These and other companies cancellation are why I will not pre-order. If they want to do a MTO (Made to Order) I will consider it if the item is exactly what I want and there is a reasonable delivery date, otherwise "in stock or no order".
Douglas
I imagine that you are not alone Douglas. I think there are a lot of people getting turned off.
I'm still not sure that there is a difference between BTO and pre-order though. There are still economic minimums that need to be met for a project to be profitable. The difference seems to be in communication though. Take Scott Mann at 3rd rail for instance. He lets everyone know the status of the projects on basically a monthly basis. MTH brings out the catalog in what, April? but doesn't announce cancelations until the end of Aug. That is bound to cause frustration.
My friend and I have one simple rule with MTH... Until it shows up at my door or on a dealer's shelf somewhere, it doesn't exist. The catalog is a wish book full of vaporware- to borrow an IT term.
I cannot help but wonder if these cancellations are a flaw in the business model.
Pre-ordering without the guarantee of receiving what was ordered? I would think this is not a confidence builder in terms of the reliability of what is in a catalog. It's sort of setting oneself up to be possibly let down. Can anyone provide a case where another product is marketed this way? I can't think of one at the moment.
