not necessarily in the same order as the ones in the spot-the-difference image above - I'm not making it that easy for you!

Side view non-mag type
This is a side view of the sort of jack we didn't want on the board. Pete Lomas, who designed the Raspberry Pi hardware, unmounted this jack from one of the boards we got back from the factory and X-rayed it for us.


This jack has integrated magnetics. You can see from the X-ray that it looks very different internally from the non-magnetic version above.

Happily, itÂ’s a very minor problem to fix (desolder the dud jack/solder on a new one), and the factory is nearly done working on replacing them on the first set of boards. This means that the first tranche of boards should still go out to customers as we were expecting. There may now be a slight delay in later batches if thereÂ’s a problem sourcing enough magnetic jacks (weÂ’ve got teams hunting them down already); all the stock of jacks we believed we had in place and ready to turn into the ethernet ports on your Raspberry Pis turn out not to be the correct part, so weÂ’re having to start again and move through the negotiating/ordering/delivery cycle as fast as we can. Our partners at Element 14/Premier Farnell and RS Components are working hard to help us cater for this, and to expedite supply of the Raspberry Pi.

We are very, very sorry. We know you want your Raspberry Pi as soon as possible (and many of you are being inhumanly patient, having followed us since we launched this website eight months ago). WeÂ’ll keep you updated with how manufacture is moving; this is, in the scheme of things, a minor problem, but itÂ’s still a bump in the road and we know that we rely on your goodwill to keep things moving forward.

On the bright side I learned something new today, I had no idea about integrated magnetics in 8P8C jacks.

A bit of clarity on pricing reveals that the Raspberry Pi Model B is $35 - with an asterisk. Apparently they were never talking about us non-britons:

As you may know if youÂ’ve been reading our Twitter feed or hanging out in the forums here, we asked our worldwide distribution partners, Element 14/Premier Farnell and RS Components, to offer you a bit of clarification about pricing around the world for the Raspberry Pi and its shipping, because some of you were getting some confusing feedback. Using the information below, you should be able to make a decision about which supplier is the best choice for where you live.

IÂ’ll start with RSÂ’s response, because itÂ’s a bit shorter:

In response to your request for a breakdown of the RS prices and shipping across the world for Raspberry Pi Model BÂ….

With demand running at such a high level, and in an effort to keep things as simple as possible, RS have decided to set a single global price and a single global delivery charge!  This should help you communicate to the Raspberry Pi community very clearly.

We will allow all orders to be placed on our website using this universal pricing mechanism, which will ensure that we ship on a first-come first-served basis to everyone that has registered, in the order that they registered with RS following the launch on 29th Feb.  It will also enable us to ship one Raspberry Pi to each customer who places their order, until availability eases and we can ship multiple Pi’s to anyone requesting more.  We will be in contact with our registered customers with instructions on how to place their orders over the next few days, as we will soon be able to provide accurate availability information based upon volume manufacturing.

So, in every country that we are legally able to ship to, where we are not restricted from selling to private individuals*, we will apply the following universal £GBP selling price, shipping charges and VAT:

Raspberry Pi Model B = £21.60

+ Shipping Charge = £4.95 (this shipping charge also covers any accessories ordered to be shipped with a Raspberry Pi – Customers will only pay ONE charge of £4.95 per shipment)

VAT @20% = £5.31

(Liz edit: if youÂ’re in the EU but outside the UK, your VAT may be calculated differently. Outside the EU you will not pay VAT, but will still have to pay any local sales and import taxes.)

Total inc VAT and shipping = £31.86

PAYMENT:  We will accept payment via PayPal and Credit Cards.  Any customer ordering with a credit card will be charged in local currency by the bank issuing the credit card, in accordance with the bank’s exchange rate policy.

The single Shipping Charge of £4.95 will apply to all orders and will also include any Raspberry Pi accessories ordered from RS at the same time as the Raspberry Pi Model B board (eg. Memory Card, Power Supply, Cables, Keyboard, Mouse etc.).  We will not charge a further shipping charge for any accessories that are ordered and shipped with the Raspberry Pi board.

*   -  Currently we are restricted in selling to private individuals in Austria only.
[ADDENDUM : This means the only place individuals cannot buy from RS is Austria.]

Just to let you know that we now have in excess of 200,000 registrations of interest.  This was still growing at 10 per minute yesterday!

 

Element 14/Premier Farnell, knowing the Raspberry Pi consumerÂ’s love of a good graph or table, have come up with some tabulated data:

element14 Pricing Update

As we work with Raspberry Pi to distribute the Model B $35 boards globally, there has been some confusion and discussion around our worldwide pricing.

In an effort to simplify our pricing and communicate transparently with our customers we have produced the following grid for consumers which shows for each country the price per device, including delivery costs in relevant currency, avoiding the need to calculate back from GPB to local currency in most instances.

The variable element is local sales tax which still  needs to be added to the delivered price. This is proving hard to simplify!

For countries where it is straightforward to do so  we have added local sales tax  to the grid below , for example the UK where VAT at 20%  has been added  giving a total price including delivery and tax of £29.46.  However for countries such as the USA  where there are different sales taxes for every state  we have added a link to help customers calculate the final price in local currency, in  an attempt not to over-complicate the information below!

This simplified pricing structure will apply to all credit/debit  card orders placed with us and includes those from  customers who have already registered their interest or intent to buy from any of the element14/Premier Farnell Group of companies, unless they were previously quoted a LOWER price, in which case we will honour the lower price.

If a customer has already ordered from us at  a HIGHER price than those listed below we will ensure this is corrected at point of shipping to reflect the cheaper prices below.

Also other Raspberry Pi ‘bundles’ and accessories ordered and shipped at the same time as the Model B  will not incur any additional delivery charges.

We hope this is clearer for our customers and as always appreciate feedback and suggestions to improve.

element14

http://www.element14.com/community/groups/raspberry-pi

 

element14 Consumer Pricing for Raspberry Pi Model B effective 12th March 2012

Region Territory

Price (including delivery & excluding. tax)

Sales Tax

Total Price  (inc. Sales tax)

Europe

UK £

£24.55

£4.91 (VAT)

£29.46

EU £ Credit Card TransactionsAustria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden

£27.25

£5.45 (UK VAT)

£32.70

Other European £ Credit Card TransactionsNorway, Switzerland, Turkey

Russia, Israel

£27.25

£38.65

Plus import VAT and duty that may be payable
Americas Mexico

$50.75

Subject to local state / provincial taxes & regulations – (please contact [email protected] for details)

Canada

CA$47.00

USA

$40.00

 

 

 

APAC

Australia

Au$ 50.95

Au$3.80

Au$54.75

China

RMB 265

RMB 39.95

RMB 304.95

Hong Kong

HK$ 309

0

HK$ 309

India

Rupee 2550

Subject to applicable national and local taxes and input duty

Korea

Won 70050

Malaysia

MYR 145

0

MYR 145

New Zealand

NZ$ 63.21

NZ$ 7.24

NZ$ 70.45

Singapore

SG$ 55.00

SG$ 3.15

SG$ 58.15

Thailand

Baht 1492.50

Baht 103.95

Baht 1596.45

Rest of World

Subject to destination, delivery, tax and duty will be confirmed at point of order

 

Rev 1  07.03.12 element14

 

  1. 1.     Why have you changed your prices now?

The incredible demand for Raspberry Pi and discussions with our thousands of customers has highlighted the need to simplify pricing, making clearer any additional charges and as a global distributor put these in local currency wherever possible to help our customers. We want to make our pricing globally transparent   in keeping with our commitment to make the Board accessible to all at a base price no higher than $35 per board. By changing our prices now, with the first delivery of reworked boards due to go out next week, we can ensure that all customers have the benefit of the new pricing structure.

  1. 2.     I placed my order at a higher price. What does this mean for me?

Your order will be charged at  the new, lower  prices automatically, you do not need to take any action.

  1. 3.     I placed my order at a  lower price. What does this mean for me?

We will honour the lower price you were previously quoted. You do not need to take any action.

4. I am a trade customer, not paying by credit/debit card. What prices will I pay now?

Customers who have a trade account with us at any of the element 14 / Premier Farnell companies will be able to buy the Raspberry Pi model B along with their normal purchases in their own country,  either on-line or via their local contact centres. Prices for these customers will be list price net of delivery or local sales tax as these vary for our trade account customers

    5. Your web site is still showing the old price? What should I do?

We have been working all weekend to get all of our local country  websites updated without impacting customers, so there may be a few changes not yet finalised. Please bear with us. We didn’t want to take our websites down to make these updates and so it is taking us a little longer but all  orders placed from now on  will ship at the new price we promise!

   6. If I order other accessories at the same time will I pay additional shipping on those items?

Accessories that are ordered and shipped with your Raspberry Pi Model B will not incur any additional shipping charges to those already quoted for delivery of your Raspberry Pi.

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