Raspberry Pi Model B

The two companies distributing the Raspberry Pi boards have issued updates on the pricing and shipping of the boards.  RS Components have decided to set single global price and delivery charge for the boards:

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 you’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.

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 also have an update on their pricing:

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.

My board due sometime in April, I can’t wait to start playing with it. More details on the Raspberry Pi blog.

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