Don't buy an Orange Lie.

I used to occasionally buy a single board computer ~10 to ~5 years ago.

Then I waited until SBC's reached the 32GB RAM level. The first such affordable and performant board was an Orange Pi 5+ or 5B (I should double check, may add a comment later).

I believe I wanted the Orange Pi 5+ but it was sold out, so I ordered and paid for the Orange Pi 5B (the 2 ethernet port variant) which was a bit more expensive but was still for sale. Both had 32GB RAM, my main requirement. There were multiple "flavors", with power adapters or with case or with memory card or eMMC etc. I chose the memory/eMMC version.

I sent a message to ask them to give me heads-up when they are about to ship mine, and then I was patient.

Then I waited, and waited, and waited.

Too patient, after a long while I start looking up on forums if other people are also waiting. I discover I am not the only one. So I take up contact again and ask when the board will be shipped.

They inform me the SBC is no longer manufactured, and offer me inflation-devalued currency.

I check which single board computers they still sell, and indeed they no longer sell the 5B variant, but now the 5+ is back in stock.

I ask them if they can just ship me the 5+ instead of the 5B. They refuse.

OK, I ask them how much I can pay extra so they ship me the 5+ instead of their unilaterally discontinued 5B.

They refuse.

A few months pass by. I ask again if they intend to ship the 5B as agreed, or the 5+ as a substitute.

So here comes the orange Lie:

They claim they shipped it, and provide a DHL link.

I first name (same as my father's) is German, even though I live in Belgium.

Their DHL link, is a shipment to somewhere in Germany, with a weight far below the weight of a single board computer, and which was delivered just minutes before their sending this message claiming shipped delivery.

I confront them that the weight of the SBC is advertised on their own site, and their DHL delivery link lists a value far below it, that I live in Belgium and the shipping address was in Belgium (I have 0 links to Germany), and that the timing of the delivery and their response message is so close it suggests people at customer support (presumably without arbitrary access to deliveries outside of the case) asked colleagues to let them know if a case pops up with a German delivery, so they can manually copy and paste bluff delivery of product X to customer Y as if it was my order to me into the message.

I confront them and ask them to answer a numbered list of questions.

They refuse to answer the questions (they can't without incriminating themselves), instead they offer me my money back.

Don't buy into the orange lie.

If you work for Orange Pie, feel free to msg me with a way to contact you, if you positively resolve my case I will remove this message.

I've got dozens of various OrangePi models and I use them for a wide range of projects like drones, sdr receivers, home automation nodes, etc.

I'm sorry you have this experience but it's definitely not typical.

What was the website you bought it from?