This is the biggest load of shite...if they knew this was going to happen (which, of course, the team did), they shouldn't have continued sending out emails that "your vampire is ready, pay now." I could have gotten mine in 10 days from Amigakit, instead of having to wait over a month for it to clear customs from a country that is on the red list, where any package from that area has to be opened and searched before it can enter the mainland of the USA.

That is the fault of your country´s politics, not of the Apollo guys.

And whenever again you buy a hobby made product, from a group of hobbysts, then dont ever expect professional class service. You made a wrong assumption.

Paid mine on March 25th - In US also. Status says same. This got frustrating fast. I guess Amiga Kit had them allocated first. *sigh*

I paid more too :rolleyes

Ok, let me explain. Last time I have build 200 cards and all of them are gone in matter of days, now I m building 200 more. Cards sent to AmigaKit were from first batch so they waited to get them like anyone else.
@kirk_m I have send you mail explaining why my country is on black list, well it is not my fault.

And while waiting is never fun, I do think this is a good thing for the future of the project. It will offload the Apollo Team the transaction/packaging/shipping part of the project, and free up time for production and development.
I realise being the one that ends up between two chairs in a transition period is never fun, but on a big picture scale, this change is good for everyone.

Like everyone else, it took months between ordering and shipping, but thats a faint memory now, and I now focus on the positive sides of having a Vampire.

While I understand it can be frustrating try to think logically.

Do I understand it well that Vampire that costed 300 Eur now costs 300 GBP?

thats the reseller margin id assume.

not trying to pick on this or anything. but it might in fact be wise to serve the preorders first, at least the prepaid ones as they have been accepted and then the resellers. you can still change the mode of distribution on the fly, but you would avoid most complains that way. i suppose.

are there plans to support other shops or is it based on their initiative and amigakit is the only one, who expressed enough interest, so far?

Still you get fastest 68k accelerator, RTG card, FastIDE port (10 MB/s and more) and soon AHI 16/32bit soundcard and AGA over the HDMI feature (no more RGB needed). I think its still fantastic for the price.

RELEC seems to have them in stock;

http://www.relec.ch/frch/index.php?p...chk=1&Itemid=2

Refrence this post;

http://amigaworld.net/modules/news/a...yid=8020#99171

ah i see relec stocks some. but probably it isnt the most convennient to buy from switzerland, otherwiser they would be out of stock as well.
there are stores in germany and poland, that might be a good alternative.

There are no paid preorders, only paid orders. If somebody paid, he did it because he got a message telling him that his card is ready for posting. It has happened, though, that somebody paid and his payment was accidentally missed and no card was posted. Thus, if you paid and did not receive your card in several weeks, you should probably ask what happened to it... All the other people "waiting to be vampirised" are just that, people that expressed interest, didn't pay a penny and could just as easily buy through a reseller or just abandon their retro computing hobby altogether during the waiting time.

@grond - I paid on the 29th March for a Vampire v500 v2+

TODAY majsta told me that I will just have to wait... 'Demand is too high'

So why send an email saying your card is ready and please pay asap!?!

When I paid for my card on March 31th I was told one was allocated for me which I took to mean it would be built to order for me. Delivery time frame was within 3 months and I would receive tracking info upon request.

So I have a little over a month more to wait for shipping according to that communication.

I understand Amiga Kit may have paid for and been waiting since before March31st, but it felt like the end user customers who purchased them yesterday have essentially "Cut the line at the grocery store". I'm in agreement that prepaid end users agreements should have been fulfilled prior to retail fulfilments in this case because it just feels bad. But I've slept on it and...

In the end, it comes down to this.

Those who needed it ASAP resorted to the highest prices via ebay.
Those who needed it now resorted to an elevated price via Amiga Kit.
Those who wanted it for the lowest possible price (me) just have to wait longer.

I was pretty pissed off last night to know these orders have been fulfilled for 200 end users and they'll have their cards within 10 days or so. But after sleeping on it, I realize it's just my impatience and low funds I'm frustrated with.

Like waiting for christmas when you have a bunch of Jewish friends I suppose. *shrugs*.

Just thought I'd voice that. And if it gets hung up in Customs for a month, I won't have it in hands until the end of July, assuming it ships out on time.

So there's that.

Did he send a card and told you to just wait until it arrived? Or did he overlook your payment and not send one at all? In either case you will have to wait some more but in the latter case an apology would seem in place. Knowing Igor I'm sure he would have apologised but you may, of course, still be displeased with the situation. AFAIK the standard procedure is to send an email to the next say x*(1+0.n) people in the line when a batch of x cards arrived from the factory and ask them to pay within a certain period of time and then skip those of them who did not pay in time. Quite a few people seem to have lost interest in retrocomputing during the waiting time or don't have the money now which means that there are always people who don't want a card anymore or not at this point in time. Thus, some who pay late may get skipped and, as always where people are working, mistakes happen and payments can get overlooked altogether (in my experience this happens especially to very early payments, have had this several times myself when buying stuff online...).

No card has been sent, basically he said demand is too high and he is working on the next batch.

Guys, please, make peace with the idea that this accelerator is made by two guys on the time they have available, which seems rather little.

If you really want this thing, and to support its creators, stop being "pissed off" about it. Because you know what is gonna happen if people keep complaining like this? Vampire will cease to exist, or at least, the two guys working on them constantly right now, will quit it, and it will all go in limbo.

Please try to change the way you think about purchasing one of these and, more importantly, the way you express yourself about this frustration. Best case scenario, you shouldn't be frustrated at all.
It's not like ordering from a high street store. There are waits involved, advance payments you have to do with a "leap of faith", and errors and overwhelmed makers trying to build as many of these as they can while juggling their everyday activities in real life too.

As a comparison, I waited a shit ton of time for my first 1541 Ultimate II from the moment I placed my order and also a bunch of months after payment for my second one after I had just missed a production run. I never complained, and I am very happy with my devices. And these are manufactured by a factory in China nowadays, yet still there is this one guy trying to deal with it all in his spare time.

Perhaps for the Apollo Team, there's some advice here too, regarding communication. Like, saying "your card is ready" but not currently having one, is confusing and I understand why people would get upset. So a simple change of wording could ease off a lot of stress for them.

Anyway, I think everyone needs to cool off a little bit before this gets bad :(

Total agree with Akira.